Motorpsycho (film)
Motorpsycho or Motor Psycho is a 1965 film by Russ Meyer. Made just prior to Meyer's better-known "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1965), the film explores similar themes of sex and violence, but focuses on a male motorcycle gang, unlike the female gang of go-go dancers featured in "Faster, Pussycat!". "Motorpsycho" is also notable for containing one of the first portrayals of a disturbed Vietnam veteran character in film. Plot. The story involves a veterinarian whose wife is raped by a motorcycle gang led by a sadistic Vietnam veteran. After the gang kills an old man , his wife teams up with the veterinarian to hunt down the gang. Production. Russ Meyer was having trouble with the censor board because of his films so decided to make a more action oriented movie. The working title of the film was Rio Vengeance. Haji was a dancer at a nightclub when she heard about auditions for one film. Meyer cast her in one role but liked her so much he promoted her to one of the leads. She later recalled: Russ worked with a five-man crew, and he took us all into the desert with snakes, lizards, and  all kinds of danger. He thought if you were a guy, you could live in a tent out in the desert, but the ladies he treated better. We lived in a trailer. When you shoot in the desert, you come back with dirt in your eyelashes and hair. Our shower was a big barrel with a cork in it, set up on four sticks. You pulled the cork out, got wet, stuck the cork back in, soaped up, pulled the cork back out, rinsed off, and that was it! Two actors were injured while filming a scene involving motorbikes and  wound up in hospital. Reception. According to Meyer, the film went "through the roof [commercially]. So I said, `Well, let's do one with three bad girls'." This led to "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!". The "Los Angeles Times" said it and "Faster Pussycat" "pack as much sex and violence as possible on the screen without bringing in the police. In fact, they're so ludicrously erotic and sadistic they can be taken as parodies of the entire genre of exploitation pictures." Legacy. Norwegian band Motorpsycho picked their name after watching this movie in a Russ Meyer triple feature. There  was already a band named after "Mudhoney" and a band named after "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" – the other two films on the triple feature – so they used "Motorpsycho". There are references to "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" in the song "Thunder Kiss '65" by White Zombie. The song also uses the phrase "motorpsycho", a popular pun on the word motorcycle that predates the movie (Peter Phillips' 1961/62 painting "Motorpsycho/Tiger" being one notable example).