31 Days of Halloween: Psycho Goreman

2020, Steven Kostanski (The Void) -- download

The tropes of 31 Days of Halloween include monsters and gore. So, whether this movie be more a scifi comedy is of no matter, we got silly, inventive monsters and gore in buckets, sometimes literally. I like that Kostanski is playing to form, having first seen his work in The Void (which Kent seemed to like more than me) telling me he likes practical effects monsters and working in small Canadian cities. Where the first movie was devoid (ba dump bump) of humour, this is basically a comedy. And it worked.

OMG main character Mimi! Again with the precocious child that I am not (too) annoyed by. But how can I be annoyed by Mimi, she's just absolutely, undeniably HORRIBLE ! She bullies her brother and her parents equally, constantly spouting dismissive catch phrases and utterly convinced she is the centre of the world. But she makes me laugh, constantly. Kudos on Nita-Josee Hanna (Buckets of Blood); she's going to evolve into something to watch.

So, sociopath Mimi and her brother are playing their own version of Calvin Ball (google it) in their backyard with culminates with her brother having to dig his own 6 foot deep grave. Yup, she was going to bury him alive as part of the game. Oh Mimi! But instead, she finds some sort of purple glowing stone thingamajig and claims it as her own. 

Purple Thing turns out to be the control stone to an Evil Alien Overlord brought up in a forgettable, but on brand, opening text scrawl, exposition dump. Eventually said Evil Alien Overlord crawls out of the brother grave (parents interrupted before he was actually buried in it) and kills some local Bad Guys in a most ludicrous over the top way. Evil Alien Overlord looks like a rejected villain from The Power Rangers which just adds to the scene. Without his Purple Thing (snicker) his powers are minimized so he follows it to its current location -- Mimi, who instantly realizes she has control over him. Her first act is to name her nasty Evil Alien Overlord, and after some banter, they come up with Psycho Goreman or PeeGee for short.

The rest of the movie is mostly from Mimi's vantage point, as she uses PeeGee for whatever insane whim comes into her head, while doing her barest effort to stop him from causing chaos and mayhem wherever they go. But every so often we get a reminder that Evil Alien Overlord was buried in the ground with a Purple Thing for a reason, and the Galactic Federation (or whatever) of weird, fucked up aliens (one is a robot with a fleshless head) still needs him captured or dead.

There is some backstory, in oh so glorious over the top 80s/90s throwback style. The movie seems to be set in another of those weird 90s amalgam time periods -- the cars are all current but they only use VHS. Eventually some of PeeGee's minions come to Earth not to reconcile with him but kill him, and we get a hilarious battle that looks like an R-rated version of before mentioned Power Rangers but instead of giant monsters, we get weird fucking aliens like the walking bucket filled with blood and guts, or the baby headed shaman. Its all such cheesy, wonderful practical effects and makeup.

Eventually there is a grand battle between Evil and Evil and Mimi (who really, is also Evil) which ... resolves things? Kind of? PeeGee is left on his own, destroying the rest of the world, but at least Mimi and family are reconciled and she won't be bullying her brother as much. That's a good thing, right?

Oh, Mimi!