BILLY BADD (aka MOTOR PSYCHO) (1992)

 

Official videocassette cover for Billy Badd (aka Motor Psycho) (© Alex Downs/Pivot Pictures/York Home Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

It's been a while since I watched a biker movie, so last night I watched the 1992 Alex Downs-directed action film Billy Badd (aka Motor Psycho, but not to be confused with the 1965 b/w Russ Meyer-directed biker movie of this same title).

Directed by the afore-mentioned Alex Downs, who also co-wrote its story, and released by Pivot Pictures in 1992, Billy Badd certainly lives up to its title. As played by Robert Restaino, the title character is a crazed, murderous, totally psychotic biker who, inexplicably, has just been granted parole from a life sentence after being convicted of rape, assault, an assortment of brutal killings that included his own parents, and who knows what else besides!

Not surprisingly, everyone in the vicinity of the desert town where Billy has been released from prison suddenly finds urgent business that demands their attention a long LONG way away – even the local outlaw biker gang departs for burn-ups elsewhere.

Unfortunately for college sweethearts Frankie (Tom Emery Dennis) and Zoey (Nicola Seixas), however, driving on an epic road journey to their scholastic alma mater in New York City via a very long and lonely cross-country highway through California's Mojave Desert, they happen to be entirely unaware of this gruesome back story. That is, until a heavily geared-up Mr Badd rides by them on his motorbike, looking disconcertingly imho like the late great Freddie Starr attired as a Mad Max road warrior, and definitely looking for trouble, BIG trouble! So once he sees F&Z, he decides to create some – with, and for, them!

Totally unhinged, and armed to the teeth with a veritable artillery of weapons, after terrifying the frantic couple for a while via his constant perilous pursuit of them Billy shoots Frankie in the leg, sets fire to their vehicle, and rides off with wounded Frankie strapped onto his bike's fuel tank, a frantic Zoey trailing far behind in the clearly vain, hopeless aim of tracking them down.

 

The smiling assassin, in every sense! Psycho biker Billy Badd, played by Robert Restaino (© Alex Downs/Pivot Pictures/York Home Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But then an ostensibly unlikely glimmer of hope appears, in the befuddled form of The Rat (Dermott Daniel Downs). He is a shell-shocked vagrant ex-soldier who lives inside a hole in the desert, and not only is even more deluded than Billy (if such a thing were possible!) but also just so happens to be his brother! Happily, however, The Rat is much more pacific and kindly in nature than brother Billy, and after a tortuous time attempting to wrap his muddled mind around what Zoey is telling him about what has happened, he finally provides her with instructions on how to reach the shack where Billy lives, together with a crossbow to use against him once there.

Eventually, after stealing a lorry en route, Zoey arrives at Billy's shack where he is holding a terrified Frankie prisoner and triumphantly regaling him with what he plans to do to him – which is when what has already been a scorching pace for the storyline becomes a veritable inferno! The movie's climax inside the shack certainly pulls no punches (especially in the physical sense!), plus there is an unexpected if wholly implausible twist right at the very end of the movie.

Billy Badd is basically a very violent (albeit not so gory) biker-themed horror thriller, whose freakish central character is brought explosively to life by a wholly unrestrained Restaino, his characterisation of Billy being not so much over the top as completely off the planet, but nonetheless is totally mesmerising throughout – especially as Billy speaks exclusively in pop-culture quotes and sound-bites, thereby rendering him even more bizarre than he already would be. Restaino also performs a number of the movie's hair-raising motorbike stunts personally – no mean feat in itself, so all credit to him for that, let alone everything else.

Dennis and Seixas are also eminently watchable, with Seixas ultimately transforming into a Lana Croft facsimile in order to rescue her man-handled man from his psychopathic abductor. And Downs as The Rat is rather like watching a mind-melted Jekyll lined up against Billy's blood-letting Hyde.

It may be a low-budget flick, but if you like blisteringly wild – and in this case also decidedly wacky – biker movies with plenty of adrenaline-triggering activity, Billy Badd will not disappoint. It even includes some snatches of dark twisted humour entwined amidst the unrelenting madness and mayhem of this road trip to hell. And if you'd like to take a brief ride down that deadly desert highway and experience a heart-pumping encounter with badass Billy himself, be sure to click here to watch an official Billy Badd trailer on YouTube, and here for a swift but savage lesson in how not to interact with Billy!

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Not a sight that you'd ever want to see through your windscreen – here's Billy!!! (© Alex Downs/Pivot Pictures/York Home Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)