There’s a school of thought which claims – not without merit, it must be said – that cult classics can’t be created on purpose; it’s a status that’s left up to the audience to decide. Clearly, Steven Kostanski didn’t get the memo when he set out to precision-engineer a late night favorite after setting to work on PG: Psycho Goreman.
The title alone was enough to hint that it was surely destined to live on as an enduring underground favorite, with the filmmaker putting his all into the project by serving as writer, director, producer, and editor. When you’ve got such a preposterous title, coupled with an equally ludicrous plot, the chances are distinctly high that the end result is going to accomplish its intended goal.
What nobody seemed to account for, though, is that Psycho Goreman would end up as a critical darling. In fact, it fared much better in terms of reviews than it did when it came to audience approval after being Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a sky-high 92 percent rating, well ahead of a 64 percent user average.
The appeal of Psycho Goreman has been neatly distilled on Reddit, too, with a thread describing it as “the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen and I love it” hitting the nail squarely on the head. After all, we’re talking about a brother and sister reawakening a creature called The Archduke of Nightmares, renaming it as the title hero, and then forcing it to defend them from a cabal of intergalactic assassins while the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.
If that isn’t Cult Classic 101, then nothing is, so there was little danger Psycho Goreman wouldn’t pass the test with flying colors.
