The hippie power-ballad cranks up again, and the credits finally roll, as the killer returns home to his mansion with a stack of presents. Inside, Harvey (Joe Turkel) makes his way into his super-secret psycho degenerate clubhouse, adorned with bondage fetish pictures and three nekkid mannequins. There's also a portrait of a stern looking woman that he has trouble looking at -- so I'm going to assume this is mother, and the source of all his hang-ups. He opens the presents: a brand new batch of clothes for his mannequins, and we leave Harvey sniffing a new pair of panties.

I assume a few days later, Ridelander is back in his office, where he receives a phone call. The mysterious party on the other end wants to meet. Ridelander doesn't want to, but the caller is insistent; he finally agrees. 

Meanwhile, Harvey's done playing dress-up and is waltzing with one of his life-sized Barbie dolls. He expresses his love for his imaginary friend, but has another fit when the mannequin won't return his love. He sprawls it out on his snooker table and attacks it with his knife.

The mannequin is saved -- for the moment, when someone knocks on the door. It's Ridelander. (Methinks there's dirty work afoot.) It seems Ridelander has been Harvey's family attorney for a long time, and new about the deranged son's hang-ups. Together, they plotted the perfect crime as Ridelander arranged for Harvey to kill his nagging wife. (Oh yeah, Columbo would have figured this out and hour ago.) Ridelander thought that that would be the end of it, but Harvey enjoyed the act of killing too much -- and wants to do it again. He wants Ridelander to use his influence with his lower clientele to kidnap two young women so he can act out his fantasies again. The lawyer refuses until Harvey plays a tape he recorded while they finalized the plans to kill his wife. So Ridelander is hooked on a blackmail, but Harvey offers to pay whoever he finds any price to do the deed.

And my internal vile-o-meter pegs out until the needle breaks off.

Later, Ridelander meets with Chelsea Miller (Stephen Oliver -- who we haven't seen since Werewolves on Wheels), the leader of the Savage Disciples; a biker gang that's seen better days. The lawyer lays it all out but Miller doesn't want in because of the "sex freak's" motives. Ridelander ups the ante, assuring him ten-grand and a fresh start, legally. The lawyer also shows his true colors by adding that people die all the time -- auto accidents, war, contract killings for nagging wives, so life isn't all that precious. (Is it any wonder why we despise lawyers so much?) Miller is in deep trouble with "the man" on some drug beef. Ridelander knows this, and warns Miller he won't be able to afford his high-priced help anymore, unless he takes the deal. Quid pro quo'd into a corner, Miller's agrees to do it; but he isn't so sure about the other Disciples. So they conspire and concoct a story that the girls are just being sold to some white-slavers down in Mexico. 

Miller leaves to try and sell that to the others. He heads to a derelict house that serves as the Disciples clubhouse. Inside, he finds Lorie (Amy Thomson) -- his old lady, strung out on something. She's hurting real bad for another fix, but they're out of drugs and money; so she's easy to convince for the quick cash. But Irish and Romeo (Bill Barney and Sean Kenney) -- the only other members of this one-lung gang, aren't very keen on the idea. Miller tries to convince them that with the bread, they can clear out, head north, and start over and bring the Savage Disciples back to the glory days. After a little more haggling they finally agree, and Miller sends them out to snatch the unsuspecting victims. He instructs Romeo to bring them back here and to be careful that no one sees them. Romeo says "No sweat" and the two roar off on their hogs. Lorie is having second thoughts. She's the extremely jealous type and warns Miller not to get any funny ideas, and "Focus on the money and not the muff" or "They'll be delivering two dead bitches."

While Romeo and Irish prowl the streets, looking for the right victims, Jenny Madison (Tanis Galik), and her best friend, Faye (Kitty Vallacher), debark off the bus from Omaha. They're going to spend summer vacation visiting Jenny's aunt and uncle in sunny Hollywood. They're paged in the depot, take a call from her aunt, and find out her uncle broke his leg. They're both stuck at the hospital, so the girls will have to take a cab to the house. Once there, Jenny and Faye start to unpack. Jenny changes  into a more revealing outfit of tight jeans and bikini top, while Faye remains in her short-skirted schoolgirl get-up. And I think we all know where this is going...

We learn that Jenny's mom sent them to Hollywood to get her away from her no-good boyfriend after they did the "deed."  Faye confesses that she's still a virgin, and Jenny confesses that her aunt used to work for the Gestapo, so she thinks they need to get out and see the city on their own. Faye isn't sure, but Jenny cajoles her into it, promising that they'll just go to the hospital. Ah, but how will they get there? Jenny sticks out her thumb.

And the first riders that cross their path are Irish and Romeo. They offer a ride, but Faye pulls Jenny aside and says she's heard bad stories about bikers. But Jenny's intrigued and convinces her to go for it. Besides, she thinks Romeo is kind of cute under that gruff exterior. So the trap is set, they've taken the bait, and their fate is sealed.

They take the girls back to the clubhouse -- not exactly on the way to the hospital. Assuring the girls they only stopped for some gas money, Romeo invites them inside to meet the other Disciples. Faye wants to wait outside, but again, Jenny trusts the dreamy Romeo. Miller greets them at the door and escorts them inside, where nothing much happens -- yet. It's starting to get dark and the girls are getting a little nervous. They ask to be taken home, but Miller says the party's just started. He tries to give them a drink, and Lorie is already seething at all the attention he's giving them and soon boils over into a full blown fit. Miller quickly takes her into a side room and gives her a beat down. Before they kill each other, Irish heads in to break it up. Alone, Jenny begs Romeo to let them go, but he refuses. Switching tactics, Jenny tries to distract him while Faye sneaks away. And she makes it outside before Irish catches her and drags her back inside, kicking and screaming. Locking the two captives in a closet, Miller leaves to meet Ridelander for the payoff.

They meet in an back alley but Ridelander doesn't have the money. Pissed at this, Miller is insistent that "No money. No broads." Ridelander says he'll have to hold them 'til morning, when the banks open. Miller asks for a small advance, gets it, and blows it all on beer and some reefer. Returning to the house, he and his cohorts whoop it up. Locked in the closet, the two captives console each other and decide they're mutually to blame. (Which is awfully nice of Faye!) Jenny is sure the cops are out looking for them. (They're not, the cops were called but convince the relatives that the girls are just out being girls and will eventually turn up.) Faye worries about the possibility of being raped, but they both agree to focus on trying to escape instead.

Ridelander calls in and reports to the impatient Harvey, whose upset that he has to wait until morning. Harvey promises that the girls will pay dearly for making him wait, and until then, he takes it out on his mannequins.

Later, with Lorie passed out in the bedroom, Miller takes the opportunity to have some fun with his two captives. Warning everyone to keep it down, he pulls them out of the closet. Promising that they'll let them go if they'll just party with them for awhile, he tries to force them to smoke some reefer, but Romeo has fallen for Jenny -- hard, and tries to protect the girls as best he can. But noble intentions don't always bring noble results, and once they're all sufficiently stoned, Miller forces the girls to do a striptease. Irish puts on some mood music and they taunt and ogle Jenny and Faye as they clumsily disrobe.

Down to their underwear, the girls refuse to go any further. Miller tries to force the issue, but Romeo intervenes; their ruckus makes too much noise -- they've woken up the old shrew. The party is busted and the girls are thrown back in the closet before Lorie rips them to shreds.

Came the dawn.

Harvey the creep is in his hide-out, carefully and meticulously packing his knifes, hack-saws, and tools of mass destruction. Meeting Ridelander at the bank, he withdraws the large sum of money and they head for the Disciples lair. Harvey can barely contain himself. Ridelander threatens Harvey that this is the last time, and when it's over, he never wants to see him again.

With time running out, the captives are getting desperate. After a failed attempt to signal the neighbors for help, through a peephole in the wall, things get even worse as the girls are caught in the act, pulled from the closet, and smacked around. Hard. Satisfied that they'll behave now, Miller orders Lorie to clean them up. Jenny begs for a glass of water and Romeo let's them go to the kitchen. But he doesn't keep a very good eye on them, allowing Jenny to sneak a knife out of the sink. Irish orders them back into the main room, where Jenny stabs him in the shoulder. The hulking biker knocks her aside and pulls the knife out. Romeo grabs Faye as she bolts for the door and the wounded Irish grabs Jenny, with every intention of returning the knife the same way she gave it -- sharp end first. 

Seeing their big payoff going up in smoke, Miller steps up to stop the enraged Irish, saying that killing Jenny is too quick, and reveals the real reason behind the kidnappings: the girls are really for a sex freak who "gets off" cutting women to pieces. Slowly. So, Miller says, he can kill her quick, or leave her to die slow. None of the bikers -- Irish included, are pleased that this piece of information was held back. Especially Romeo, but they're in it too deep now to back out. 

While Lorie tends to the wounded Irish, the other two tie the girls up. Leaving them bound and gagged on the couch, they vacate the house, mount there choppers, and roll on down the road a spell and wait. Soon, Harvey's Rolls comes into view. Inside, Harvey tells Ridelander to hold the payment until he makes sure the girls they got are pretty enough. Leaving Ridelander by the car, he heads inside with his suitcases. 

Watching all of this, Romeo is getting a little antsy. Miller wants to know why they don't get their payoff right away, and grows impatient. Tension mounts as Harvey heads inside and is smitten with his victims -- so smitten that he forgets to signal Ridelander to pay off the bikers. He pulls out a knife and shows them a disaster bag -- the kind they use in freeway accidents, when the victims are in more than one piece.

Focusing on Jenny, Harvey cuts her feet loose and stands her up. He cuts off the gag and they start to dance. (A scene eerily reminiscent of the earlier scene with the mannequin.) He asks Jenny if she loves him. She says what he wants to here, to save her life, but he doesn't believe her. He takes the knife and promises to show her what happens when he's lied to. He lunges. She screams. He misses? And sticks his hand through a window. 

Jenny's screams brings Romeo on the fly. He kicks starts his bike and roars to the rescue. Irish chases after him. Ridelander sees this and hops into the Rolls, to head them off. Romeo dodges the car, but Irish is hit and crashes in a heap. The impact causes the car to spin out of control, where it proceeds to wipe Lorie out and crushes Miller into a tree. Ridelander slumps over the wheel, unconscious. 

Back inside, Jenny is completely loose and is bandaging the whimpering Harvey's hand. Romeo storms in and throws Harvey to the side. He grabs Jenny and heads for the door, but she stops him -- they're forgetting poor Faye. They go to untie her, just as Harvey recovers that homicidal urge. The men roll around on the floor and struggle over the knife. Harvey gets lucky and stabs Romeo in the guts. But Romeo manages to get back on top of him, and turns the knife back on Harvey. Harvey has one more, pathetic flashback to dear old Mom, before allowing Romeo to plunge the knife into his chest. Romeo rolls off, his wounds are fatal, and he gives Jenny one last look before he expires.

And my internal vile-o-meter hiccups, burps, and officially croaks.

Outside, Ridelander recovers and checks on the others. They're all dead. Jenny runs out of the house, screaming for help, and spots him. Not knowing he's in on the conspiracy, she calls to him for help. They meet halfway, and the hippy power ballad kicks in as they both limp toward the house, together, promising a happy ending. 

I think.

The End

I think it's going to take my internal vile-o-meter quite a while to recover from this movie. Even if it does -- and I stress on the IF, it won't be speaking to me for a long, long time. Now I don't mind a sleaze in my movies. Sleaze is naughty, and forgivable. Vileness, on the other hand, is whole different can of corn. The movie isn't as vile as, say, Maniac -- thee sickest and most indecorous piece of cinema filth this particular reviewer has ever watched, but they're both concerned with the same things: Girls are bad, and somehow, the girls are asking for it -- therefore deserving it, and it's all Mom's fault. I have no patience for this kind of crap. If anything, with no nudity or gore to speak of, this movie shows amazing restraint. But somehow it just seems more vile for the lack of it!

If the film has one redeeming quality -- and you've got to dig pretty deep, it is the hippie-powered soundtrack, provided by a group called The Salt Lick. They're kind of an odd combination of The Moody Blues and The Loving Spoonful -- which I guess would make them The Melancholy Sporks. The haunting theme to this movie will stick with you a lot longer than the movie itself. 

The outlaw biker movie started with Brando's The Wild One, but really didn't find it's center until Roger Corman's The Wild Angles. Spawning a ton of imitators, the genre quickly flared out and was in a bad downward spiral by the beginning of the '70s as producers tried to squeeze just a little more life out of the formula, including the use of biker gangs as a simple plot-prop to draw a crowd -- like the Frankenstein's Monster in his later films. A menacing presence, but they just kind of sit there and don't do a whole lot, while the plot moves around them. Cycle Psycho definitely falls into that category. Coming out in 1972, it speaks volumes of the sorry state the biker genre was in at this time. The end was nigh, and the genre officially died two years later with The Northville Cemetery Massacre. For an interesting, informative, and more in depth look at the outlaw biker genre, I highly recommend Jeff Dove's dissertation on biker films found right here.

Producer and director John Lawrence was no stranger to the genre. A few years earlier, he gave us Dennis Hopper running amok in The Glory Stompers: Hopper played the psychotic leader whose gang was feuding with the not-so-psychotic leader of rival gang, Jody McRea (who finally got off the beach.) He was also the money man behind both The Thing with Two Heads and The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant. Sharp eyes will recognize Sean Kenney from several episodes of Star Trek, including his role as the injured, bump-n-go Captain Pike in the classic Menagerie episode. Psycho Joe Turkel's cinematic career is all over the map, as well. Looking like an odd combination of Lou Reed and Frankie Avalon, he played the black-mailing, beatnik sailor that Richard Carlson killed in Tormented, was one of Steve McQueen's shipmates in The Sand Pebbles, and created the replicants in Blade Runner.

This movie -- Oy! this movie. I understand that it's being released under it's alternate title, Savage Abduction, by the Troma Classics Line. All I can say is, don't get suckered in by the cover art or lurid title. As the old saying goes: Never trust a movie that has more than one title. An old trick to sucker paying customers back on the promise that they're seeing something different, when all they're really getting is the same stinky piece of poo.

At last check Cycle Psycho had three alternate titles.