Every horror filmmaker has to start somewhere. For Jerry Ciccoritti, the man who would go on to a career in Canadian television and theater, that “somewhere” was a micro-budget madhouse called Psycho Girls. Shot in Toronto in eleven frantic days on a budget that wouldn’t cover lunch on a Marvel set, the film is part slasher, part melodrama, and part fever dream cooked in the basement of a psychiatric ward. And you know what? Against all odds, it’s fun—messy, cheap, but undeniably fun.
Plot Breakdown: Family Feuds with Cleavers
The story is as straightforward as a hatchet to the forehead. A woman escapes from an asylum with two of her equally unstable friends, determined to exact revenge on her sister. From there, the film drifts between family melodrama, gothic theatrics, and good old-fashioned slasher mayhem.
This is not the kind of film where you sit with a notepad trying to track character motivation or long-term story arcs. This is the kind of film where you wait for the next knife, axe, or conveniently placed sharp object to make its entrance. It’s soap opera plotting interrupted by bursts of blood, like if Days of Our Lives were rewritten by a sleep-deprived teenager after a Fulci marathon.
Production Values: Held Together with Tape and Guts
Shot in less than two weeks, Psycho Girls wears its budget proudly on its torn hospital gown sleeve. The film used the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital for location shooting—because nothing screams “cinematic atmosphere” like real asbestos in the walls. The lighting often makes characters look like they’re under interrogation, and the sound recording has the occasional “was that the wind or the boom mic guy sneezing?” quality.
But here’s the thing: those limitations give the movie a grubby charm. You feel the hustle, the scrounging, the DIY insanity of filmmakers who knew this was their shot at getting noticed. Director Ciccoritti himself later admitted the movie was “made by the numbers” and just a means to an end. Fair enough—but those numbers add up to something oddly memorable.
Acting: Soap Opera Meets Student Theater
The cast is full of actors giving it their all, even when “all” means “wide-eyed mugging at the camera.” John Haslett Cuff, Darlene Mignacco, and Rose Graham oscillate between melodramatic screaming fits and deadpan line deliveries that sound like they were read off cue cards taped to a wall.
It’s inconsistent, but that’s half the fun. In one scene, a character is howling like she’s auditioning for Hamlet; in the next, she’s barely awake, mumbling her lines like she just realized the craft table ran out of donuts. It’s horror as community theater, and somehow, it works.
Gore and Madness
For a film made on a shoestring budget, Psycho Girls doesn’t shy away from blood. The kills are cheap but enthusiastic, with splashes of red paint—sorry, “blood”—on walls, faces, and clothes. Some of it looks realistic enough to make you wince; some of it looks like the crew raided the clearance section of a Halloween shop.
The real horror, though, isn’t the gore. It’s the atmosphere of unhinged hysteria, the shrill laughter echoing through hallways, the manic performances that teeter on the edge of parody. You watch it not for the kills themselves but for the sense that the film itself might lose its mind at any moment.
Themes: Sisters Are Doing It to Each Other
At its core, Psycho Girls is about family. Not the warm-and-fuzzy Hallmark Channel version, but the “I want to bury you alive” kind. The sibling rivalry at the center of the story gives the movie its anchor, even when everything else is chaos.
There’s something inherently funny—and tragic—about watching sisters locked in a bloody feud, each one convinced she’s the wronged party. It’s like Little Women if Louisa May Alcott had a machete phase.
Distribution and Legacy
The Cannon Group eventually picked up the film for distribution, which is fitting because if any studio could smell “cheap but weirdly watchable” from a mile away, it was Cannon. Released on MGM Home Video in 1986, Psycho Girls was buried under the avalanche of low-budget slashers clogging video store shelves.
And yet, it refused to stay dead. In 2023, Vinegar Syndrome gave it the royal treatment with a Blu-ray release, complete with a commentary track from Ciccoritti and DP Robert Bergman. For a movie that was made just to “establish a name,” that’s quite the afterlife.
The Dark Humor of It All
Watching Psycho Girls now is like watching a family home video where everyone’s armed and nobody’s sane. The dark humor isn’t in scripted jokes but in the absurdity of the whole thing. A killer wandering hospital corridors like she’s looking for the bathroom. A psychiatrist who seems one coffee away from a breakdown. Dialogue that sounds like it was written in a single draft on a bar napkin.
And yet, it entertains. Because in its chaotic way, Psycho Girls captures the essence of 80s horror: excess, hysteria, and a sense that anyone with a camera and a few hundred bucks could make a slasher movie.
Final Verdict
Psycho Girls is not a “good” film in the traditional sense. The plot is thin, the acting uneven, the production values laughable. But it’s an entertaining film—a scrappy, bloody little curiosity that wears its flaws like battle scars.
If you want polished horror, look elsewhere. If you want to see what happens when raw enthusiasm collides with no money and a ticking clock, Psycho Girls delivers. It’s a slasher that makes you laugh, wince, and maybe even appreciate the fact that sometimes madness on screen is just as fascinating as sanity.
