1983? Let me tell you how it was.

In a World Without the Internet, before Youtube, before Netflix, before Prime, before 4K UHD smart TVs, before social media or Substack or niche newsletters, before IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, before DVDs and Blu-rays, even before blogs (gasp!), you would find yourself sitting around late at night, channel surfing, listlessly flipping through TV Guide, restlessly looking for something to watch, and you would come across a movie like The Horror of Party Beach and you would think, “What the hell? Is this worth ninety minutes of my life?” And since you would likely have only once chance to see the thing, it was a decision fraught with import. (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase.)

In the absence of all of the resources and options we now take for granted, how did you decide what to do? I’ll tell you what I did — I reached for The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.

The brainchild of Uber-Geek Michael Weldon and an offshoot of his Psychotronic Video magazine, the book is, according to the back cover, “The complete viewer’s guide to the weirdest movies of all time!” It’s a boast that the volume makes good on with one pseudopod tied behind its back.

The back cover also sports an important disclaimer:

WARNING! The author of this book has been watching these movies obsessively since the age of 6. He is now unfit for conventional employment. Because of the addictive nature of these films, we the publishers cannot guarantee that your sanity won’t be endangered by reading this book.

Just what is a “psychotronic” movie? Well, it’s a broad category covering all manner of films, from horror and science fiction to juvenile delinquent dramas to women behind bars sleaze to sword-and-sandal epics; in other words, low-budget exploitation movies generally, with some exceptions for big-budget productions with low-budget souls. To again quote the back cover (and let me tell you, it’s one of the greatest back covers of all time — and the front cover is no slouch, either),

From the slightly offbeat to the outlandishly bizarre… from the no-budget quickie to the multimillion-dollar box-office smash… PSYCHOTRONIC films range from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes to E.T…. from Angel’s Wild Women and Hellcats of the Navy to I Dismember Mama and Let Me Die a Woman… from sincere social commentary to utter trash. PSYCHOTRONIC stars are ex-models, ex-sports heroes, dead rock idols, future presidents, would-be Marilyns, and has-beens of all types.

Once you manage to get past the cover — no easy task — the book consists of over 3,000 punchy reviews of psychotronic movies (most written by Weldon himself), seasoned with tons of great photographs: movie posters, lobby cards, publicity stills, and images from the actual films adorn almost every page.

It was a great day when I bought my first copy of The Psychotronic Encyclopedia. (I’ve gone through several over the years, and when I wear one out, I give it to a prospective acolyte; I aim to earn my way into psychotronic heaven by actively proselytizing. These days if you want a copy your best bet is eBay, where you can also find copies of Psychotronic Magazine.)

In the bad old days, it was extremely hard to find out about these films, and a surprising number of people — some of them capable of speaking in complete sentences and holding down real jobs, believe it or not — wanted precisely the kind of information that only The Psychotronic Encyclopedia could provide.

But don’t take my word for it. Let card-carrying Respectable Citizen and certified Hero of the Mainstream Literary Establishment Colson Whitehead, who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Underground Railroad and who also penned the zombie apocalypse saga Zone One, vouch for the value of the psychotronic worldview. Whitehead declared that

Weldon’s book was proof that even the most unlikely idea had a chance. If these movies existed, then surely whatever measly story was bubbling in my brain was not so preposterous. The psychotronic movie’s disregard for mimesis, its sociopathic understanding of human interaction, its indifferent acting, and its laughable sets were a kind of ritualized mediocrity. The filmmakers were so inept in their portrayal of any kind of recognizable reality that their creations became a form of grubby science fiction, documentaries about an alternative planet.

Bull’s-eye. Disreputable, shocking, embarrassing, tasteless, tacky, trashy, revolting, hilarious (intentionally or, more commonly, unintentionally), utterly free from the constraints of competence and good manners imposed on “serious” filmmakers, offhandedly subverting every decent value (often including that of minimal coherence), psychotronic films are rebellion made flesh — or celluloid. Just watching one feels like striking a blow for liberty, and Michael Weldon’s book is a revolutionary manifesto more radical than anything ever tossed off by Marx and Engels. (Just imagine what that pair of stuffy Germans would have made of Hot Rods to Hell or Robot Monster!)

Of course, because the book was published in 1983, it also an artifact from A World Without any Movie Made over the Last Forty Years — no Repo Man, no Silence of the Lambs, no Dark City, no Revenge of the Sith (ok, not having that movie might be a feature rather than a bug), no Shaun of the Dead, no Independence Day.

This admittedly limits the Psychotronic’s utility somewhat, but I still find myself thumbing through its well-worn pages with embarrassing frequency. Sometimes you just have to know who starred with Bela Lugosi in The Devil Bat or what year Roger Corman made Ski Troop Attack, and it’s one of those books that’s truly like a bag of potato chips — you can’t read just one entry. Before you know it, you’ve blown an hour seeing if Weldon did justice to Count Yorga, Vampire or The Mole People, gaining new insight into Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and admiring photographs of Chubby Checker, Jayne Mansfield, and Vincent Price (not from the same movie, unfortunately — some things will never happen this side of paradise).

Anyway, if the years 1984 to 1995 are all that important to you (I can barely remember them, myself) Weldon produced a second volume called The Psychotronic Video Guide in 1996. But while the original Psychotronic Encyclopedia still lives right under my wide-screen TV where I can lay hands on it at a moment’s notice, I found that I never used the Psychotronic Video Guide that much.

Maybe that’s because by 1996 we were on the cusp of a change the magnitude of which we couldn’t even begin to imagine, and the old world of B-movie, cult movie, low-budget, late-night old movie TV was about to vanish forever, or at least be transformed almost beyond recognition. Today if you want to investigate The Horror of Party Beach, you can watch it any hour of the day or night on Youtube (at least as of last weekend — as you know, the streaming world is as inconstant as our nation’s trade policy) and there are countless people on that same platform who do nothing but yammer endlessly about these kinds of movies.

It’s great, in its way, but sometimes I miss the old days when opportunities were fleeting and consequently the choices seemed more important; hell, I even miss the used car commercials.

So, what did I do about that non-hit of 1964, The Horror of Party Beach, when I came across it all those years ago? Did I sacrifice an hour and a half of the only life I’ll ever have to watch such a manifest piece of junk? Such a momentous decision would paralyze most people, but I consulted the Psychotronic Encyclopedia, and on page 331 I was told,

Forget anemic teen horror movies like Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. This low-budget gem from Stamford, Connecticut, features kids on the beach dancing to “The Zombie Stomp” and a girl who drinks hard liquor and strips for bikers. Meanwhile radioactive waste turns human skulls on the bottom of the ocean into horrible monsters! They kill the wayward girl on the beach, then all the girls at a slumber party. If you don’t understand what’s happening, newspaper headlines (MONSTERS STRIKE!, MONSTERS STRIKE AGAIN!, and MASS MURDER AT SLUMBER PARTY!) are shown to keep you informed. With great music by the Del-Aires, lame jokes, phony blood, a sportscar driven through New York City, and a maid named Eulabelle who saves the day by knocking a beaker of sodium on a living monster hand, which promptly disintegrates. Billed as “the first horror monster musical!” it’s a cool classic that was also turned into a photo comic book. EXTRA! EXTRA! FIVE MORE KILLED BY MONSTERS!

Did I watch The Horror of Party Beach?

Don’t ask stupid questions.

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Thomas Parker is a native Southern Californian and a lifelong science fiction, fantasy, and mystery fan. When not corrupting the next generation as a fourth grade teacher, he collects Roger Corman movies, Silver Age comic books, Ace doubles, and despairing looks from his wife. His last article for us was Movie of the Week Madness: Duel