Psycho Beach Party

The New York Times Stephen Holden

It is surprisingly timely.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

A little Hitchcock and some good Psycho fun at the beach.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

If it doesn't always come off, enough headlong energy develops to carry it through.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Its cheeky, good fun is what makes Psycho Beach Party an enjoyable, if weightless, romp.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Smart, fun and mildly subversive, but it rides the wave of its joke a little too long.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Overstays its welcome until the jokes curdle and the satire becomes a blunt instrument, but not before Busch throws some priceless one-liners.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

For all its energy and inspired moments of giddy goofiness, Psycho Beach Party gets stuck in the sand.

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

There's nothing here that's outrageous, startling or daring enough to give your funny bone a jolt.

Miami Herald Charles Savage

While there is archival value in permanently recording this work on celluloid, the best way to really enjoy it remains live on stage.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Never maintains the spark necessary to sustain a feature film.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This unsubtle parody probably worked better on stage; its candy-colored artifice looks more than a little strained on film, and the actors are all trying really hard to be camp.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

Ultimately, Psycho...can't overcome the redundancy of parodying a genre that long ago sank into its own satiric muck.

Film.com Ernest Hardy

The problem is, director Robert Lee King has a hard time sustaining the aimed-for camp tone, and while there are a few well-spaced giggles to be had, the movie sputters more than it soars for most of its 95 minutes.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Psycho Beach Party is, from the start, in dire need of the electroshock therapy that Florence ultimately undergoes.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

The viewer is left to ponder the number of levels on which this counts as a pointless exercise -- a parody of parodic movies, a deconstruction of transparent genres, a self-negatingly knowing example of camp.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Charles Busch's spoof of beach-party movies and psychological thrillers, an off-Broadway hit 13 years ago, stubbornly refuses to entertain in this unrelentingly dull film version.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

This multigenre parody is excruciatingly slow and unamusing; a go-go dancer in the opening and closing credits does as much in a few minutes to shake up our perspective on a bygone aesthetic as the entire narrative in between.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Struggles like a fat kid on the gym rope to conjure up even a single decent laugh.