Psycho Cop

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Officer Joe Vickers at your service.

He always gets his man...and everyone else.

—Tagline for the first film.

Psycho Cop and its sequel Psycho Cop Returns (also known as simply Psycho Cop 2) were two So Bad They're Good Slasher Movies which followed the exploits of psychopathic police impersonator Serial Killer Joe Vickers, who is on a mission from Satan to kill everyone he perceives as criminals and make bad puns out of everything while he's at it. Curiously, these movies hit the cinemas right after the first Maniac Cop installment.

In the first film, three young couples decide to have good time on a luxury cabin which resides in the backwoods. They are followed by Vickers who starts killing them one by one. Unsurprisingly, the movie ends with Vickers Not Quite Dead.

The second film opens with Vickers hearing about a bachelor party from two office workers which will be held in an office building in late-hours and it will include booze, drugs and hookers. He then follows the two men to the site of the party, locks the doors and starts killing everyone stuck inside with him.

This movie ditches the Cliché Storm teenkill-approach from the first film and goes over the top with its presentation; gore, nudity and laughably bad puns are all over the place.

Tropes used in Psycho Cop include:

"Have a heart!"

Vickers: "Seventh floor: Linens, luxury, eviscerated women."

  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Returns.
  • Evil Elevator: Elevators in the sequel after Vickers has sabotaged them.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Vickers' actor Robert R. Shafer does his damnedest to entertain, and he succeeds.
  • Evil Laugh: Vickers has a very jolly one.
  • Exact Words: In the sequel, Sharon has Vickers on her sights but he has one strippers as a meatshield. Then he promises that he won't shoot her if Sharon puts the gun down. She complies, and he snaps the stripper's neck because he only said that he wouldn't shoot her.
  • Eye Scream: Gus's death in the sequel.
  • Eyepatch of Power: In the sequel, Vickers gets half of his face burnt while wearing sunglasses and is left with other half of his sunglasses covering his healthy eye
  • Final Girl: Laura in the first film and Sharon in the sequel.
  • Finger Wag: Vickers wags his finger at Mike when he unknowingly evades him in the second film.
  • Footprints of Muck: In the first movie, Vickers tries to gain Laura's and Doug's trust to lure them in Doug realizes that Vickers is the killer because the footprints he leaves behind on the floor are the same size as the prints he has left in the shed.
  • French Maid Outfit: One of the strippers is wearing one in the second film.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: Vickers hits himself on the head with a beer bottle when rampaging in the offices in the sequel.
  • Gross Up Close-Up: Various body parts in Vickers' car are shown up close during the sequel's opening credits.
  • Grumpy Old Man: The sequel has Mr. Stonecipher, the boss of the company where the protagonists work. He hates brown-nosers.
  • Healing Factor: Vickers has it.
  • Hollywood Satanism: Vickers worships Satan.
  • I Lied

Vickers: Remember what I said about not holding a grudge? I lied!

Laura: "Oh God..."
Vickers: "God? Hah! God has nothing to do with it!"

  • Sound-Only Death: In the sequel's ending when Vickers kills people coming in to his room.
  • This Cannot Be!: Caretaker says this when he sees Vickers and realizes that a cop is about to kill him.

Caretaker: "It can't be."
Vickers: "But it is!"

  • Trash Landing: In the sequel Vickers drops one of the strippers into the trash from the top floor of an office building.

Vickers: "You act like trash, you get treated like trash."