Stephen Tashjian

Psykho III: The Musical is an intriguing play on the tension between “authentic” and “pop” camp. This celebration of artifice was originally written, directed, and produced by Mark Oates as a stage musical parody following the release of Psycho II in 1983, and was performed at the East Village’s most notorious nightspot — The Pyramid Club. In 1985, after a wildly successful run, Oates reached out to longtime friend and video artist Tom Rubnitz to produce a video adaptation of the stage musical.

Loosely based on a one-act drama by Tennessee Williams about a prostitute dying in a fleabag bordello, Hello from Bertha is played out in a Boston bedroom with spotty Southern accents and loose wigs. One of Morrisroe’s three surviving films (a fourth, centered on the murder of his cat, was censored immediately after it was shown, and has been lost) that all engage with the experimental cinematic language of their time, incorporating elements of horror cinema, a punk ethos, and the outrageousness of artists like Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, and John Waters.