Lewis’ film is taken from a screenplay by ESP enthusiast James F. Hurley who, according to Lewis’ DVD commentary, was so displeased with WEIRD that he made his own movie called THE PSYCHIC to fully display the beauty and might of psychic power and to debunk the chicanery of SOMETHING WEIRD. Here, psychics are valued purely for their ability to entertain others at parties, which is logical when you consider that Lewis’ made the film based on his belief that a man with ESP equaled box office gold.

A little about the head-scratcher of a plot, then. The film opens on a man about to be struck by a live wire. He is promptly electrocuted and sent crashing down off the roof he was so foolishly standing atop. It is worth noting that this guy picked the wrong medium in which to walk on a roof with a live wire; if this had been “Family Matters,” his skeleton would have become visible, blue electricity lines would have pulsated around him, Urkel would have yelled “Did I do that?” but, in the long run, he would have been just fine. The poor guy does it in a Herschell Gordon Lewis film, so he drops like a rock to his death. His fall - and you can be sure that the man took a real fall because this film sure as hell couldn’t afford a stunt fall - draws the attention of several other men, who try to untangle him from the wire and make sure he’s ok. The leader of this kind but very stupid band is Cronin Mitchell (Tony McCabe), who frees his friend and for his trouble, fumbles the wire and zaps himself in the face. Instead of dying - he only got the 6,000,000 volt jolt without the one story fall, so he’s in relatively good shape - the side of his face gets burned like bread in a cheap toaster. I’d tell you which side but it tends to change from scene to scene.

If facial mangling wasn’t bad enough, Mitchell soon discovers he can now read people’s minds, attracting all sorts of losers to his new job as a psychic. Things get worse when a powder-faced, powder-wigged witch makes Mitchell a bargain: he gets his good looks back if he’ll become her lover. He is reluctant, but his ego gets the better of him and he agrees.

Mitchell really should have reconsidered this offer. What good are looks if he’s stuck shacking up with a nasty old witch? To be brutally honest, Mr. McCabe wasn’t particularly good looking in the first place; if he’s going to pay that terrible sexual price for all eternity, he should have asked to look a lot hunkier, or for the power to seduce women with his mind. But then we’ve already got a WHAT WOMEN WANT, don’t we? And anyway, what does any of that have to do with being a psychic? Couldn't he foretell how disgusting sex with this rancid woman would be? At that point he should have wised up to the bum deal he was about to enter.

SOMETHING WEIRD rambles on with little inspiration storywise; Mitchell is recruited by some police officers (who all look and act alike, making it really difficult to name them) to solve a brutal series of murders, which the gore-loving Lewis keeps surprisingly bloodless. The director’s willingness to really embrace weirdness pays off a lot (like when a police officer casually gives Mitchell some LSD to “help” with the case), but it doesn’t make the plot any more intelligible. Things get really bizarre when Mitchell takes the LSD and winds up in Lewis' approximation of the finale to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, where he meets some corpses, and wanders a desert, chasing after a buxomy woman. Chew on that, Freudians.