Psychos in Love 1987

Joe [Carmine Capobianco], a bartender and strip club proprietor, and Kate [Debi Thibeault], a manicurist, meet after years of searching for someone who truly fits them. They reveal that they are both murderers, a realization that brings them closer as they compare their crimes with a blunt, almost clinical honesty. They also bond over a shared, almost silly grievance: their mutual hatred of grapes. This odd detail becomes a quietly defiant symbol of their reckless, offbeat union as they begin to see one another not just as partners, but as kindred spirits who understand the darkness they carry and what it has cost them to live with it.

During a house visit to a male [Mechanic] [Eric Lutes], Kate is attacked and sexually assaulted, yet she fights back with a nail file and then ends the assault by striking him with a rock, securing a deadly blow. The violence is swift and intimate, a stark reminder of the power they hold over others and over each other. Later, Ruth Collins as Susan, a topless dancer, auditions for a position at the bar inside Joe and Kate’s home. The encounter turns fatal when Joe stabs her to death, decapitates her, and places her head as a macabre centerpiece in the kitchen, a chilling image that marks the couple’s escalating boundary-pushing for thrill and control.

As the relationship deepens, Kate proposes that they commit a murder together, turning their shared fantasy into a coordinated act. Joe brings home Nikki, a dancer from the bar who is attracted to Kate, Cecelia Wilde stepping into Nikki’s tense dynamic with a wary curiosity. Nikki is stabbed multiple times, but does not die immediately, and when she fights back, Joe continues to brutalize her with a frying pan. Even as Nikki briefly stirs again, Joe shoots her with a shotgun. Kate, weary yet intrigued by the romance with Joe, suggests they pause the killings, but the pair decide to proceed with a wedding, their bond cemented by crime as much as by affection.

The couple travels to Chicago for a wedding that doubles as a honeymoon. There, they encounter a female prostitute at an oldies bar, and Joe, eager to explore a new facet of his Jack the Ripper fantasy, stabs the woman to death in the shower. The violence, both ritual and impulsive, reinforces their shared appetite for danger and their belief that they belong together in this dark partnership. After returning, their murderous impulses begin to surge again, even as Kate’s enthusiasm wavers and she grows jealous of Joe’s attention to other women. She admits that murder no longer brings her the same thrill, but the couple channels their energy into voyeuristic curiosity, buying a VCR and renting a vast array of horror films to feed their fixation, including the entire Friday the 13th and Halloween series.

A grim domestic inconvenience—kitchen sinks clogged with entrails—forces them to confront the physical toll of their life. They summon Herman, a neighborhood plumber who is, in fact, a cannibal. In the drain, severed fingers surface, and Herman attempts to leverage the discovery into blackmail, threatening to kill them and cook their bodies with a grape sauce if they refuse. In a tense struggle, Joe extinguishes the lights to misdirect Herman and brutally kills him Frank Stewart, turning their kitchen into another scene of their brutal, ritualistic routines.

After Herman’s murder, the pair goes out for dinner, but their relationship remains a battleground of competing desires. They bicker over what to eat and reaffirm their shared hatred of grapes, a bittersweet consistency in a life defined by peril and perversity. Even as they drift through domestic ordinarycies—their marriage, their appetite for new murders, and their warped sense of romance—what endures is their vow to stay together, no matter how conflicted or consumed they become.