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Asylum
[Dark Sky]
1972; color
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Starring: Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Barry Morse, Barbara Parkins, Robert Powell & Charlotte Rampling
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Asylum is one of those horror anthology type dealies; aka a number of shorter film pieces that, when strung together, add up to the length of a regular feature film. Normally this isn't my kind of thing but I have enjoyed the other Amicus features I've seen - meaning the other two movies in The Amicus Collection, And Now The Screaming Starts and The Beast Must Die - and this boasts a pretty interesting ensemble cast. Plus, according to the brief-but-interesting featurette in the extras section, this genre was one of Amicus Films' specialties, so I decided to attempt to ignore the fact that I don't really like horror anthologies and watch it anyway; and I have to admit I enjoyed it quite a bit. One thing I definitely appreciated was the fact that this has a decent story tying the whole thing together, as opposed to the more "comic book" style of American made movies of this ilk. (Creepshow being the first that came to mind.) The other thing I now realize I can appreciate about this genre is that the "good parts" of each portion occur rather quickly into the proceedings. For example, if the first story was a regular ol' Hammer film it would have taken forever for us to get to the part where the butcher-wrapped, disembodied body parts start to attack Barbara Parkins. But, um, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. To backtrack a bit, the first character we meet is a plucky young doctor rolling up to an ominous looking, fog friendly, Dunmoor House For The Incurably Insane. As we learn once the fella makes it inside the building, he's there for a job interview. Oh but this is no regular job interview my friend. While most situations like this require an interviewee to impress the person that will choose to hire them, or not, this situation calls for the Doc to pick out the person that would have hired him, had that person not gone gongwipdu and had to have his name tag changed from sane to crazy. With this simple yet effective transition it's off to the first room we go. Here we, of course, meet a lunatic and, after a minute or two, flash back into flashback mode. This formula carries us through four stories in total, my favorite being the first one - the one with the aforementioned disembodied body parts. The other three patients offer stories about a sinister custom made suit, a particularly mischievous imaginary friend, and a mechanical doll with human traits. (And human guts.) All of this leads up to the part where the young doctor is asked to identify the once sane doctor... which in the end is actually kind of a trick question. While this film is not completely hard to figure out, it is rather entertaining and fun. I would definitely rate it as recommended.
—Bunny
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