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Madhouse
[Dark Sky Films]
1981; color
Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis
Starring: Trish Everly, Michael Macrae, Dennis Robertson, Morgan Hart & Allison Biggers
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Prior to watching this forgotten low budget "classic" from the early '80s, the only Madhouse I was familiar with was the excellent 1974 effort starring Vincent Price. How I wish that was still the case. Truth be told, this Madhouse isn't so bad I wish I'd never even heard of it but it's definitely among the shoddier efforts I've seen from one of horror's most prolific eras. Written, directed and produced by Ovidio Assinitis, who's kind of like the Greek Roger Corman but with a dearth of original ideas, the movie centers around identical twin sisters and - as we all know - if you've got identical twins, one's gotta be evil. In this case, not only is one twin evil (she's been locked up in an asylum for years), she suffers from some weird disorder that's gradually making her facially disfigured. Which, of course, also makes her even more crazy. She also has some sort of psychic control over a bloodthirsty Rottweiler that does her bidding, but that's a whole other aspect of the story we'll get to in a minute. The 'good' twin, Julia, leads a seemingly normal life as a teacher of hearing impaired kids but when she gets a call from her Uncle James, who's also a priest at the hospital where sis Mary is residing, it sets a series of events into motion that drive the rest of the film. When the movie begins it's five days away from their mutual birthday and Mary's been acting crazier than ever. She breaks out of the hospital and makes a beeline for Julia's, immediately acquiring the aforementioned super-evil Rottweiler who starts things off by killing a guard at the hospital during her escape. (I'm assuming this dog is the spawn of her original dog from when she was a child because, even if a dog could live to be 20 in human years, there's no way a mutt that old would have the energy to do anything other than eat, sleep and poop.) Mary gets into Julia's apartment building, kills her maintenance man, and sets herself and the dog up in the abandoned attic to wait. Meanwhile James breaks the news to Julia about Mary's escape, but she doesn't seem too worried until her apartment door is covered in dog's claw marks. Just to be safe, she has a friend spend the night at her place. Later that night, while Julia's sound asleep from the pills she took, her friend hears a noise outside the apartment, goes to investigate and… well… I think you can predict her fate. After this, the movie becomes thoroughly confusing, as we find out Uncle James is not only crazy as well, but is in cahoots with Mary. He makes short work of Julia's landlady and begins setting up a birthday party for Julia and Mary in the basement, which leads to a scene almost completely ripped off from Happy Birthday To Me. There are a number of weird twists and turns along the way, including the dispatching of the killer dog with a power drill, but the end result is Julia and her boyfriend (who, just by luck, shows back up in time to save the day) being the only survivors. I'm not gonna go ahead and recommend this one for everyone, but if you appreciate really bad props like a killer dog that obviously a guy's arm in a dog suit, and really bad synth drums that sound like out of place outtakes from the first Cars LP, this one's for you.
—the Kommandant
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