Insane asylums are fertile ground for horror flicks. Why shouldn’t they be? Insanity is scary stuff. Gathering different flavors of it together in an isolated location? How can filmmakers resist the temptation?
From way back in 1973 comes Don’t Look in the Basement, the first in a run of four horror flicks from auteur S.F. Brownrigg, from a screenplay written by Tim and Thomas Pope (despite results on the internet, this is not the same Tim Pope who is known for directing music videos).
A regional feature filmed in rural Texas, Basement tells the story of the staff and patients of the Stephens Sanitarium, a private institution run by its namesake, Dr. Barry Stephens (Michael Harvey). The location is a drab, three-story wooden building that was once part of Trinity University’s original campus in the very small town of Tehuacana, Texas. After Trinity relocated in 1902, the campus was occupied by Westminster College until it closed in 1972, leaving the property available for Brownrigg and company to film. The building is still standing as of this writing.
It’s a small sanitarium, with only as many patients as a viewer can keep track of, and a movie with a small budget can afford. Dr. Stephens’s therapy indulges his patients’ delusions, in the hope that fulfilling their fantasies can allow them to climb out of them. That doesn’t work out so well, as he gets an axe in the back early on from one of his patients, the Judge (Gene Ross).
The next day, the movie’s protagonist arrives. Psychiatric nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) has been hired via correspondence, and, when she arrives to start work, has no idea of Stephens’s fate. Stephens’s assistant, Dr. Masters (Annabelle Weenick), wasn’t informed of 
her coming, either, and it takes some convincing before Charlotte is allowed to stay. She moves into a room in the sanitarium, and then the weirdness commences.
Each of the patients in the sanitarium has a unique affliction, but ones that follow common tropes. Sam (Bill McGhee) is simple-minded. Jennifer (Harryette Warren) has the mind of a frightened child. Danny (Jessie Kirby) is a manic who can’t resist pulling pranks on the other patients. Jaffee (Hugh Feagin) suffers from severe wartime PTSD. Allyson (Betty Chandler) has a dependent personality disorder that causes her to throw herself at any nearby man. Harriet (Camilla Carr) is fixated on caring for a baby doll. And Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) just appears to be elderly.
The crazy isn’t quite enough to make this a horror flick, so Brownrigg throws viewers a bloody murder on occasion. Charlotte becomes more and more aware of the danger she is in as the movie goes on, and the audience is left wondering who is doing the killing. The twist in the final act is easy to see coming for veteran moviegoers, but still works well. All leads to a bloody denouement.
Basement was made right at the cusp of modern slasher flicks. It may not have established many of the familiar tropes, especially since it had such a limited audience back when it was released, but this movie’s DNA is very much a part of later films. The most significant mark against the movie is a somnambulistic pace. It takes a long time to get where it’s going, and it meanders along the way. The journey is more important than the destination, and this movie showcases just why that is. It’s a tough watch even for those whose attention spans were formed before the days of the internet.
The movie does have cachet as a relic. Made by relative unknowns very far from Hollywood, with cheap filmstock and cheap lenses, it’s a museum piece, part of the linear anthropology of cheap horror. Before everyone carried an HD camera in their pockets, movies like this were shot on videotape. And before videotape, there were films like this. Don’t Look in the Basement enters the Watchability Index at #430, displacing French Quarter. This is one for the hardcore horror fans.