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. Continue reading “Don’t Look in the Basement, aka The Forgotten”
Lisa and the Devil, the 1973 film from Italian auteur Mario Bava, has become one of his more renowned films in the last couple of decades. I first saw it around twenty years ago with a roommate who was watching it for her film class at NYU. Upon release, though, it was a butchered product, with a framing story shot and added after Bava delivered his cut. Of this film, which had been released under the title of La Casa dell’esorcismo (House of Exorcism), Bava said, “La casa dell’esorcismo is not my film, even though it bears my signature. It is the same situation, too long to explain, of a cuckolded father who finds himself with a child that is not his own, and with his name, and cannot do anything about it.”
It Happened at Nightmare Inn is something of a travesty. It’s a victimization of what looked to be a fairly decent Spanish horror flick from 1973 called A Candle for the Devil. That film is an 83-minute-long flick about a pair of murderous sisters who run a B&B in a rural village in Spain. It Happened One Night is a 67-minute-long cut of that film with all the juicy bits removed for American television. The cuts are so ruthless that it’s obvious to the viewer that key scenes are missing. So much has been excised that it ruins much of the storytelling, as important plot points are passed over. If at all possible, I recommend potential viewers stay away from the TV cut, unless they are curious to see what happens when a toddler with a pair of scissors is allowed to edit an already finished film.