Asylum (1972) — dvd movie review

by Chris   ⋅   October 11, 2006   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

With Halloween just around the corner, some of you adventurous souls are probably looking for a few new holiday scares. While the gorehounds will love Evil Aliens, others of you are probably looking for “higher-brow” entertainment. Horror that deals with the darker facets of the human condition: guilty consciences, deals made in desperation, jilted lovers, and simple vendettas. If so, Asylum might be just the ticket.

Lured by the prospect of fulltime employment curing damaged minds, psychologist Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) arrives at the Dunmoor Asylum for the Incurably Insane only to find that his scheduled interviewer, and director of the asylum, has now become a patient. His replacement, Dr. Rutherford agrees to offer Dr. Martin the job, on one condition: Dr. Martin must interview the patients upstairs, learn their stories, and construe which one is actually the former director. Dr. Martin naturally accepts, and sets about interviewing the disturbed guests upstairs. His efforts will lead him to discover four horrific tales, concerning murderous husbands, magical suits, homicidal toys, and devious doppelgangers. He may never be the same again.

Made by Amicus pictures (the other British horror mainstay of the 1960’s and 70’s) and featuring a star studded cast including Charlotte Rampling (Swimming Pool), Peter Cushing (Brides of Dracula), and Britt Ekand (The Wicker Man), and a script by Robert Bloch (Psycho), Asylum is definitely of a higher pedigree than your average horror flick. This well polished anthology film features some truly innovative and delightfully subtle special effects (ranging from eerily shimmering fabrics to breathing disembodied heads), strong acting, quality camerawork, and some genuinely spooky storylines. As the individual tales are rather short (20 – 30 minutes tops) I won’t delve into the individual storylines so as to preserve the tension of each. However, suffice it to say these four are all equally intriguing, far from the Creepshow films of the 1980’s, and skillfully pull the viewer into a state of, if not completely suspended, suitably postponed disbelief. Furthermore, director Roy Ward Baker keeps the action taut and the performances believable, even in the face of some rather fantastical (and in other hands laughable) plot points. Everyone involved remains straight-faced, and not once do they saunter into the realm of camp.

Asylum harkens back to a day of subtler terrors — ones crafted through spooky atmosphere and skillful suggestion rather than pure, in your face grotesqueries. As such, it may not interest today’s gore-thirsty audiences. But, for fans of classic British horror, good old fashioned scary stories, or even parents looking for Halloween films that will scare, but not psychologically scar their children, Asylum is a surefire bet.

The DVD

Dark Sky films presents a restored Asylum in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and restored 2.0 Mono sound mix. The picture looks quite nice, with even strong reds in their proper place (In these glory days of the matured DVD format rarely are we ever seeing a bad restoration), but the sound mix seems heavily balanced toward the score. Many times we had to turn up the volume to hear a discussion, only to turn it down right after as the ominous music set in. The disc comes complete with a trailer gallery featuring other Dark Sky Amicus Collection releases (The Beast Must Die, And Now the Screaming Starts, and of course, Asylum), some pretty respectable bios for the film’s main actors (Britt Ekland, Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom), director Roy Ward Baker, and Amicus co-founders Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky.

Also included on the disc are a photo gallery featuring international posters and production stills from Asylum, and a lengthy doc on the history of Amicus, Inside the Fear Factory, that covers the company’s founding, it’s flirtation with Hammer pictures, and their ultimate emergence as the kings of the horror anthology. The documentary includes some rather entertaining interviews with Amicus co-founder Max Rosenberg and Asylum director Roy Ward Baker. Both are pleasant to listen to and provide the viewer with quite a bit of horror history. The disc also includes a commentary track by Roy Ward Baker and cameraman Neil Binney. The two maintain a fairly low key banter, sharing a good deal of memories from the production, and various technical aspects of the film. It’s nice track, of interest primarily to fans, but a nice change from the mutual backslappings of most commentary tracks for mainstream releases. Lastly, the film comes in a clear amray case with some nifty cover artwork (I’ll admit it’s what brought this disc to my attention in the first place), as well as a brief essay insert by Christopher Gullo, webmaster of PeterCushing.co.uk.

All in all Dark Sky has presented a well rounded disc for a gothic horror classic. Well worth a look for the horror connoisseur.

About the Author

Chris Nelson has been a film fanatic since age six. A former film and English major, he is now a Java Developer and contract Technical Writer living in the Silicon Valley.

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