Asylum

I've been on an Amicus roll lately, watching many of the portmanteau films (or anthology films) that Amicus was known for. After watching ASYLUM today, I have to say it is one of my favorites of the Amicus anthologies. This is a star-studded production with actors such as Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Barbara Parkins, and Robert Powell, among others. Powell plays a young psychologist, Dr. Martin who arrives at an insane asylum for a job interview. His interviewer is Dr. Lionel Rutherford (Patrick Magee) who is wheelchair-bound due to an attack by an inmate and tells Martin that the job is his if he can figure out which of the current inmates is Dr. B. Starr, the former head of the asylum. So Martin sets off, accompanied by the attendant Max Reynolds (Geoffrey Bayldon) and visits several of the inmates in his attempt to determine which of the inmates is Starr. This narrative frame then allows for several stories to unfold. FROZEN FEAR is the first story where inmate Bonnie (Barbara Parkins) reveals how she plotted with her lover to dispose of his rich wife. Unbeknownst to the conniving lovers, the rich wife was heavily into voodoo and when she is murdered and dismembered, let's just say her body parts are not exactly resting in peace. Although not exactly original and a tad predictable, this was fun to watch. THE WEIRD TAILOR is my favorite in this anthology primarily because Peter Cushing does such an amazing job portraying the role of a sinister man who approaches a poor tailor to sew a suit for his son. Cushing's character insists the suit be sewn with materials he provides and the innocent tailor realizes too late that the material for the suit has the power to animate anything it is put on, even the dead! Creepy and riveting, this episode proved to be a suspenseful watch. LUCY COMES TO STAY features Charlotte Rampling who tells Martin that she has been institutionalized in another facility before. Britt Ekland also features in this one. MANNIKINS OF HORROR stars Herbert Lom as an inventor who is experimenting with soul transference on a small bio-robot. Lom delivers a creepy performance and his efforts make this episode another favorite. This anthology is really worth a watch if you're a fan of classic horror, and there are enough unpredictable elements here to make it engaging. The ending scene is quite disconcerting which is as it should be in a horror film.

I picked this title at random because it seemed lonely and unreviewed. As it turns out it was a pretty good find. The basic premise is pretty simple; a new doctor arrives at an insane asylum and interviews the prisoners. Each one relates their story in a series of creepy vignettes. From a production standpoint this is pretty much what you'd expect from the time period. The effects aren't great, the stories are predictable yet they still manage to get under your skin. At least in part this may be due to the music. It's unnerving and it's LOUD compared with the dialog track. I had to keep the remote handy. It probably helped the creepiness factor a bit that I started the movie with the sound turned up way too loud and jumped a foot when the music immediately blared. So this is a solid choice for free; it has that much more understated quality of horror at the time. You don't have to see every bloody detail. Sometimes all you need is a hint, an implication. It also has the advantage that it's reasonably kid appropriate, if your kids are used to the Twilight Zone and other similar creepy stuff. PS: It is always my endeavor to provide helpful reviews. If you find my review helpful please vote appropriately. If you do not, then please leave me a comment indicating what you want to know and I'll be sure to do better next time.

I saw this movie in my hometown movie theater in a small, isolated Oregon community on New Year’s Eve 1972 going on 1973 when I was 8 years old and it has stuck with me ever since. While I have developed into an inveterate fan of horror stories, more in my reading habits than movie watching proclivity, my memories of this movie and it’s affect on me and my sister have not faded. Directly after the movie ended, completely shell-shocked, we shuffled to the family sedan and were dropped off with an ill-equipped teenage baby-sitter at our aunt’s house while the grown-ups went out to ring in the New Year. After a terrifying phone call from the babysitter’s boyfriend claiming that he had just seen Bigfoot staring in his bedroom window with its eyeball torn out and hanging down on its cheek, a night of terror ensued that could have easily been filmed as a horror movie in its own right. By the time my parents came to pick us up, I was hiding in the closet in the master bedroom while my sister had locked herself in the bathroom and curled up in the fetal position in the bathtub. Our toddler cousin was so upset by our hysterical actions that she threw up and the babysitter, now traumatized herself, vacuumed it up. The movie and its aftermath is still talked about to this day at family gatherings, with a lot of laughter replacing the wailing screams of terror. Upon viewing the film all these years later, the happenings are fairly tame by today’s standards; however, the insanity aspect is still unnerving. The acting is effective, and with Robert Bloch of “Psycho” fame as writer, I look forward to reading the stories that the different vignettes were based upon. Enjoy, the movie is actually pretty good!

Excellent horror anthology: Well-crafted tales which aren't "run-of-the-mill": This reminds me of the "Night Gallery" TV series, and of course, of "The Twilight Zone" for its unexpected turns of fate, & twisted ending. It's fun to watch Britt Ekland, Barbara Parkins, & Charlotte Rampling when they were really young, in addition to the great horror actor, Peter Cushing. These 4 tales are only about 1 1/2 hours' viewing time all together, & you most likely won't figure out the ending for most of them. These tales are sufficiently creepy without being gory, so it's fun to be a bit scared by the suspense without being afraid to turn off the lights to sleep :)

Ok

Alles top

A great movie. Put together really well with surprise ending!

Another very strong entry in Amicus films long series of portmanteau films, Asylum features stories written by Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, and is directed by horror regular Roy Ward Baker. A young psychiatrist Dr Martin(Robert Powell) arrives at an asylum set in the countryside, to be told by acting head Dr Rutherford(Patrick Magee)that in order to get the job he has applied for, he has to correctly identify the previous head of the Asylum, Dr Starr, who has gone native and become one of the inmates after attacking and crippling Rutherford. These scenes are excellent as Martin baulks at Rutherford's antiquated terminology concerning the inmates Martin then goes up a large foreboding staircase to meet the patients who may or may not be Dr Starr. We then get four stories involving the patients he meets. In the first story, a cheating husband disposes of his wife, only to face vengeance from beyond the grave. In the second, a tailor facing poverty and eviction from his home, gets an order for a very unusual suit. The third concerns a fragile woman who has a devious friend, who may be real or imaginary, and in the fourth Martin meets a man who claims he has created a race of tiny living mannequins. All four stories are enjoyable, with a great cast lining up and giving their all. The second story 'The Weird Tailor' has a camp but enjoyable climax, and the story involving the mannequins is wonderfully gory. The aforementioned cast includes Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Barry Morse, Richard Todd, Charlotte Rampling, Britt Ekland and Megs Jenkins to name just a few. Also Geoffrey Bayldon should be mentioned in a small but important role as Reynolds the hospital orderly in the framing story. So great cast, great stories, great twist ending all add up to make an excellent British horror film that should entertain from beginning to end. Also of note is the music used in the film-Night On Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky- is a wonderful foreboding piece, well suited for this film. The DVD transfer is perfectly adequate, and also contains a commentary by the director Roy Ward Baker.

リージョン2／ PAL 国内Blu-rayプレイヤー（FUNAI）で再生出来ますが、 日本語字幕は付いておりません。 内容をある程度、分かってみえる方にお勧 めします。 画質は良好でletterbox収録。 1972年度作品／89分 ★マニアなら説明不要の傑作オムニバスホラー！ 私の場合、輸入β版ソフトに初めて手を出したのがこの「アサイラム」だった。 その後、日本でもVTRテープブームで大映ビデオより日本語字幕付きソフトが 発売され、怪奇映画ファンの渇きを癒した伝説的な作品となった。 ☆自分勝手にサブタイトルを付けてみました・・ご容赦ください。 ①「ブードゥ呪術／迫り来るバラバラ死体」B・パーキンス ② 「モルグの死装束／真夜中の仕立人」 P・カッシング ③「殺しの競演B＆C/怪奇と混乱の美女」 C・ランプリング／B・エクランド ④「恐怖の内臓人形/アサイラム脳波コントロール」 H・ロム ★日本劇場未公開作品ですが面白いですよ！

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