Madhouse, 1981.
Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis.
Starring Trish Everly, Michael MacRae, Dennis Robertson, Allison Biggers, Morgan Most, Edith Ivey, and Jerry Fujikawa.
SYNOPSIS:
Julia is approaching her 25th birthday but unfortunately her estranged twin sister Mary sees this as an opportunity to escape from her hospital bed and torment her just like when they were kids, culminating in a birthday party straight out of a nightmare.
Originally released at the peak of the first slasher boom, Madhouse (a.k.a. There Was a Little Girl & And When She Was Bad) gained something of a reputation by being added to the Director of Public Prosecutions’ Video Nasties list back in the 1980s but, like most of the movies on that list, is it really that depraved and corrupt or is it just another example of the authorities knee jerk reacting to nothing more than a slightly bloody thriller where somebody happens to brandish a knife in a menacing way?
Well, as if you need telling it’s the latter as there is very little in this film that makes it worthy of a ban, unless you count some of the prosthetics glued to Allison Biggers’ face which looked a lot more convincing during the blurry days of VHS than it does in this pristine 2K restoration. However, for a film so dull and slow the premise is quite good and had huge potential to be a lot scarier than it actually turned out to be, despite some sterling efforts on the part of the filmmakers to try and throw in a red herring about who the killer is and who will be left for the final fight.
In fact, for a scarier take on the twisted sister (not the band) story you’d be better off editing in the footage from Pet Sematary that involves the bed-ridden sister of the main female character because it is far creepier than what Madhouse is doing, as in this film Julia (Trish Everly), a teacher in a school for deaf children, is fast approaching her 25th birthday and is visited by her uncle James (Dennis Robertson in a role that one imagines would have been played by David Warner had the budget allowed) who tells her that her twin sister Mary (Allison Biggers) is dying in a hospital bed and wants to see her. When Julia visits Mary the sick woman grabs her sister and reduces her to tears by bringing back harsh childhood memories where it is revealed that on their birthday every year Mary used to torment Julia with her pet dog. The next day James visits Julia and tells her that Mary has escaped from the hospital which, funnily enough, coincides with the murders that start happening around Julia’s apartment involving people’s throats being ripped out by what appears to be a large dog. Spooky…
Except it isn’t really as when Mary does finally appear during a birthday party that has been set up in Julia’s basement, it appears that whatever disease she has makes small pieces of latex stick to her face in an attempt to look like scars; remember, this is post-Exorcist so every young woman stuck in a hospital bed has to look like her face is melting but the effects budget – or talent – didn’t really stretch to anything other than the basics. Far more effective and jarring is the one scene where a figure that appears to be Mary walks into shot with her face covered and she is just approaching her victim with no bad effects or silly cackling noises to dumb it down, just the killer and her intended victim with nowhere to run and it is probably the most frightening scene in the whole film, almost J-horror in look and offering up a bit of nightmarish terror in a way that Pet Sematary expands upon.
But, like the film as a whole, whenever it does something good it doesn’t build on it or manage to sustain the dread, making the tone very uneven and dropping the pace just when it should be ramping things up. However, Dennis Robertson is on hand to at least try and escalate things with a very strange performance that you realise fits when the film finishes and you can reflect upon it but at the time he seems to be the only real source of energy in a film full of dry and lifeless performances. Veteran actress Edith Ivey (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Dennis Farina lookalike Michael MacRae (Battlefield Earth) try their best with what they are given but both of their roles are fairly unrewarding, which leaves Trish Everly to carry the film and while she certainly isn’t terrible, she isn’t exactly what you would call an exciting lead.
Which leaves the blood, gore, violence and all the other reasons why this movie was deemed a “video nasty” back in the day and, truth be told, there’s not a lot to get upset about, with most of the blood being spilt during the dog attacks and it literally is just fake blood being spread over the actor’s necks. The final slaughter feels too underwhelming to be offensive to anybody and is framed off-centre so it hardly shows up as a major set piece, and while the setting of the final act tries to strike a morbid atmosphere it just feels like it is playing up the dark humour a tad too much and in all the wrong places.
The presentation of the film, though, is quite spectacular as the 2K restoration, despite highlighting where the skin stops and the latex starts, does give Madhouse something of a polished look that is certainly at odds with other Italian horror productions of the time. The Riz Ortolani score, despite sounding very similar to his work on Cannibal Holocaust, does the job and as for extras there are interviews with Edith Ivey, who has nothing but good things to say about her experience making the film, cinematographer Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli and director Ovidio Assonitis plus a fun commentary from the guys at The Hysteria Continues podcast which, if you’re going to watch this film, is probably the best way to experience it as their informative and lively chat certainly helps add a bit of spark to a film that isn’t awful but should have been a whole lot better than it actually is. One to file under ‘Completists Only’.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
