Asylum DVD Report

Print: OK a few marks - Sound: Good - Label: Vipco - Year: 1972 - Cover: Good - Format: 16:9 - Length: 1h26m/1h28m - Before: Yes on TV several times - Again: Maybe - Price: £1 - Rating: 6/10.

Amicus Films and Psycho author Robert Bloch join forces for a seventies classic, Asylum! When Doctor Martin (Robert Powell) arrives at Dunsmoor Asylum, he expects to be interviewed by director Doctor Starr, but instead is met by Doctor Rutherford (Patrick Magee), who explains Starr has suffered a mental breakdown and now a patient.

Rutherford decides that if Martin can deduce which one is really Starr, then he will be given the position! Is it Bonnie (Barbara Parkins), whose affair with a married man turns murderous? Is it Bruno (Barry Morse), a hardluck tailor visited by a mysterious stranger (Peter Cushing) with a special fabric for an unusual suit? Is it Barbara (Charlotte Rampling), accused of murdering her brother and her nurse but insisting that her friend Lucy (Britt Ekland) was responsible, or is it Doctor Byron (Herbert Lom) who claims the ability to transfer his psyche into a doll?

As an early seventies horror movie, Asylum is without doubt a classic, but has a couple of odd points, how does a torso walk? or a severed head for that matter? Why does a human leg wrapped in brown paper have high heals in a freezer, but not later on? Its still a good romp though!

Here is the trailer...