If anyone ever assembles a compendium on modern American horror that is truly worth it's salt, there will *have* to be an entry for SF Brownrigg's ubiquetous exercize in Asylum Horror. Every time I watch this movie I am impressed by the complete economy of the film, from the compact, totally self-contained plot with a puzzling beginning and an all too horrible ending, the engaging performances by what was essentially a group of non-professional actors, and a prevading sense of dread and claustrophobia that effectively consumes the narrarive with a certain inevitability which is all the more terrifying because the viewers know what is going on long before the hero[es], with the only question being when are they going to wake up & smell the coffee?

Shot on a dental floss budget in Brownrigg's native Texas at an old palatial manor that nicely serves as the setting for a private sanitorium, DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT is another intriguing twist on the good old Edgar Allan Poe tome about inmates taking over the asylum just before an otherwise "normal" outsider unwittingly joins the ranks without realizing until it is far too late that not all is what it seems, they are totally cut off & beyond any outside help, and inevitably find their own sanity questioned as the madness spins out of control -- The Original STAR TREK TV series had a go at this with their WHOM GODS DESTROY episode from 1968, Juan Moctezuma gave the proceedings a peyote fueled Mexican psychedelic trip in DR. TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON in 1972, and tangentially related is Fernando Di Leo's ASYLUM EROTICA/SLAUGHTER HOTEL, which injects the elements of an unknown killer and an ending that can only be defined as "Splatter Cinema" -- Brownrigg may not have seen or been thinking of SLAUGHTER HOTEL, but he sure came up with some similar ideas.

Legaliciuos former Playboy Playmate Rosie Holotik plays Charlotte Beale, RN in Clinical Psychology, who has just left her nice job as a supervisor at a major hospital to travel way out into the middle of some god forsaken waste right out of a Peckinpah movie to work with a Dr. Stevens at his private sanitorium. Dr. Stevens has pioneered a new form of therapy based upon basically encouraging the emotionally & psychologically scarred to face their inner obsessions, bring them to the surface and hopefully rid the patients of whatever has fried their sense of reasoning. Nice idea, but arming a 6ft 250 pound utterly insane man with an axe and telling him to pound out his aggression AND THEN TURNING YOUR BACK ON HIM probably isn't the smartest idea, and Dr. Stevens is dispatched before Ms. Holotik even appears onscreen with a good whack to the lower portion of his skull.

This event leaves the sanitorium effectively in the hands of one Geraldine Masters [actress Annabelle Weenick, who also served as the script supervisor & production manager], a woman of startlingly professional demeanor who quickly defuses the situation with the help of Sam, the film's wonderfully unlikely hero, a lobotomized African American boheomouth played by an actor named Bill McGhee who was sadly robbed of a supporting Oscar nomination for his turn as a mass of muscle with the brain of an 8 year old boy. Sam's one wish is to have someone help him put his prized toy boat "in the water", and his continual asking of the various female cast members to do so [and his nonstop consumption of chocolate popsicles] as *SOME* kind of underlying theme, though we will avoid such here because the kids might still be up. There is also a quick subplot about a staff member who has decided to leave after being threatened by one of the patients, but I'll leave the details of that to your discovery.

Ms. Holotik arrives just as Dr. Stevens has been effectively laid to rest and is quickly won over by the snappy professionalism of Ms. Masters, who reluctantly allows the leggy young nurse to stay on in spite of the tragedy that has just happened, oh, TWENTY MINUTES AGO, which you must admit was rather sporting of her. Holotik's Nurse Beale begins to demonstrate symptoms of not being the sharpest meat cleaver in the drawer, however, when informed that she shares living quarters with a bunch of maniacs and there are no locks on the doors & doesn't trudge off for the nearest Ace Hardware Store to pick up a hasp and padlock to secure herself, and we are treated to a couple of truly creepy scenes where some of the inmates sneak into her room & do stuff like smell her hair, try to kill her with butcher knives and caress her neck with axe heads. But that's all a part of working in such a radical psychiatric health care environment, Ms. Master's informs her, and she goes about her oddly defined "rounds" that consist of wearing as leg defining a nurse outfit as you can find in a 42nd Street fetish boutique and getting to know the inmates.

Allysson is a obsessive compulsive nymphomaniac with homicidal tendancies who likes to take off her shirt & provide the film with some T & A between fits of histrionics; Harriet is a young former mother who let her child die in a stupid accident and now dotes on a beat-up old doll that she is also homicidally protective of; The Seargant is an actual seargeant [and implied Vietnam vet] who's negligence led to the death of his platoon, and now watches from the window with binoculars for the approach of an unseen enemy; Jennifer is a Phish fan who couldn't score a ticket to the New Year's Eve Show and went insane & likes to scarf down nembutols and other barbituates when nobody is looking, and likewise has hidden homicidal tendancies linked to her inability to find a bra; Judge Cameron is apparently a homicidal pervert who became obsessed with his own sense of power and now likes to chop things up with axes; Ms. Callingham is an aged poet who serves as a sort of soothsaying old hag from MACBETH before the cat gets her tongue; and Danny is an insane idiot who was included in the cast as the random element that the plot cannot control, and who's antics serve as the real catalyst for the series of tragedies & murders that ultimately take place in this dark, old, creepy house in the middle of nowhere.

The house itself is a wonderful set, with a threadbare early 1970's decor that is remarkable in it's unremarkableness, with a fantastic use of color achieved by subtle ambient lighting. The house is a series of hallways and rooms with shiny brown wooden floors, twisting, confined stairways, secreted closets and passageways leading to the different larger areas, and of course the basement mentioned in the title -- visited only once, but boy it sure proves to be a doozy! I love the frosted old freezer where Sam keeps his stash of popsicles, the utterly plain exteriors that remind me of a summer home our family used to visit every year & force us to swelter in the heat: Everyone is covered with beads of persperation and looks exhausted, and even the ever cheerful Sam at one point begins to suspect that bad things are happening, though he cannot understand what it all means and Rosie H. is too firm in her belief of her profession to even suspect what has really happened, and while Ms. Holotik's limitations of an actress may have diminished the effectiveness of her Big Revelation scene, she's a great screamer when all Hell starts to break loose, and Brownrigg indulged of some nice camera shots of her in various suggestive poses or stages of undress that show off what a pretty lady she is without exposing anything more than her contract stipulated. Too bad!

The real show stealer is Sam, however, and fans of what I have been taught to refer to as Splatter Cinema will not be disappointed by the rather shocking finale, and there is something moving about how Sam runs to the protection of his friend and brutally kills everyone within arms reach in a matter of seconds that either suggests he was one mean motha before his lobotomy, or the film is CUT. In any event you won't be prepared for the ending the first time you see it, even though you as the viewer know what the score is long before anyone else in the film has put it all together.

Except for one person: Rhea MacAdams' uproariously stereotyped old coot Mrs. Callingham [who seems to be inspired by the Donald Sutherland Old Woman character from the Michael Reeves' 1964 Christopher Lee film CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD, in addition to a rather nasty death by round spike to the eye], who not only predicts the future, but has the film's most laugh out loud amusing bit of dialogue while on a walk in the garden with Ms. Holotik that runs something like this --

"It's really beautiful out here. Do you get out much, Mrs. Callingham?" asks Holotik, to which the old woman replies

"It's YOU who needs to get out."

Hilarious, and one of those things you gotta kind of see for yourself to "get". DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT is available on at least a half dozen "bargain bin" codefree DVD releases by companies like Brentwood Home Video, Diamond Entertainment, VCI and Platinum Disc Corp.'s HORROR CLASSICS series; I kind of like Alpha Video's sexily gorgeously decorated $6 release from 2003:

Dig through those bargain bins! But make sure you get one with the 89/90 minute print contained therein; an older 83 minute version is downright confusing due to some of the trims, and you really need to see the ending credits as intended to bring this sick, twisted and surprisingly entertaining yarn to it's end.

Masterpiece? Maybe not compared to THE EXORCIST or ROSEMARY'S BABY, but it is a very uniquely American horror film, and a genuine classic of the drive-in age that deserves to be rediscovered by anyone looking for something made with more than just a little bit of brain juice, and not a penny more than they absolutely needed.

***1/2 out of ****

Sentiment: positive