31 Nights of Terror 2015 #33 - Don't Look in the Basement (1973)

Don't Look in the Basement (1973)
Director: SF Brownrigg
Starring: Bill McGhee, Jessie Lee Fulton, Robert Dracup
Format: DVD

Plot: Nurse Charlotte Beale arrives at the isolated Stephens Sanitarium to work, only to learn that Dr. Stephens was murdered by one of the patients and his successor, Dr. Geraldine Masters, is not very eager to take on new staff. Charlotte finds her job maddeningly hard as the patients torment and harass her at every turn, and she soon learns why Dr. Masters is so eager to keep outsiders out.

I picked up this movie as part of a 12-movie DVD set called American Horror Stories, which I bought while visiting the US a couple of years ago. Most of the movies are public domain stuff (House on Haunted Hill, Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors) or very bad prints of other 60s and 70s horror. While the picture quality of this 70s indie cheapie (apparently it cost $100,000 and was shot in 12 days) isn't great, luckily the movie itself makes up for that in spades.

Also known as The Forgotten, this was the debut for late director SF Brownrigg, who does a great job of building up a tense atmosphere. The acting, all by unknowns, is rough around the edges as you'd expect, but does a great job of conveying the various mental short-comings of the inmates. There are some genuinely chilling moments and a bit of blood is shed here and there.

The setting and opening kill (axe to the head while chopping wood) invoked comparisons with Friday the 13th: The New Blood, while the rest of it kind of reminded me of a low-budget Shutter Island. I won't go too much into the plot since there's a pretty good twist involved (which veteran horror movie fans will probably guess but is good anyway).

I highly recommend Don't Look in the Basement, although fans of more modern and polished horror might not find it to their liking.

As a post-script, I should mention that the director's son has helmed a sequel, the trailer for which you can find online. I'm looking forward to checking that out when it's released.

June 13 - Hellhole (1985)

The cover of my VHS copy of Hellhole

Hellhole (1985)
Director: Pierre De Moro
Format: VHS (Hoyts)

Hellhole is a nifty little women in prison exploitation flick, transplanted from the usual prison setting to a mental hospital, produced by b-movie auteur Samuel Z Arkoff and his son Lou.

Susan (Judy Landers - who looks damn recognisable but I can't place where I know her from, even with the help of IMDB) witnesses her mother being murdered by a sleazeball called Silk (Ray Sharkey) and ends up in a mental institution with amnesia. Silk disguises himself as an orderly to try to find out the location of discriminating papers, but he's not Susan's biggest problem.

The mental hospital is run by the evil Dr Fletcher (Mary Woronov, DEATH RACE 2000), who is turning patients into zombies for her own sexual perversion in a hidden dungeon the patients call Hellhole. Coming to Susan's aid is an orderly (Richard Cox, THE VINDICATOR), and together they try to uncover Dr Fletcher's secret and expose it to the world, while avoiding Silk, some of the nastier patients and Dr Fletcher's corrupt security guards (including Robert Z'Dar from the MANIAC COP series, in one of his earliest roles).

Hellhole is full of the standard WIP fare, with bucketloads of full frontal nudity. There's a topless fistfight in the girls' shower room with a dozen or so naked girls cheering, two lesbian scenes and even a threesome in a mudbath.

The horror elements are minimal, although the "zombie" patients make for some nice, chilling moments. Woronov is in great campy form as the deviant lesbian boss woman and Sharkey oozes sleaze while looking like the lovechild of Freddie Mercury and Bowser from Sha Na Na.

For a movie with a great title like Hellhole, I would have liked to have seen more gore, but it delivers as a WIP sexploitation flick, with an abundance of naked chicks with 80s hair.

Previews on my VHS: American Ninja, White Nights, Santa Claus: The Movie