aka House of Crazies

• Directed by Roy Ward Baker
• Written by Robert Bloch
• Starring
  • Peter Cushing
  • Britt Ekland
  • Robert Powell
  • Patrick Magee
  • Herbert Lom
• Produced by Max Rodenberg and Milton Subotsky

This anthology flick was made during the brief British “horror anthology renaissance” of the early seventies, a period that also produced Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and The House That Dripped Blood. The latter, in fact, has a lot in common with Asylum: it was also written by Robert Bloch, it features Peter Cushing (it was legally inadmissable to produce a horror flick in Britain without Cushing in those days), and it has a good framing device to hold the separate tales together.

In this case, we have the titular asylum, a gloomy place called Dunsmoor, operated by a Dr. B. Starr. Young Dr. Martin (Robert Powell — that’s right, he’s Jesus Christ) comes for an interview for a position, and speaks to Dr. Rutherford (Patrick Magee), who has taken over since Dr. Starr recently and suddenly became an inmate afflicted with “hysterical fugue,” a state in which the patient completely adopts a different personality and history. Annoyed by the young doctor’s booklearned cockiness, Rutherford sets up a challenge: Martin is to go upstairs where the incurably insane are kept. Max the orderly (Geoffrey Bayldon, a dead ringer for James Cromwell) is to show him around to four patients; Martin is to hear their stories and determine which of them is actually the insane Dr. Starr. And by the way, Martin has no clue as to Starr’s gender.

What follows, then, are four tales of extraordinary happenings — some involving the supernatural, some merely involving insanity. It’s almost impossible to describe any of them without giving spoilers, but in order they are:

- “Frozen Fear” (or, as I like to call it, “The Telltale Head”): A “kept husband” conspires with his mistress to murder his wife, who has recently been taking classes in African spirituality. He chops her up, wraps her parts in brown paper (note to future murderers: If you’re going to go to all the trouble, at least chop the body into small enough parts that they’re not immediately recognizable), and stuffs her in the freezer. But she won’t stay dead. When the mistress arrives, the husband is nowhere to be found.

Best image: The head, escaped from the freezer and still wrapped in brown paper and string, sits there on the landing, breathing in and out…

- “The Weird Tailor”: Bruno the Tailor (Barry Morse of Space: 1999) is approached by Peter Cushing to make a suit for Cushing’s son from a strange shimmering material (presented very economically as a shiny material with different colored gels played on it) in a very peculiar design, with hours to be spent working on it determined by astrology. Bruno, in dire financial straits, takes on the project — but when he delivers the suit he finds out its purpose is far stranger than he had imagined…

“Lucy Comes to Stay”: Barbara (Charlotte Rampling, Jodie Foster’s long-lost twin sister) comes back to her ancestral home in the company of George after some kind of nervous breakdown. She’s upset that George has hired a nurse for her; she’s even more upset when her friend Lucy (the incredibly beautiful Britt Ekland) shows up and hints that George is trying to get her put away so he can inherit it all by himself. Together they start planning their escape…

“Mannikins of Horror”: Dr. Byron (Herbert Lom of the Pink Panther movies) is himself a neurosurgeon, but in the asylum he’s discovered a new hobby: creating small robotic dolls, each with the face of a colleague. He’s finally created one with his own face, and he declares that by concentration he will put his consciousness into it to gain revenge on Dr. Rutherford…

I also can’t spoil the final answer to the riddle, “Which one is Dr. Starr?” I can only say that the framing story and the four tales interact just enough to keep everything held together, that nothing drags, and that this is quite an enjoyable little piece.

In fact, my only complaint is that the entire musical credit is given to Douglas Gamley, when at least half of the music we hear is from Mussorgsky, both “Night on Bald Mountain” and various themes from “Pictures at an Exhibition”; Gamley’s score is only filler between these more impressive selections.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • John Franklin-Robbins (“Stebbins,” Bruno’s landlord) was “Macias” in the 7th-season TNG “Preemptive Strike”
• (I should also mention that, as this was a British production, there were six cast members who’ve shown up on Dr. Who, and just about everyone has helped out on The Avengers)