The Fifth Floor

I saw this film as a kid and I remember the advertisments for it on tv made it look like it would be as scary as The Shining. It really isn't scary at all. The actors do a fine job, Dianne Hull (whatever happened to her?) makes a nice damsel in distress. Its funny seeing Robert Englund before he played Freddy Kruger. A young disco dancer is mistakingly committed to an asylum after someone drugs her. It makes you think because there really have been a lot of cases like this. I don't remember what happened in the end, but I don't think it had a happy ending.

A woman (Dianne Hull) is poisoned with strychnine while disco dancing (now THAT might have been an effective way to stop disco). Everyone (including her clueless boyfriend) takes her poisoning to be a suicide attempt and she ends up involuntarily committed to a co-ed mental institution where there is a lot of melodrama, but really little that goes beyond a typical 70's TV movie of the week. Her main antagonist is a corrupt male orderly (Bo Hopkins) who pressures her for sex. Her fellow inmates, meanwhile, include a young Robert England and an (apparently genuinely) pregnant Patti D'Arbanville.

A lot of stuff in this movie seems rather preposterous today, but back in the 70's perhaps not so much. This movie kind of reminded me of the the contemporary theatrical film "Human Experiments" and the TV movie "Nightmare in Badham County". Dianne Hull was one of those very cute 70's actresses who appeared in a few things and then pretty much vanished into oblivion. This is perhaps her most memorable role aside from "Girls on the Road" (where she'd played a hitch-hiking teenager who almost has sex with "Papa Walton"). Her full-frontal nude scenes are about the only thing that separate this from a tame TV movie, but she does give a pretty good performance. And it's always fun to watch Bo Hopkins play a redneck villain even if he's not quite as memorable as he is in "White Lightning" and .

This is probably not a movie that's going to make a deep impression on anybody, but it's entertaining enough I guess.

Although this was made in 1978, I recall seeing this with Don't Go In The House in 1980 at the drive-in theatre. Oddly enough I was attending psychiatric technician training at the time. Bo Hopkins after introducing himself to the unfortunate disco heroine as 'your friendly psychiatric technician' goes on to deliver a good performance with convincing menace beneath a superficial cheery 'therapeutic' demeanor. Sharon Farrell is convincing as a patient. The always creepy Anthony James gives one of his best performances and, horror fans, Robert 'Freddie' Englund is also on hand as a patient. Toss in some disco and you got some kind of late 70's semi-classic drive-in entertainment.If nothing else, watching Bo Hopkins puffing on a cigarette as he worked reminded me of 1980, when it was commonplace to see staff and patients smoking on a unit. Note too, that Bo appears to be working AM, PM (Swing) and Noc shift in this movie. No doubt racking up some good OT money but perhaps driving himself to some of the behaviors he displays. (For me) nostalgic fun ** out of *****

"Fifth Floor" was actually better than I had expected. What makes it rise above the other, run of the mill B-movies/television movie of the week is the good performances from lead actress, Diane Hull and the supporting cast including Sharon Farrell and Bo Hopkins as an orderly who abuses his authority and terrorizes the young heroine.

Following a young college co-ed disco dancer who is inexplicably poisoned by strychnine in her drink is determined to be a suicide risk and delegated to the titular "fifth floor" psychiatric ward of a hospital for observation for 72 hours. Of course, a lecherous orderly makes things difficult for Kelly and her stay ends up being prolonged and not even her fiancee believes her cries for help. Diane Hull who played Kelly, manages to convey vulnerability and strength at the same time. The only people she can trust are the fellow patients on the ward who help her with a couple of escape attempts. The supporting cast is a who's who of character actors including a younger Robert Englund a.k.a. "Freddy Krueger" as one of the patients. One stand out performance is Sharon Farrell as Melanie, a truly broken woman who may have been made worse by her stay on the fifth floor and trapped there. Looking like Farrah Fawcett, she definitely conveyed the manic madness and becomes an unlikely ally of Kelly. Bo Hopkins, as the abusive orderly, is chilling and disturbing as the villain. The movie was made in the late 1970s and this is very noticeable with the CHIPS like background music and 3 disco dance numbers. Although a bit contrived at moments and an ending that ends abruptly, the film held it's own on it's B-Movie budget and I would go as far as to say that I liked it better than the similarly themed, "Girl Interrupted" which also was based on a true story. Nothing more is made of the true story that this film was based on or when it happened. I have heard of a similar film about an undercover reporter who poses as a mental patient and this is only known to one psychiatrist who unfortunately dies and every time the reporter attempts to tell the staff they give him more tranquilizers. It seems unlikely that this could happen but at the same time it is plausible under certain extreme circumstances where people are going to assume that you are paranoid. Very scary thought indeed.

Its obvious that some big wigs, or maybe small wigs, decided that because One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest was popular and that Disco was still flapping its huge collars and flares on the dancefloor, combining the two would be a hit. Well it wasn't.

I saw that because this only ended up on my radar after watching old Siskel and Ebert reviews, watching old trailers and somehow this entered my consciousness. The next day it pops up on Talking Pictures TV, so it would have been rude not to... The story is about a disco dancing student who ends up ingesting some drug which ends up with her being sectioned. The rest of the movie is her trying to prove her sanity, while being abused by various members of staff. This is many peoples idea of hell. And what I can tell you is that this is based on fact. A bunch of psychologists decided to do an experiment by pretending to be crazy in order to get sectioned. They were and nobody believed their stories about being psychologists. You can look this up.

So with a solid premise and with psychiatric input to the film, its strange that "the crazies" act pretty normal. I suppose real looking mental health patients aren't for show. What is surprising is the quality of the cast. There are so many faces that went on to be so well known in the following decade its a wonder this isn't more widely known.

The film does work in terms of engagement however and the story is well paced and executed. It obviously has some similarities to women in prison movies, but it doesn't really have the same sleaze or nudity. It is basically a disco-melodrama version of Cuckoos nest, without the same emotional punch. Although it does have a satisfying conclusion.