"Dark Sanity" (also released as "Straight Jacket") follows recovering alcoholic Karen Nichols, who moves into a house in Los Angeles with her husband where a brutal axe murder occurred. Karen, already prone to psychic events, begins to experience a number of disturbing visions.
This little-seen production is about as obscure as obscure can get; virtually nothing is known about anyone involved with it, and all the names associated with it have fallen into complete anonymity other than that of Aldo Ray, who stars as a quirky retired cop who also shares a psychic connection to the protagonist's home. To put it plainly, there is not much about this film that makes sense. Karen's visions ostensibly have a greater meaning, though the house and Ray's character's connection to the murder victim is sketchily drawn to say the least. Karen's alcoholism is played to the hilt only to generate conflict between her and her gruff husband, but the roots of her problems remain unclear. The psychic and premonitory elements are even stranger and come across as arbitrary features that were shoehorned into the screenplay.
From a narrative standpoint, it seems obvious that the filmmakers behind "Dark Sanity" either ran out of money or ideas (or perhaps both), as the film feels like a slipshod effort that was patched together to make a semi-cohesive final product. That being said, all of the relative strangeness that abounds in the film really makes it a treat for anyone who enjoys bad (and surreal) B-horror movies. It is similar in tone to something like "Don't Go Near the Park" in that, despite having a dark subject matter, it aesthetically resembles a family-oriented made-for-TV movie of the era, boasting stark '70s period sets, simplistic camerawork, and a stock musical score that could have just as well been featured in an episode of "The Brady Bunch."
The gaudy late '70s/early '80s Southern California atmosphere lends the film a nice nostalgic flair, and, while I wouldn't say it is an overall well-acted film, there are actually some solid performances here, particularly from Chuck Jamison, who plays Karen's boorish husband. Kory Adams, who portrays the tortured Karen, also offers some realistic moments in a performance that is otherwise often shaky. The experienced Aldo Ray (at this stage in his career, a drunk himself) is actually worse than both, spitting his dialogue out and stumbling over lines.
The film culminates with a giallo-esque attack sequence revealing the black-clad axe killer, in what is one of the most absurd (and abrupt) chase sequences in horror history--it's all good, though, because the truth is, "Dark Sanity" is not much of a horror movie anyway. If anything, it's a psychological chamber drama with some murder mystery thrown in (and some brainscrambling psychic powers). While it is on many levels a veritably bad film, I did find it extremely entertaining and weirdly fascinating. It is one of those obscure genre efforts whose production history is likely more interesting than the film itself. Unfortunately, at least as of the writing of this review, nobody involved with it has come forward, and few people have even seen it; it was released direct-to-video, receiving scant distribution and only occasional TV airings throughout the 1980s. It may one of those instances of films that are truly "lost to history." 7/10.
