Don't Look in the Basement

Considering budget, time and talent put into making this movie, it actually isn't so bad, but don't go into it expecting much. It's a work of passion and is probably only interesting to fans of the horror movie genre who aren't picky about their poison. Everybody rest has absolutely nothing to look forward to from this movie. I give it 6/10 and recommend it to fellow hardcore horror movie fans. The rest, avoid it...

I have to admit that my preference is for psychological horror where the imagination is left to roam. Thus I thought the lead-up to the unfortunate bloodbath was both interesting and different. Each of the asylum patients in the lead-up is given a chance to demonstrate his or her particular disorder— the compulsive soldier, the nympho hungering for love, the obsessive mother with her doll baby, the partially lobotomized black man, et al-- and except for the judge (Ross) none seems particularly homicidal. And, of course, there's the power-crazed "doctor" (Weenick). Then, into this loony bin arrives poor drop-in nurse Charlotte (Holotik) not realizing that a loony is in charge.

This sets up an interesting and fairly suspenseful storyline since we can't be sure where the plot is headed since the murder, mayhem and gore so far is at a minimum. Plus the acting is pretty darn good—Weenick & Holotik, especially. (And after 60-years of movies, I've never seen a cast with more un-Hollywoodized names!)

Now, in my view, had the creators exercised more imagination, they could have come up with a less hackneyed climax than the gore-fest we're subjected to. Of course, the blood-letting may satisfy many horror fans, but to me, it betrays the subtler possibilities posed in the lead-up. For example, why not have the real doctor murdered by one of the patients, and then try to figure out which of the patients is actually homicidal. A sort of loony-bin whodunit.

Anyway, the film is mostly well-crafted for a cheap-jack production. Still, I wish IMDb provided more background info, since what does appear looks like a wholly Texas production with a local cast. To me that would amount to quite an achievement, regardless of budget or fall off in imagination.

Some can call it cheap, others can call it stupid and some may even call it pointless, but these are all adjectives once attributed to classics such as Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left. As the latter was also distributed by Hallmark, they obliged to reproduced the same tag line here - `To avoid fainting keep repeating: ‘It's only a movie…only a movie…only a movie'.'

Don't Look in the Basement tells the story of Charlotte Beale (heartstoppingly gorgeous Rosie Holotik and Playboy covergirl, April, 1972), a young nurse whose arrival at her new position coincides with a dramatic change within the Stephen's Sanatarium for the mentally insane. The unusual treatment here involves allowing patients to roam free around the hospital, allowing them to express their repressed inhibitions to cure their madness. The patients are a truly frightening gathering. One girl shuffles around with a doll she believes is her baby and if you offend her you'll die; A chap believes himself to be a judge, constantly preaching courtroom jargon; A nymphomaniac wanting love from anyone who lunges at all men; An ex-Vietnam vet watches over the premises, assuring nobody escapes…etc. Soon, poor Charlotte realizes that all is not as it should be and '...a sense of unease creeps over her...' Will she solve the mystery of the Sanitarium before she too is driven insane?

If you allow yourself to get with the flow of this low budget horror film, then you might even see the twist in the tail. I won't spoil it for you here

S.F. Brownrigg is surely one of the most overlooked directors in the slasher genre with Basement being his masterwork. The plot concerns a young nurse (Playboy covergirl Rosie Holotik) who takes a job at a secluded mental hospital. Upon her arrival, it transpires that her employer has been killed by one of the patients and the place is now being run by strict disciplinarian, Dr Masters. Make no mistake, this is a horribly under-staffed operation. The lunatics truly are taking over the asylum and you really have to feel for the young nurse. Tough first gig. The basement figures only very briefly and towards the end of film. It is, in fact, the safest place in the house because the rest of the place is pure madness. I can only assume that Don't Look in the Basement was perhaps an afterthought as a title, possibly forced on the film by the backers to make it sound more scary as the title card appears to have been dropped in arbitrarily and does not match the other titles. Scenes worth watching for are the Judge attacking the doctor with an axe and a broken rubber knife in the final bloodbath. Forget One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. This is the stuff.

DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT may be an ordinary-looking exploitational grindhouse movie, but it's actually worth a look for fans of cult cinema. It's entirely cheap with a scuzzy look, but it's also actually a pretty interesting look at mental illness and it doesn't just rely on gore shocks and axe murders to make it work. It has more plot than that, including a fine ending which is something of a mini-classic.

The setting is a cheap, run-down old asylum populated by a group of distinctive characters: there's a the girl who cradles a doll and thinks of it as her child, the former judge who goes around dispensing law, alongside a handful of sympathetic characters. Soon enough a series of gore murders are taking place, and it's up to the pretty young heroine to solve the crimes before she herself becomes the next victim. Director S. F. Brownrigg gets the most out of a clearly non-existent budget, and the film becomes most impressive at the Grand Guignol-style climax, which has something of FREAKS about it.