Asylum of Satan (1972)

Lucina Martin (Carla Borelli) finds herself very suddenly and unexpectedly confined in the titular asylum. There’s something very wrong indeed with the place, even by the standards of early 70s psychiatry. Inmates - calling them patients does not seem fitting – are treated with highly curious methods; a group of people in hooded white bathrobes pop up repeatedly; and inmates seem to disappear without anyone minding. Well, as the audience soon enough learns, these people are actually murdered in various bizarre ways. The place’s interior regularly shifts to something rather more rundown, and the medical professionals working here are generally weird and/or creepy, while the big boss, one Dr Specter (Charles Kissinger) dresses like a stage magician without his hat.

While Lucina becomes increasingly bewildered and panicked in her attempts to get out or at least make contact with the outside world, we regularly pop in with her Porsche-driving fiancé Chris (Nick Jolley). This owner of various turtlenecks and some of the most 70s pants imaginable is simply flabbergasted how his beloved ended up where she did after he was away for just a week or so. Until he acquires a half-decomposed head, he’s pretty terrible at convincing the police of there being any problem whatsoever, though.

Which, to be fair, could have something to do with his habit of not actually telling the main cop (Louis Bandy) the not inconsiderable number of clues pointing at something criminal going on and instead telling the guy about his angry feelings. It would be a short film otherwise.

Chris’s inability to remember pertinent facts from a scene ago that would actually help his case in the next is rather typical of the loose idea of logic and narrative connective tissue William Girdler’s debut Asylum of Satan (shot and produced in Girdler’s native Louisville, Kentucky) demonstrates, things the director never really got to grips with in his short life and career. If you’re looking for even a smidgen of sense, it’s best to take your business as a viewer elsewhere.

Because this is a film made by a young guy with little experience, using whatever local talent he could get his hands on in Kentucky, there are also copious technical flaws to get through, like the too often nailed on camera, editing that wavers between crude and effective, acting that’s all over the place (though Borelli is as pleasantly naturalistic as anyone could get in this sort of thing), or simply the terrible quality of the rubber insects and related effects. Well, of most of the effects, really, for Satan will turn out to look perfectly adorable, and some of the creature and sort of gore design is certainly imaginative, if not effective.

Of course, all of these flaws, as well as the leaden pacing of the whole affair, are pretty much what you expect going into a local production of this level; those of us who know what they are doing to themselves when inflicting these things upon ourselves just hope for something clever, something energetic, or something plain bizarre to make up for the technical flaws, or in fact believe that all of these fun things can often be enabled exactly by these technical flaws.

And wouldn’t you know it? There’s actually quite a bit to like here when you get through the film’s jungle of technical problems. There’s the aforementioned Satan taking part in a very redly lit attempt at a big sacrificial ceremony in the finale, which is pretty great, and even better when it is repeatedly intercut with the same shot of police cars driving to the rescue to dramatic 70s cop show music. Particularly once it turns out that our rescuers are not going to do much rescuing, because Satan has become somewhat disappointed in Specter for reasons nobody appears to be able to make out on the audio track and which the film certainly didn’t suggest before, making this set-up as bizarre as it is funny.

On a more serious level, some of the shifts between the cleaner interior of the hospital and its more dilapidated true self are rather effectively shot and edited – particularly Lucina’s first encounter of the phenomenon is genuinely creepy and bewildering. Nobody would probably call the murder scenes genuinely creepy, but they are so strange and illogical they seem to be aiming for the same kind of irrational undergrowth you find in the best Lucio Fulci films, though most probably end up so by sheer chance rather than directorial fiat.

And if there’s one thing I really like in my very cheap horror movies, it’s accidental strangeness that suggests the qualities of dreams, nightmares and the effects of apple pie gone bad, so Asylum of Satan turns out to be one of Girdler’s films I genuinely enjoyed, even though it’s not as incredible as Day of the Animals.