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A Movie A Day: MADHOUSE (1981) Most people’s nightmares end when they wake up. Mine begin.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the newest October special horror run of A Movie A Day!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf, recorded on the home DVR or streamed via Instant Netflix and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my usual A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day. At the end of each standard AMAD I’m going to include a recommendation of a genre film that is either one of my personal favorites or too good of a double feature with the AMAD title to pass up a mention.]
The opening credits of MADHOUSE (aka THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL) play over a long shot of two identical girls standing in blackness. The one standing is rocking the other back and forth in a rocking chair as an eerie version of Rock A Bye Baby plays on the soundtrack.
As the credits play the camera moves closer and closer to these two girls until everything reaches a crescendo and the one standing raises what looks like a sharp rock and bashes the other girl’s face in.
“This movie’s right up my alley,” I thought. And at first it was. Great opening credits sequence and then meet our lead played by Trish Everly who is a teacher at a school for deaf kids. “This just keeps getting better and better,” I thought. What a great place to set a slasher movie, at a school for deaf kids. There are so many possibilities.
Then the rest of the movie happens and my excitement level fell.
First of all, Trish Everly isn’t a very good actress, so building the movie on her performance wasn’t exactly a solid foundation. She plays a woman tormented by the memory of her tormenting little sister, who now resides in an insane asylum. Apparently Everly’s character, Julia, has childhood memories of her cruel sister displaying the uncanny ability to control animals. Not exactly a common attribute amongst little girls, even if they’re evil. I don’t remember Patty McCormack wielding neighborhood dogs in THE BAD SEED.
All these years later the committed sister’s evil starts showing on her face as disease contorts her features and causes lesions on her skin.
Of course sis breaks out of the nuthatch and after talking about how afraid Everly is of her sister she’s surprisingly unaffected by this news. When she first hears it there’s fear, but then the next scene it’s like she forgets her crazy, fucked-up looking beastmaster twin sister who wants to do nothing but hurt the sane sis is out on the loose.
Director and co-writer Ovidio G. Assonitis (TENTACLES, BEYOND THE DOOR) gives us a few fun characters, like a kind of creepy father-figure priest (Dennis Robertson), a completely over the top southern belle landlord (Edith Ivey) and a cantankerous borderline stereotype Asian handyman (Jerry Fujikawa) all are fun to watch, but with one major exception they’re all there for one scene before it’s time to die.
Julia’s birthday is coming up and her crazy sister just wants to prepare her a nice party full of dead people, so she has her psychicly-linked rottweiler kill all of Julia’s friends.
When the crazy sister, Mary, first shows up killing people I thought the movie was picking back up again, but unfortunately after poor Mr. Fujikawa’s stabbing the movie just gets muddled. Plot threads don’t ever go anywhere, hints are dropped that I guess are supposed to be red herrings, but the way they’re executed feels more like half-thoughts littering an ill-conceived feature film.
Then the final act really had me itching to hand over my full interest once more, but the chaotic plotting was still in full swing. Mary apparently wasn’t working alone, but she could definitely control animals… However her accomplice is clearly the one in charge, but has no real power other than liking “the game” of stalking someone with a knife. I’m still confused.
Much like yesterday’s WOLFEN the early ‘80s photography scratches a deep nostalgia for me. I love the purple animorphic lens flares and the look of the film stock of this era. I guess because I grew up watching movies of this era this is what real films look like to me. If this exact same movie was made at a comparable budget today I’d probably be less “meh” and more “this sucks” just because it’d be done with actors just as shitty, but more underwear-model pretty and shot on some minor HD camera, overlit and plain as can be.
Final Thoughts: I suppose the bottom line is that I thought the movie was okay when weighing in what worked and what didn’t. I’m getting a little tired of movies that kill off all their interesting characters straight away, leaving us only to stick with the dull and/or bad actors. The gore is fine, the creepy rotty is good and I liked the photography, but lord is there a messy script and some horrid acting going on here.
Considering the end of this movie takes place at a corpse-filled birthday party I figured I’d go to another ‘80s slasher with a very, very similar finale for the double feature recommendation.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME just felt right, even though I could probably pull a dozen horror movies that feature the “corpse party” scene, most of them rip-offs of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE.
Now, while I really dig HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME I have to say that it isn’t my favorite fun slasher of this era. For pure fun I’d go with SLEEPAWAY CAMP or SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, but HBTM works on a lot of levels.
For starters, the movie almost has an Italian horror feel to it, like it was ghost-directed by Dario Argento. The kills are all super inventive… bloody and fun. I love the weightlifting kill the best probably, although the poster image shish kabob kill and the scarf-in-the-motorcycle-wheel kill (later ripped off in PET SEMATARY 2) are close runner-ups.
I find the main character, a tortured student suffering with amnesia after a car accident that killed her mother, a bit on the annoying side. I don’t completely blame actress Melissa Sue Anderson completely for feeling that way, but her screaming (which happens a lot) wasn’t the fun horror screaming, but grating on the ears-ish after a while if you know what I mean.
Much like MADHOUSE there are a lot of interesting side characters, mostly the main group of students comprised of rebelling richie richers. My favorite is Jack Blum as the creepy tall and skinny guy that always carries a mouse in his pocket and makes horror sculptures in his spare time.
The plot of the flick centers on Anderson trying to remember what happened the night of her mother’s death. She’s coached by Glenn Ford playing a psychiatrist. It’s kind of a shock to see someone as prestigious as Glenn Ford in a movie as dirty and exploitative as this, but he does class things up a bit.
Speaking of classy, this film is directed by J. Lee Thompson who was kind of a badass in the ‘60s, directing such great films as CAPE FEAR and THE GUNS OF NAVARONE. It’s more than a little weird to see his career path, working with such high class actors on big studio projects to doing a minor studio slasher and a run of on-the-cheap Charles Bronson actioneers (10 to Midnight, Murphy’s Law, Death Wish 4).
I’ve never seen this film big, but I’ve read that the soundtrack on the DVD was changed by the studio, the original score removed and replaced with the odd dance music. I did notice that in the movie, but I’ve never been able to compare the two.
A little research shows that the Amazon VOD version has the original score ($2.99) and so does the iTunes VOD (search the iTunes store… $2.99 to rent and $9.99 to own).
I haven’t shelled out the bucks myself (I mean, I already bought the DVD), so I can’t 100% vouch for the original score being on the VOD versions, but that’s what I read in the horror forums.
At any rate Happy Birthday To Me isn’t exactly the most famous slasher of the early ‘80s, but it’s definitely a good one that goes to some crazy places. The birthday finale is shockingly similar to MADHOUSE, but goes even crazier.
Here are the next week’s worth of AMAD titles:
Sunday, October 18th: THE HOUSE WITH THE LAUGHING WINDOWS (1976)
Monday, October 19th: THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1945)
Tuesday, October 20th: DEMON SEED (1977)
Wednesday, October 21th: STAGEFRIGHT (1987)
Thursday, October 22th: DEAD OF NIGHT (1977)
Friday, October 23th: THE SERPENT’S EGG (1978)
Saturday, October 24th: THE SWARM (1978)
Moving to a real deal giallo tomorrow in the awesomely titled Italian thriller THE HOUSE WITH THE LAUGHING WINDOWS. See you folks then for that one!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
AMAD Halloween Spectacular 2009:
October 1st: Nothing But The Night (& The Wicker Man)
October 2nd: Beware! Children At Play (& The Devil Times Five)
October 3rd: Cameron’s Closet (& Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)
October 4th: Afraid of the Dark (& The Lady In White)
October 5th: The Pit (& The Gate)
October 6th: Brain Damage (& Basket Case)
October 7th: Brain Dead (& Braindead, aka Dead Alive)
October 8th: Visiting Hours (& Dressed To Kill)
October 9th: Macabre (& The Beyond)
October 10th: Private Parts (& Eating Raoul)
October 11th: Road Games (& Duel)
October 12th: Dead End Drive-In (& Repo Man)
October 13th: Psychic Killer (& Alone In The Dark)
October 14th: The Body Snatcher (& Son of Frankenstein)
October 15th: The Leopard Man (& The Ghost and The Darkness)
October 16th: Wolfen (& Cujo)
Click here for the full 215 movie run of A Movie A Day!
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So is the one in Paranormal Activity! HAha...but seriously. I've never seen MADHOUSE.
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Oct 18, 2009 5:31:15 AM CDT
I like the John Larroquette and Kirsti Alley Version of Madhouse
by judaspriestly
A much better movie IMHO!
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COMPANY....!!!!!
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and i think the swarm created the army of bugs vs humanity horror sub-genre during the era it got released.I remember a lot of these kind of movies with ants,spiders,bees,frogs,snakes,bats etc.But i think the best one was with Heston vs the ants,i dont remember its title but i have it.
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Are they hi-def? Standard def? Def Leppard fans? Def Jam? What?
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Was it run by Russell Simmons?
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...during the day with bored kids?Or at night with bored rednecks and the occasional brat up past his bedtime?That is the question...
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... poo! Why the WTWTA bash? Have you seen it? It's friggin' awesome. Just living up to your handle? Flinging shit for the sake of Flicking-poo? Obsessed with things scatalogical? Just curious as your posting style often seems to consist of little more than farting and running.
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...I can't wait to see WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE...you claim to be familiar with my posting style...where have you been? I've been a shamelessly sentimental supporter.What I am curmudgeonly about are the manners of the theater going public in Pissburgh New Jersey.No, you know what? It's not just their manners...it's the whole person. They ruin every movie and they're a stench unto heaven....I want to see WTWTA so badly though that I'm putting on my hip-waders and going for it. If I'm wrong and for once the locals behave I will post a retraction right here later tonight.
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Melissa Sue Anderson in a slasher flick?! Wasn't she Laura's big sister, Mary, in Little House on the Prairie? I can't be the only person on AICN who watched the show. Okay, maybe I am...
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...you're the same person who slandered me in a Gilliam/TIDELAND talkback. You're wrong on the issues. You are wrong about flicking, you are wrong about poo, and you're wrong for America.You're on notice.
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... just starved for attention like the rest of the trolls. Totally misinterpreted that post. I do that. My brain doesn't work quite right a good deal of the time. Too poor to get drunk.
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Oct 18, 2009 10:46:33 AM CDT
OTHER theater-goers are the reason I quit going to the movies
by scarywaitress
It's just no fun when everything is tinged red because the whole time, you're thinking about turning around, ripping that a-hole's cellphone out of his hand, and explaining to him that JUST BECAUSE HE'S SPEAKING SPANISH DOESN'T MEAN WE CAN'T HEAR HIM, or tearing that other guy's arm off for talking and mocking every scene, or murdering that woman three rows back for asking, "What did he say? Why did he do that? I don't get it!" every five minutes...
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...that you aren't keeping up with all of my latest posts and opinions.Would you like to subscribe to our quarterly newsletter? It comes with an official and free genuine aluminum poo-flicker and will keep you up to date on all the latest poo and flicking related news.Latex gloves not included.
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I remember you now, you're one-o-them widely rumoured but rarely encountered "nice" "rational" talbackers. Carry on.
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...that goes a long way. A TIDELAND lover would have to deliberately shit in my Captain Crunch to really piss me off.
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Quint, I once again urge you to check out Zeder, a much better Pupi Avati film with one of the best horror film openings ever. It also has a few of the same character actors as HWTLW. The movie doesn't even come close to sustaining the opening level of awesome past the first five minutes, but even still it works better as a sleazy Italian WTF fest than HWTLW.
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But I totally disagree with detractors. It's one of the bravest pieces of film making in the history of cinema. Gilliam has a legacy of being forced to compromise his intent by studios. Tideland does not compromise. It is riveting, powerful, and unapologetic. The rarest of films in these days of crappy romcoms and soul-less blockbusters featuring dialogue aimed at 6th grade reading levels.
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Be sure to check out "A Serious Man". (if you're into the Coen bros, some perfectly reasonable people aren't, kind of a deal breaker for close friendships though) if you haven't already: FANTASTIC. Amazing visual metaphor non-resolving ending that will drive some people nuts.
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Normally "brave" is a ridiculous appellation for a moviemaker; it's used to describe actresses who (shock) show breasts or go without makeup, or actors who pretend to be retarded.
None of that is brave... but Tideland took courage to make. And, like you, I totally understand people not liking it. -
...WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE brought out the best in them...or maybe just the best of them. Except for a few distant little kids who had no business being there the theater was mostly quiet. Even silent and churchlike at the important moments and towards the end.Oh, and great movie.
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...with The Swarm. The DVD version is apparently 40(!) minutes longer than the theatrical cut, and it's at least an hour too long as a result. Incredibly boring with only brief moments of B(ee)-movie entertainment.
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... in hijacking Quint's AMAD TB! This is now a WTWTA/Tideland thread. Lol.
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Aside from literal infants (I will never understand what parents think drooling babies under the age of 1 yr will get out of being taken to a movie), none of the kids in the theater at my screening of WTWTA appeared bored or restless in the least. In fact, I've never seen an auditorium full of under-12s so completely quiet and mesmerized by a kid's movie. Meanwhile, every time I've been somehow trapped into seeing a "conventional" kid flick (like the many featured in trailers before this one), I've never NOT seen kids running around in the aisles, bored out of their wits. I'm convinced that we don't give chilluns enough credit -- they know instinctively when they're having dumb, recycled shit shoveled at them, versus something that takes children seriously and respects them, and they respond accordingly.
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... why most adults think you havw to talk down to most kids has always escaped my comprehension. "they know instinctively when they're having dumb, recycled shit shoveled at them" indeed. Well said.
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In the way that only freaky 70s sci-fi can be. Yes, cheesy dialog, yes, bizarre scenarios, yes, the ending is completely whack. But the practical effects are fun--especially the weird spinning geometric metal thing--and who can beat Julie Christie being sexually exploited by her self-aware smart house.
It's a weird, peculiarly 70s classic. -
DEMON SEED is an awesome, awesome movie, both in its clinical, patient creepiness, and that fucked up concept alone. Dean Koontz has never bettered this novel (though COLD FIRE would make a fantastic movie, inevery sense of the word).
And I showed it to Mrs-Spud-To-Be, who declared DEMON SEED one of the creepiest get-under-your-skin-and-give-you-shivers movies she'd ever seen. This is a couple of weeks after I showed her PHASE IV, which is just flat-out fucking freaky.
I love 70s horror. It confuses you and freaks you out at the same time... -
Have you seen PHASE IV? That shit is fucked up...
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Always freaked me out as a kid. Maybe some day I'll actually get round to watching that flick...
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"Got your name on it. Guess it's your cocaine meng!"
"I got a thin fetus!"
"You try to come in here, and I'll sell you to bedouins!"
"How would you murder someone....if you have a problem Los Angeles....ask someone else you know, I don't know what anymore..."
"Now let's play cuisinart!"
"Honey what's for dinner?" "Just squab again."
MADHOUSE WITH LAROQUETTE AND ALLEY FTMFW!!! -
A fun movie and very much like an Italian horror movie like you said. Good stuff. I only wish the studios hadn't cut the gore so much. It is a compliment to the movie though that even with the lack of gore it is still a fun movie.
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Wow, what a messed up, mvie it is.
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