Don't Look in the Basement (1973) Horror Asylum

Don't Look in the Basement (1973) - aka The Forgotten, Director S.F. Brownrigg takes a script written by Tim Pope and Thomas Pope and brings sort of on the nose story to the screen, but overall it lacks movement and the tension needed to make it a really good film. It is a story about a young psychiatric nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) arriving at her new job at Stevens Sanitarium. The dramatic irony is that Dr. Stevens (Michael Harvey) the man that has hired her, has been killed by one of the patients "the Judge" (Gene Ross) and another patient Geraldine Master (Annabelle Weenick) is posing as the new head of the sanitarium. Okay before you start giving me shit for spoiling the plot, stop. The premise is known to the audience right from the beginning of the film. Not only that the writers and director do very little to hide the subterfuge from the viewers. It really is the major flaw of the film that everything about the secret is not hidden in anyway. We know from the start and watch as Charlotte eventually figures it out.
  There is some really fine acting in this one, particularly co-lead Weenick who had a long career (1961-98) before her death in 2003 at the age of 78. She carries a lot of the emotion in the film as the control freak with the secret she does not want Charlotte to know. When the rest of the patients start unwinding and her position becomes threatened she does the only thing a mentally ill control freak can do and starts killing them off. Other character well played are Sam (Bill McGhee) who plays a lobotomized man child, and the Judge (Ross) playing an uptight rules obsessed patient.  The rest of the cast play there stereotypes, Harriot (Camilla Carr) obsessing over a doll like it was her baby. She also appeared in the 2015 Don't Look in the Basement 2. That film was directed by son of SF Brownrigg, Anthony  and uses several of the original locations.  Danny (Jessie Kirby) playing something of a screechy adult 11 yr old trickster. Jennifer a withdrawn moper with a dangerous side. Stg. Jaffee (Hugh Feagin) war veteran with a bad case of PTSD, Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) an old lady with dementia, and Allyson(Betty Chandler) a sex and relationship obsessed woman looking to have a man "love" her, all the time and with borderline tendencies that keep that from happening. All are okay and make a hodgepodge of stereotypes that play off each other to create situation that Charlotte has to deal with. Gene Ross also had a long career and was in some notable films like Halloween 4 : The Return of Michael Myers and David Lynch's Lost Highway.
  Charlotte is slow on the uptake and can't see through the thin veal of sanity Masters is projecting which sets up a classic third act when all the hidden bodies are found and the true nature of the situation she is in is revealed. Even though she is technically the final girl she has very little agency in discovering the truth. Instead of being proactive and figuring out the weaknesses in the reality being presented to her she just goes along trying to deal with the situations that working with the mentally ill present. In the end it is really the patients inability to keep a secret more than anything Charlotte does that exposes the charade. Even then in a panic she tries to flee from the house, and in not finding an unlocked door ends up trapped in the basement. It is only Sam's decision to help her that she survives. We are left with her standing outside in the rain while the patients kill each other inside.Needless to say this is not really getting a recommendation on this blog. Although it is part of the early seventies horror I like it just doesn't have enough to it for me to give it a thumb's up.

Shutter Island (2010) Thriller

Shutter Island (2010) - Spoiler Alert! Yeah all over this blog entry! Shutter Island is the new thriller from director Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley. It is set in 1954 and DiCaprio's character Federal Marshall Teddy Daniels arrives at an asylum for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of a patient. They enter with really too loud and disorienting music that had the audience covering thier ears and questioning the decision making of Scorsese early on in this film. Teddy his new partner they begin an investigation that does not end where the viewer would first think. As they work there way through their interviews of staff and patients it is clear that the agents are not in on the full story. It becomes more and more clear to the audience that Teddy is not the most solidly put together agent in the world. The hints are not subtle in this film and questioning the writing as too on the nose in some scenes seems reasonable, but it is a complicated enough plot and the acting is decent. Choices in the writing and directing just did not work real well. The reoccurring hallucination of Dolores Chanal (Michelle Williams) as Teddy's wife was probably the best of the choices. Her reveals were subtle and then she become more important in the end. We become aware as the story unfolds that Teddy may be a patient, which seemed a bit obvious in the previews without ever seeing the movie. His final realization comes when he confronts Kingsley's Dr. Cawley and learns that Cawley is trying this one final ruse to let Teddy play out his agent fantasy and come to terms with his real life tragedy. Again in a really not needed scene after learning in real life that Teddy's wife had killed his children and then Teddy had killed her, we are subject to watching the melodramatic scene. It did not really seem necessary other than a big time actor like DiCaprio was not going to pass up the chance to flex his acting muscles. So everyone in the asylum were putting on this elaborate play to break this one, supposedly the most violent person out of his Marshall Teddy fantasy and hopefully avoid having to lobotomize him. It seems to work to, but the big point is still to come. After the confrontation will Teddy slide back into that character the day after the confrontation? Can he live with his guilt and pain and change his life?
This was a decent movie, it was unfortunate that advertising has to give so much away in order to attract an audience. The director makes some questionable decisions that pull you out of the movie instead of enhancing it and the writer (Laeta Kalogridis) was not shifty enough to "not give away" the plot before its time. Still the acting was good and it was an interesting and engaging film. After listening to the writer talk to creative screen writer it is obvious the things I picked out were intentional decisions, but I still dont think they worked out.
Rating (6.3)

Creative screenwriting interview with Laeta Kalogridis