Don't Look in the Basement

source: Don't Look in the Basement

The Forgotten (AKA: Don't Look In The Basement) is a very cheaply made and very old looking horror movie. The story is very slow and never really reaches anything worth getting excited about. The patients at the asylum are embarrassingly funny especially Sam and the old woman who always quotes an old saying to everyone. (Look out for the bit when she gets close to the camera, tell me you can watch without laughing!). Now the gore is very poor looking, with the blood looking pink in many scenes so it doesn't really deserve its place on the video nasties list!. Overall if you aren't looking for a fantastic horror film and have some time to spare then it's worth a watch.

That was the tag line used to sell this movie back in 1973. It played at mostly drive-ins along with "Last House on the Left" and "The House That Vanished". This triple feature was so incredibly popular it kept playing at drive-ins into the mid 80s! Never saw "House That Vanished" but "Last House..." was sadistic trash. This is boring trash! A "horror" film about inmates at a sanitarium who are getting a little out of control. Young, beautiful nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) comes to work there. She finds a new administrator under control--Dr. Masters (Annabelle Weenick). The former one had been killed by one of his patients. But things are fine now...or are they? There is a plot twist in this which you'll probably see coming from a mile away--but I still won't reveal it. This has a nice murder at the beginning and turns into an all out bloodbath at the end---but everything in the middle is dull! It just has a bunch of horrible bad actors portraying mental patients--and very badly too. Padded endlessly with repititous scenes, pointless dialogues, horribly unfunny "humor" and some really gratuitous nudity. Basically a 30 minute feature dragged out to 90 minutes. There is some good acting by Holotik and Weenick and also Betty Chandler as Allyson--but that's about it. ALMOST worth seeing for the incredible gore at the end...ALMOST. For drive-in cultists only. Otherwise avoid.

There's not much I can add to the positive reviews of the film, other than I agree completely - this weird little movie has a unique atmosphere all its own. Brownrigg creates a very effective atmosphere of obsessive madness; the movie breathes down your neck! It's amazing that a film so well-lit and full of bright colors can be so unsettling. As someone mentioned, the film looks like a retitle because there's a strange title card inserted, but I have seen a televised version of the film that had the original titles superimposed on-screen - they were orange and read "Don't Look In The Basement" - with quote marks around them, just like that. Why they were taken out and replaced by that garish title card is a mystery to me, but the originals did exist. Another interesting note: I read in an old horror magazine that during the climactic massacre, Brownrigg wanted to make things ultra-gory and so he used a lot of slaughterhouse entrails (sheep, I think), and they were kept in a bag with fake blood. Well, when it came time to film that scene, it was hot in the room, and the entrails had begun to rot, so when the actors tore the bag open, they all nearly vomited at the stench! If you look really closely around the edges of the frame, you can get little glimpses of some entrail... but, to my knowledge, they aren't graphically shown in any prints. In any case, check this movie out... it proves that a low budget can be made up for with a lot of imagination. There's no other film like this... I also recommend Brownrigg's other movies.

Like the review before me, people were a little too critical on this film. Delivered very well with a great cast. My friend and I watched it a few days ago and he guessed the plot early in the film, and said "It would be awesome if this happened" Which it did, so it was really cool- It has a good story and twists and keeps you guessing. Sometimes it's a bit humorous, but the setting and mood was delivered well. This is a good film to watch with some buddies or a special someone. It will keep you interested until the very end, and will give you that good IL' Horror feeling. If you're looking for a pretty gory, weird movie- Don't look in the Basement is definitely it.

This movie was pretty bad. First of all, I have to say, the title has really nothing to do with the actual movie. No one ever says, `Don't look in the basement.' The basement isn't even referred to or gone into until an hour and 20 minutes into the movie. And even then, the basement segment is only about a minute long. The acting was pretty horrendous. Although there were a few interesting characters, it was more silly than frightening. It reminded me of a cross between `Spider Baby' and `Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' `Spider Baby' because of all the weird characters, `TCM' because of all the screaming. Both of those flicks beat this one by a mile. The music was kind of weird, but not in a good way. It sounded as if it was pulled off of re-runs of `The Prisoner.' And maybe it was just my DVD, but there was an annoying trail coming off of things when they moved that made the movie almost painful to watch. As for the story, like I said, there were some interesting characters but the basic plot seemed to be written by some sort of crazy person that should've been in the film. Very rarely did it seem to be going in any coherent direction and when the story finally got around to making some sort of sense, it was very predictable. `Don't Look in the Basement' is a painful movie to watch with no real rewards afterwards. I wouldn't recommend it.

"Don't Look in the Basement" is a very, very cheaply made film. Nothing about it seems very professional….yet, oddly, the film is quite entertaining. Is it really good? Nah—but very entertaining providing you are the type person who can appreciate such an odd film! This movie is set in some sort of sanitarium for the mentally ill—the very, very, VERY mentally ill. No attempt is made to make these folks seem real and it has about the same level of insensitivity you'd find in "Birth of a Nation". I have worked in a psychiatric hospital many years ago, and it was NOTHING like this place! It's pretty obvious they did not film it in a real hospital and just looks like an old house was used. And, for the parts, the 'patients' were told to act very stereotypically insane—like you might expect folks to do on "Whose Line is it Anyway?"—subtle, it ain't! When the doctor (whose methods seem no saner than his patients) is killed by one of the patients, another doctor takes his place. Soon, a new nurse arrives—and she's shocked at how ineffective and stupid the treatment is for the patients. Eventually, more folks start dying and only then do you learn some very interesting secrets. I'd say more, but I really don't want to spoil the suspense. This engaging film looks like if you were to remake "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and had it rewritten by an actively psychotic individual! It's bloody, it's scary and, what I really like is that you really have no idea who, if anyone, is sane in this film! It's one of those ultra-low budget films with no-name casts that manages to work in spite of all the many strikes against it! Clever, strange and probably not for all tastes! If you like "Carnival of Souls", "Night of the Living Dead" (the original one) or "Spider Baby", then this film is for you!

I personally have a soft spot for horror films that are set in hospitals and asylums so I had a good feeling about watching this "Don't Look in the Basement", even though its reputation is doubtful. Well, turned out I was right! This is great, trashy entertainment with a couple of efficient shocks and delightfully absurd characters. You have to, of course, look beyond the poor productions values and the completely illogical plot but, if you manage to do that (and if you're a fan of this type of horror, that's an essential quality), you'll be rewarded with an outrageous "video-nasty" in which blood and insanity form the main elements. The young and cute nurse Charlotte arrives at a remote sanitarium where she's supposed to start her new job. She finds out that the Doctor who hired her was killed by a patient and the replacement doctor-in-charge Masters seems reluctant to accept the new arrival. The life inside the sanitarium is rather peculiar, with the patients running around free and every door is kept unlocked. After a whole series of bizarre events, Charlotte discovers the horrific secrets that the institution hides.... The opening 10 minutes (pre-credits) are great and so is the completely deranged climax. Everything in between is pretty much without surprise or tension but you patiently wait because you just feel that the finale will be wild fun. The asylum's patients are textbook lunatics, but I love them nevertheless. Some of my favorites include the former judge (who still talks exclusively in legal terms), the suspicious army-Sargeant and the mad-raving old lady. "Don't Look in the Basement" is great low-brained fun, especially recommended to fans of 70's trash-cinema, sick puppies and other types of scum. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, yeah!!

You'll either love or hate movies such as this thriller set inside a lonesome asylum in a far off lonesome land. It's not so much of a horror show, but a concoction of frightening imageries and wackozoid mental patients. "Scream" is the best term to use in what was obviously a popular drive-in classic noted for some strange and wicked behaviors. Notice the "judge", who's about to put on the ax from behind the doctor! Brr-r-r-r!!! Not much else can be described here other than some bloody tasty goodness, but when you get a chance, remember the familiar old saying by the hag lady: "Get out! Get out! And never ever come back!". Don't you wish you haven't looked in the basement?

Dr Stephens (Micheal Harvey) runs a mental asylum. He has a different approach to the insane. He conducts unorthodox methods of treatment. He treats everyone like family, there are no locks on the patients doors and he lets some of the inmates act out their twisted fantasies. He lets Sergeant Jaffee (Hugh Feagin) dress and act as a soldier and Harriet (Camilla Carr) be a mother to a doll, including letting her put it to bed in a cot. Dr. Stevens is outside letting Judge Oliver W. Cameron (Gene Ross) chop a log up with an axe, it turns out to be a bad move as once Dr. Stevens back is turned the Judge plants the axe in his shoulder. Soon after Nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik) arrives at the Sanitarium having arranged an interview with Dr. Stevens about a possible job. She is met by the head Nurse, Geraldine Masters (Annabelle Weenick as Anne McAdams) and is offered a trail position. She gets to know and becomes well liked among the patients. However things eventually start to turn sour, the phone lines are cut, an old lady named Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams) has her tongue cut out and she starts to get a strange feeling that things just aren't right somehow. Then, one night all the Sanitariums dark secrets are violently revealed. Produced and directed by S.f. Brownrigg this film has a great central idea which builds into a cool twist ending, but ultimately is a bit of a chore to sit through because of it's low budget restrictions and a rather slow script by Tim Pope. There are just too many long boring stretches of dialogue by the inmates, not a lot really happens until the final twenty odd minutes. The film has no real visual quality as it's set entirely in the Sanitarium and it's grounds which is basically just a big bland house in the middle of nowhere. There's no graphic gore in it, a few splashes of blood here and there and thats yer lot. There's a bit of nudity, but like the gore not much. The acting is pretty strong, especially Holotik and Weenick. The photography is flat and unexciting and I can't even remember what the music was like. The twist ending is great, but it just takes far too long to get to it. A film that had a lot of potential that was probably held back by it's budget. OK I guess, but I think it would have worked a lot better if the story had been turned into a half an hour 'Tales form the Crypt' episode.