Mansion of the Doomed

source: Mansion of the Doomed

Disturbing, gory and fine low budget shocker. A deranged surgeon, Dr. Leonard Chaney(Richard Basehart)is guilt ridden after his daughter Nancy(Trish Stewart)loses her eyesight in a traffic accident he caused. The doc decides to start abducting people at random and removing their eyes in hopes of performing transplants on his daughter. His disfigured victims are kept caged in his dungeon-like basement. With every transplant on his daughter she becomes more and more scarred. Disappointed and disgusted with her father, she manages to help release the eyeless people she has discovered in the basement. The disfigured captives seek revenge... successfully. Other cast members: Lance Henriksen, Gloria Grahame, Donna Andresen, Katherine Stewart and Vic Tayback. Sensitive and disturbing scenes prompt the R rating. Hardcore horror fans should be pleased.

How far would you go to cure your beloved Daughter's blindness, this is the plot of this low budget but very enjoyable 70's horror movie. Richard Basehart plays the deranged ophthalmologist and is well supported by a horror movie stalwart, Lance Henriksen. It's not in the least bit scary, but was fun.

After about an hour, I realized in watching this creepy horror film that it was best to continue viewing it as a dark comedy. It's certainly has many moments that made me reluctantly laugh, but I couldn't help it in the most notable melodramatic moments when several of the kidnapped victims of doctor Richard Basehart escape. One is quickly captured in the front yard (with no neighbors even noticing), and another makes it to the highway with bass hard chasing her, aided by a force that she didn't even perceive in taking care of the situation. Then there is a presence of Gloria Grahame, looking like she stuck additional cotton into her mouth to give her that pouty look, her squeaky voice even more affected than it was when she played Ado Annie in "Oklahoma!". The story surrounds Basehart's desire to find eyeballs for daughter Trish Stewart who was injured in a car accident and is now blind. It certainly is a gruesome theme, and there's plenty of gore within the context of the film. The snake pit of people that he kidnaps for their eyeballs becomes like a mental institution of the blind, and those scenes are very odd to say the least. The pretty poor black girl who is hired as a nurse and finds herself quickly blinded and kept in the basement is by far the most tragic character. Grahame really gets nothing substantial to do, and her character has no motivation, making her declaration of "Kill them!" to her boss all the more odd. At least with Basehart, there's a reasoning for his madness, even if he is a brutal fiend.

I first saw this in the late 80s n found it to be a bit boring but aft revisiting it recently, i found it to be disturbing, specially the suffering of the eyeless victims caged in the basement is frightening n very disturbing. Thank God the little girl survives but can someone tell me what happens to the character of Lance Henriksen n the lead character Trish? The director of this film Michael Pataki directed only two movies n one tv episode but acted in 178 movies, the most famous being Graduation Day, Halloween 4, Rocky 4, Sweet Sixteen, Dead & Buried, Dracula's Dog, Airport '77, The Bat People, Grave of the Vampire, The Return of Count Yorga, Dream no Evil n the tiny role in Easy Rider. Michael Pataki shamelessly copied from Franju's Eyes Without a Face but somehow succeeded in creating the horror vibe. No sane fella can find this movie comical cos it is truly disturbing seeing the plight of the eyeless.

The plot of this one is really disturbing and scary. "Mansion of the Doomed" provides drama, horror, suspense, and most of all cheap gore effects that will surely please the lovers of the red! The drama is portrayed by the Doctor's situation. He victimizes innocent people in order to take off their eyeballs to later practice eye surgery on her daughter in order for her to recover her sight. Crudely, any father would do the impossible to help a daughter, that's for sure. The fact that this lunatic takes the eyeballs of the victims and later cages them in his mansion is the disturbing factor. With a plot like that you can expect a brutal and chilling exploitation movie. Well there are some gruesome and disturbing scenes involving negligent eye surgery and that's about it. There's no suspense, even false scares, and you can never say that the movie shocked you, it just disturbs the audience by showing violent scenes. There's not much to comment about this one, except that if you like the sub-genre you should check this one out. It's as cheesy as you can get but it's plot makes it eerie. The movie wasn't just done correctly.

Richard Basehart plays a doctor whose daughter is blinded in a car accident; the remainder of the film focuses on Basehart's attempts to restore his daughter's sight by kidnapping people and removing their eyes for unsuccessful transplants. Not bad horror flick, and very well-acted for such a low-budget effort. Basehart registers strongly as the determined doctor, as does '50's 'bad girl' Gloria Grahame as his devoted assistant, even though she is given very little to do. But be warned, this film is not for those with weak stomachs.

Charles Band's perfectly grim and upsetting first-ever low-budget indie fright feature is a real creepy, unpleasant and most unnerving shocker starring Richard Basehart as a well-respected, but obsessed surgeon determined to restore his blind daughter's sight by stealing unwitting donors' eyes for extremely graphic and gruesome transplants! Pretty soon Basehart has a basement full of miserable, hideously moaning and hollow-socketed victims who include the always welcome Lance Henrikson (who's fine as usual in his initial foray into the horror genre) and blaxploitation actress Marilyn Joi. Capably directed with admirable conviction and seriousness by longtime favorite sleaze movie thesp Michael Pataki (who also helmed the outrageously bawdy soft-core musical version of "Cinderella" for Band), with excellent icky make-up f/x by Stan Winston, a splendidly spare'n'spooky Robert O. Ragland score, an appropriately eerie and unsparingly bleak tone (the sequences with Basehart's victims groaning in abject pain and suffering are quite potent and upsetting), solid cinematography by future big deal mainstream Hollywood director Andrew Davis (who went on to direct such big budget action blockbusters as "Under Siege" and "The Fugitive"), sturdy supporting performances by Gloria Grahame as Basehart's loyal, but worried assistant and Vic Tayback as a homicide detective, and a truly startling nice'n'nasty ending, this overall rates as a highly unsettling and effectively rough-edged little B-horror item.

This is trash, pure and simple. But it's so bad it'll make you laugh. The fact that Lance Henriksen gets top billing, yet plays a very minor role, doesn't say much for the leads. Rent it and watch it after a night of hard drinking.

I watched this last night on a twenty plus year old VHS tape I brought of eBay, under it's UK title 'Massacre mansion'. We open with shots of Dr Leonard Chaney (Richard Basehart) walking through a hospital, he goes to a patient and inserts his thumbs into her eye sockets. As it turns out this is just a nightmare, according to the accompanying monologue by Basehart anyway. He goes on to talk about his daughter Nancy Chaney (Trish Stewart), we see scenes of her swimming in a pool with her boyfriend Dr Dan Bryan (Lance Henriksen) with Doc Chaney lovingly looking on. He also talks of an accident. While driving along a dog runs out in front of Doc Chaney's car, he swerves to miss it and he crashes the car. Nancy, who was a passenger, is blinded in the accident. Luckily Doc Chaney isn't an ordinary Doctor, no he happens to be an eye surgeon! Using his medical expertise and help from his assistant Katherine (Gloria Grahame) he sets out to restore Nancy's sight by an eye transplant. Unfortunately the eyes need to be fresh, which means he needs to kidnap people and take their eyes out. First up it's Nancy's boyfriend and one of Doc Chaney's fellow professionals Doc Bryan. The transplant works to start with, however Nancy soon loses her sight again. Doc Chaney needs to know what went wrong so he prepares another operation, again the eyes are rejected. After several more operations he is still no closer to permanently restoring Nancy's sight. To add to his worries his basement is rapidly filling up with his eyeless victims, who he wants to keep alive so when he has discovered the secret he can give them back their sight too. Produced by Charles and Albert Band (and not a killer toy in sight!), cinematography by Andrew Davis (who would later go on to direct films such as the fugitive and under siege), make up effects by Stan Winston (terminator, jurassic park etc.) and directed by Micheal Pataki, massacre mansion has quality both in front and behind the camera. However that doesn't make it a particularly good film. The central idea is good, Doc Chaney isn't portrayed as a monster, but as a loving father who becomes more and more desperate as the hole he's dug himself gets deeper by the minute. The victims aren't simply there to be used, the film shows them trapped and blinded trying to help and comfort each other, it tries to make them part of the film that you want to care about. There's no real gore in it, except the first transplant which is shown, the others cut away before Doc Chaney begins to operate, but various shots are shown on a black and white monitor that Doc Chaney looks at to help himself, it wouldn't surprise me if this was real eye surgery footage. Whats there is, is quite effective, and the effect of the victims having no eyes is also well done. My biggest problem with it is that it's all rather dull and forgettable, and a little bit slow. Not bad I suppose, just average.