• Straight to Video
• Director: George Demick
• Written by: George Demick
• Running Time: 75 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: UNRATED
• Cast: Jason Petty, Kerry Wade, Aimee Tenaglia, Misty Lewis, Justin Ipock, Brian Fisher, Brandon Boyd, Sixx Williams, Pete Pittman, Byron Brooks, Melissa Young, Taylor Demick, Ned Johnstone, Chad Perry, John Ekloud, Amy Wallum, Jean Ward, Lynda Cameron, Scott Hauser, Kimberly Jenson, Tony Warner, John Francescon, Mari Jane Aime, Keith Scott McNamara, Jessica Leemaster, Mike Romeo, Kristy Jelliff

Even though “Asylum of Terror” has yielded predominantly negative reviews online, I’m not about to shy away from my love of the film.

Yeah, it’s sloppily made and with virtually no plot to speak of, but who cares? A great many of the slasher films made between 79 and 90, including the ones we hold up as classics, suffered from these very same technical and thematic rough edges but we (and by we, I’m talking about cinema geeks) tend to look back at those films of yesteryear with genuine fondness. “Asylum of Terror”, for all its inherent problems, genuinely taps into that same sense-of-being, in that there’s a very 80’s film vibe running through the entire production. Many others films made have tried to emulate in an attempt to capture the same feeling but have fallen short in their task. This one doesn't. The funny thing is that I’m not entirely sure if it’s because the director, George Demick, intended it that way, or if it was a collection of happy accidents arising from an inexperienced crew, a cheap stock VHS camera and junky editing equipment.

A mad man with a fetish for early 80s horror film icons, goes on a brutal rampage at a Mental Institution which has been converted into a Halloween funhouse, as he endeavours to fashion his very own slasher film. To the folks touring the macabre Halloween house – stumbling obliviously upon the bloodied mutilated bodies, or, in some cases, standing in the same room as the killer as he commits bloody murder, it’s all part of the show, that is until the attention of the killer is turned in their direction.

The funhouse theme has been explored in a bunch of films, most notably Tobe Hooper’s “The Funhouse” and Jon Keeyes’ “Hallow’s End”, but “Asylum of Terror” is the first one to appoint a Tarantino-esque film geek as the slayer of choice. Granted, his unempirical debate with a lizard-looking hallucination over which was the greatest movie killer; Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers or Freddy Krueger (“Freddy was a child molester,” our killer reasons aloud), is the kind of enjoyable drivel movie nerds will love, but for everyone else it’ll feel forced and asinine. The background on our psycho is nearly none-existent but, thanks to exposition from some nameless teenagers (the Star Trek equivalent to red shirts) and an off-in-the-distance radio broadcast, we learn that our killer-to-be is an escaped mental patient who murdered a bunch of folks after screening one too many horror films (or something). We also discover that, years earlier, he might very well have been the one who set fire to the same asylum that these wacky kids have turned into a Halloween funhouse called, ironically, “Death Row”. When the killer arrives onscreen early on, he stands in line just like everyone else waiting to get in and even joins in on a discussion about two subjects he knows a lot about; movies, namely “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, and himself. We know that he’s the killer and Demick makes no bones about it, even if the characters around him are unaware. His identity, like those of the other characters (and soon to be murder victims), aren't important. It’s all just the pre-card trivialities before the main event takes stage.

Early on in the film, when the killer first embarks on his murder spree while the varying folks touring “Death Row” are completely oblivious to its reality, is really part of what makes the film tick, however, the director himself seems oblivious to the craftiness of his own invention. Thankfully, this idea of making the carnage part of the show and the show part of the carnage, and everyone in between minus the killer and the audience completely unmindful of it, was elaborated upon later by a much more talented director Jeff Lieberman in his amazing film, “Satan’s Little Helper”.

Copious shots of the killer stalking darkened, hazy hallways wearing varying disguises including Meyer’s Shatner mask, Brandon Lee’s Crow face and Jason’s goalie mask, only work to slow the film down in the last half. For some, it’s a dead crawl, I’m sure. The kills run the gamut of imaginative to downright grisly, with the money-shot arriving midway into the film when a young girl voluntarily allows herself to be handcuffed to a ceiling, assessing for herself that the killer must be part of the Death Row staff. Her mistake ultimately results in her very gruesome demise, as the psycho grabs a chainsaw and proceeds to rape her with it. The protracted shots of him inserting and extracting buzzing blade, as blood sprays like mist, and she writhes in sheer agony, was enough to get my attention. Who needs Brian DePalma? Interestingly, while the cinematography isn’t particularly memorable, some of the shots, like those during this rather ghastly sequence, are absolutely exquisite. The chainsaw segment ends on a single shot of the girl’s bloodied face (with eyes wide open). It eventually pans out to reveal the absolute carnage or killer has wrought. Before the final frame, a child will fall victim to the killer’s rampage, thus illuminating the film’s sheer go-for-the-jugular mean-spiritedness. The psycho only seems to move into this place - killing children - after he’s cast-off his needs to emulate the killer’s he’s viewed on screen, as if they, and the conventions of the horror genre as a whole (don’t kill children being the big one) somehow reigned him in. Left on his own children are suddenly fair game. This will surely turn some people off, if they make it that far.

For the record, the audio is unbalanced and terrible, the lighting tends to be a little too dark, and the acting is below par, even for a straight-to-SVHS production (look for “In the Woods” star Aimee Tenaglia in a bit part), but, whatever; it all seems to bring us one more gradation closer to the stuff being produced back in the 80s. And, trust me, I have no problem whatsoever revisiting those good ole days of 80s slashers films.