The Mansion of Madness (1976)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Excellent, a Must See

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Spanish movie based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story. It takes place in the 1700s. A reporter goes to visit a remote sanitarium. After he meets the head of the place and seen the patients he comes to realize that the inmates are running the place and have locked up the rest of the staff.It tries to mix surrealism with comedy and horror. The result is a not uninteresting but confused and unfocused movie. The main problem is that most of the actors overact to such an embarrassing degree they're hard to take seriously. True they're supposed to be mad but do they have to be so LOUD? Also it's not scary for one second. One the other hand it's certainly never dull and the surrealistic touches do work. So it's interesting but ultimately unsuccessful.

This is a Mexican adaption of the Edgar Allan Poe story 'The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether'. It tells the tale of a journalist who travels to a sanatorium to report on eccentric medical techniques practised there. This is frankly a really bizarre feature. Right from the get go this is odd. It is sort of a horror film yet its atmosphere is almost quirky a lot of the time. The music reflects this by being spectacularly inappropriate throughout. I suppose with a central idea of the lunatics taking over the asylum, the general off-kilter strangeness is imbued in the music and general mood. There is a multitude of oddball characters that feature throughout the picture, culminating in a finale involving menacing chicken people. No, seriously.I guess this movie can best be described as a surrealist film. Seeing as its Mexican and made around the same time as Alejandro Jodorowsky was making movies this makes more sense. There must've been something funny in the Mexican tap water back in the early 70's. So I suppose it will probably appeal more to those who appreciate weird art films rather than anyone after a Gothic horror yarn, which to be honest this film really isn't. While it's certainly a memorably nutty film, it would be remiss to not mention that it's a little rough around the edges as well. It's really a mixture of quite bad film-making with some pretty impressive moments. The overall strangeness is probably ultimately its chief selling point though. So if you have an interest in the bizarre then this certainly will tick a few boxes for you on that score.

This is a bizarre horror film based upon an Edgar Allan Poe story . I have no knowledge of the original text but the idea of lunatics running an asylum has certainly influenced literature , cinema and television not to mention influencing real life itself . Was it Poe himself who came up with the expression of " Lunatics running the asylum " ? It's certainly made for a very memorable film . The bad news is that it's not going to be remembered in a good way The film starts with a journalist in 19th century France visiting an insane asylum to report on a new , radical technique engineered by an eminent doctor to treat lunacy . It's very noticeable from the start of the movie that it contains fundamental flaws in film making . For example a character says to himself " There weren't armed guards at the gate last time I visited " When you've painful exposition like this you know you're not going to be watching a masterwork of cinema . The film continues in this way and suffers from an entirely bizarre feel involving mood . We're treated to camp comedic incidental music and sound effects and the IMDb itself includes the word comedy in its genre main page . but at no point does the movie give the impression it was meant to be a camp affair . Everything seems made with a dead pan feel and it seems when the film was completed the director has gone back and insisted on injecting humour at several points hoping the audience believe they're watching camp cinema rather than incompetent movie making . Good try but he isn't fooling me This manifests itself a subplot involving human chickens , or rather lunatics who believe themselves that they're chickens . Again I must reiterate that this must have seemed grotesque and macabre on paper and is in keeping with Poe's themes . But to watch a climax involving a choreographed sequence of chicken people dancing in synchronized step is impossible to take seriously as it plays out on screen . In some ways it's like watching the climax of APOCALYPSE NOW with a bunch of effete go go dancers skipping around Walter Kurtz outpost , not that this film deserves to be mentioned in the same review as Coppola's classic because the chicken people are appearing in an absolute turkey

I kinda like this bizarre Mexican flick which was a mix of "Hearts of Darkness" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Anyone familiar with these types of movies made south of the border in the seventies know that coherent plots are not to be expected. Gaston LeBlanc has come to witness the revolutionary treatments of Dr. Maillard in his spacious sanitarium. When he is introduced to the Doctor and his lovely niece Eugenie he is taken on a tour which begin an array of odd encounters with the patients who seem to roam free. As Gaston beholds the increasingly eccentric methods of Maillard's "soothing system" he begins to question the mental stability of the doctor. Chicken Man would of had me running out the front door long ago but I guess that's just me. After one of the Doctor's religious ceremonies involving Eugenie almost comes to a murderous end if not for Gaston's intervention she is taken away for punishment which for what he's witness can be just about anything. Gaston saves Eugenie, whom he has fallen for, and she tells him that Maillard is actually an escaped convict named Fragonard who led a revolt by the inmates imprisoning the real Dr. Maillard and his staff. With Fragonard's system for controlling anyone he sets out for, what else, world domination! I can see how "Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon" can turn people off. If you are expecting a gory exploitation/torture horror film you will be sadly disappointed. This is actually more of a comedy than anything as the sheer lunacy of some of the scenes inspire some serious laughs. Claudio Brook as Maillard/Fragonard is especially entertaining as his rantings and constant cackling convinced me that nobody is more crazy in this asylum than him. It does have some slow moments when the dialogue gets a little to wordy for me but the occasional pair of naked breasts made up for that. I don't know what director Juan Lopez Moctezuma's fascination with bird people was but he definitely had an ample amount in this movie. Not everyone's cup of tea but nonetheless a movie that kept me entertained for most of its 82 minute run time which is a lot more than I can say for most of the other titles in this "Chilling Classics" collection. Give it a shot.