Asylum of Terror (1998)

So much average

Redundant and unnecessary.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The negative reviews of Asylum of Terror seem extremely unfair to me. The vast majority of these reviews derides the film for being so poorly made. But poorly made, low budget films are an art form in of themselves. They can be entertaining, funny, and completely accomplish exactly what they intend. If you're looking for Shakespeare, or even Clive Barker, then don't watch Asylum of Terror. If you enjoyed Blood Feast or Color Me Blood Red, you might find Asylum to be worth your time. Personally, I'd much rather watch an H.G. Lewis movie than a Wes Craven movie. Take, for instance, the scene in Asylum where the chubby girl is having sex with a guy wearing a mask. She tells him to keep it on, and, after a bit of moaning, he is killed with a hammer to the face. She nonchalantly walks away, screaming in an unemotional manner, gets turned around accidentally, and is finally drilled to death. If this doesn't bring a smile to your face, you're probably not a fan of low budget horror to begin with. This is a movie that features an awkward killer who is dressed rather nicely, terrible fun-filled acting, a bit of gore, and children getting killed. Accept it for what it is, and you might not be disappointed. Compare it to I Know What You Did Last Summer, and you shame us all.

In this world of community theater throwbacks, the man who has the camera pointed at him the most is king. Here's the plot...random people in random locations getting killed randomly. The audio comes to us direct from Peanuts. Dean, the "hero", is the towns top haunted house worker, making his pay only slightly lower than that of a late night bus stop janitor. Of course, this makes him highly desirable. When he finds the first murder, the person he is with wants to find the murderer to stop him. Dean's first reaction is to throw up, cry, then wet himself. Eventually, after a lot of nothing happens, they find the killer. Again, the girl he's with wants to stop the killer as it's two on one. Our fearless hero's argument against this is that the killer is amateurishly wielding a small icepick. Dean waits until the killer is distracted by trying to kill an doughy ham of a child, then makes his move with a chainsaw. Oh yeah, there was something about a fire and a ghost or something, but in the end it doesn't matter, nor do we care

The acting is bad but even worse is the absolutely horrible sound quality of the video. I can at least enjoy a bad, poorly acted movie for laugh value, but the sound in this one makes the dialog (such as it is) often unintelligible or garbled. Take a cheap microphone and put it inside of a trash can, then have the actors stand 50 feet away ... that's what this one sounds like.

As a summary review, the film was good once all things are considered. It was shot on a shoe string and seemed to include a good bit of improv. All in all, not a bad flick for the B-horror genre. George Demick did a decent job with so little resource.