Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Asylum Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 8, 2018

Note: This film is available both as a standalone product and also as part of the box set The Amicus Collection.

The recently reviewed Hammer Horror: The Warner Bros. Years makes an interesting point in passing that, as iconic as Hammer Films’ horror outings undeniably were, there were other studios pumping out product whose features were at least occasionally mistaken for being Hammer productions, when in fact they weren’t. Probably prime among these examples would be Amicus Productions, a British institution that was nonetheless founded by two Americans, Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. Rosenberg and Subotsky themselves had a somewhat infamous Hammer Films connection, having (according to Rosenberg, anyway) come up with the project that ultimately became The Curse of Frankenstein, a 1957 opus that was Hammer’s first horror outing in color, Hammer’s first “reboot” of a venerable horror character, and arguably the film that set the tone for what became a decade or more of Hammer’s preeminence in the horror genre. Subotsky and Rosenberg were kind of pushed to the sidelines on the project, receiving no credit, and (again according to Rosenberg) even handing over their meager $5000 payday to Ray Stark in exchange for a promised partnership which never manifested. There was obviously some kind of discord associated with this film, at least from the perspective of Rosenberg (who’s on hand in some archival interviews in this set, disparaging both Hammer in general and Eliot Hyman in particular), something that may have led to Rosenberg and Subotsky deciding to set out on their own when they could hopefully be captains of their own fate.

Kind of interestingly, then, while Subotsky and Rosenberg had gotten into the horror game before the creation of Amicus with the 1960 film The City of the Dead (note that the link points to a British release), their first two outings in their guise as Amicus Productions were quasi-musicals designed to appeal to the teen set, It's Trad, Dad! (directed by none other than Richard Lester) and Just for Fun. While Amicus occasionally varied outside of its largely self imposed horror limits, including with a couple of Doctor Who related feature films, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks — Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the studio is arguably best remembered today for its so-called portmanteau features, films which typically included four or five at least tangentially linked stories into one film. The first of these portmanteau efforts was 1965’s Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (note that the link points to a German release, though it’s region free and I personally found the technical merits better than the domestic release from Olive). That film set the portmanteau template for Amicus, where typically some kind of framing story would link the “episodes” contained within the film, and that’s pretty much exactly what one of the films in this new Amicus set (Asylum) does. Kind of interestingly, though, the two other feature films in the Amicus Collection are the somewhat rarer outings from Amicus that offer only one narrative thread for the entire film. Of those other features, one (And Now the Screaming Starts) is the really rare Amicus offering that traffics in what had been Hammer's stock in trade, Gothic horror.

Asylum is probably the most “traditional” Amicus offering in The Amicus Collection, since it exploits the portmanteau structure that became one of the studio’s stocks in trade. In this case a psychiatrist named Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) arrives at a kind of residential institution run by Dr. Rutherford (Patrick Magee) to apply for a job. Rutherford informs Martin that Martin’s “job interview” will consist of Martin interviewing several inmates to determine which is the former head of the institution, a Dr. Starr, an individual who has had a complete mental breakdown and is now confined to the locked ward on the second floor of the building. Dr. Starr’s breakdown was so dramatic that Starr (whose gender is not disclosed) attacked Dr. Rutherford, leaving him confined to a wheelchair and unable to even venture upstairs himself.

That then leads to the “episodic” vignettes as Martin meets and listens to the stories of several inmates. These include a woman (Barbara Parkins) who conspired with her lover (Richard Todd) to murder the man’s wife (Sylvia Sims). Unfortunately, the wife had a little interest in black magic, something that keeps her corpse from resting in peace (so to speak). Next up is a tailor named Bruno (Barry Morse), who is tasked by a client (Peter Cushing) with making a bizarre suit which turns out to have magic powers that result in a plot that plays a bit like the old Jewish folktale of the Golem. Third in line is Barbara (Charlotte Rampling), a recidivist who blames all of her problems (which include several murders) on a mysterious woman named Lucy (Britt Ekland). Last to be interviewed is the imperious Dr. Byron (Herbert Lom), who has been working on building little miniature robots which he insists he’ll be able to transfer his psyche into.

None of these vignettes is frankly all that scary and none of the supposed twists are hardly revelatory, and yet Asylum does manage to develop a rather spooky, unstable feeling mood. (I personally found the most unsettling aspect of any of the stories the rustling noises that the animated corpse in the first story makes after the husband wraps the body pieces in butcher paper.) It’s a rather odd film from any number of standpoints (note how the asylum’s “art” hanging on the walls is all illustrations of patients in days of yore being tortured, hardly the sort of thing one would think would contribute to a peaceful institutional life), but it’s kind of winking good fun in a typical Amicus way.

Asylum Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Asylum is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This transfer is kind of the "middle child" of the Amicus box set, not as shoddy looking as The Beast Must Die, but not quite at the level that And Now the Screaming Starts offers. The palette is just slightly anemic looking, and densities occasionally fluctuate throughout the presentation. Detail levels are generally "okay" looking, but a lot of the presentation is on the soft side, though some extreme close-ups offer rather commendable fine detail levels. There's some fairly noisy looking grain during the optical credits sequence, but once the actual story starts, things calm down and there are no major resolution issues from that point forward. There are occasional hiccups like misaligned frames and scratches and the like that show up from time to time, but on the whole this is perfectly watchable without any huge problems.

Asylum Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Asylum features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix that capably supports the film's dialogue and sometimes fun sound effects. Whoever thought shoehorning in "Night on Bald Mountain" as underscore might have thought twice (that's a joke), but the orchestral cues sound generally bright, if a bit on the narrow side. Fidelity is fine, and there are no issues with damage.

Asylum Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Two's a Company (1080p; 18:18) is a fun archival piece from 1972 which aired on the BBC and which offers interviews with Milton Subotsky, Roy Ward Baker, Charlotte Rampling, James Villiers, Megs Jenkins, Tony Curtis (not that one, the Art Director for this film) and Teresa Bolland.


• David J. Schow on Robert Bloch (1080p; 20:55) offers some interesting background on a writer whose name may be familiar, but whose story may not be.


• Fiona Subotsky Remembers Milton Subotsky (1080p; 9:38) offers a sweet reminiscence from Subotsky's widow, who is also evidently a psychiatrist, which must have come in handy when dealing with a spouse in the film industry.


• Inside the Fear Factory (1080p; 20:28) is another fun overview of Amicus, with Roy Ward Baker, Freddie Francis and Max Rosenberg.


• Audio Commentary features Roy Ward Baker camera operator Neil Binney, moderated by Marcus Hearn.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:31)

Asylum Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Asylum is the one offering in the Amicus Collection that has "Amicus" written all over it (so to speak). This is another enjoyable if kind of slight anthology that has a few minor scares along the way, but is probably a bit too silly to ever really frighten (which may indeed have been the intent). Technical merits are generally okay if never overwhelming, but the supplementary package is quite enjoyable.