ASYLUM OF SATAN (1972)
Article 4344 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-22-2013
Directed by William Girdler
Featuring Charles Kissinger, Nick Jolley, Carlo Borelli
Country: USA
What it is: Devil worship, mad doctor style

A female singer finds herself inexplicably transferred to an asylum under the care of a man called Dr. Specter, and his designs on the patient are hardly honorable…

This was the first movie directed by William Girdler. Though nothing of what I’ve seen of his work so far has impressed me, I will say this much; he got better. The most interesting thing about this movie is that it combines the “mad doctor” and “devil worship” movies, and that’s only slightly interesting. The movie is pretty bad on every level. The acting is terrible all around, though the actress playing the heroine is the worst; when she tries to emote, it looks like her primary concern is to make sure she doesn’t smear her make-up. The movie often seems edited at random, and the direction is static and lifeless. It has a plot revelation about two people being the same person that is mostly notable for its total pointlessness. Some of the sets look like they only had one can of paint to use for each one. And you’d think that someone making a virgin sacrifice to Satan would at least have made doubly sure that he had a virgin in the first place. Really, I feel like I’m shooting fish in a barrel here, and it’s the bottom of the barrel as well.