A
kind of smorgasbord of Italian slasher stylized giallo, evil twin sister
revenge thriller, and a whole lot of Riz Ortolani power, Madhouse echoes the sensibilities of Argento and Fulci’s brand of
artfully rendered exploitation horror which unfortunately like The Visitor throws just enough
extraneous threads in to tip it over into silliness. It’s fun but all over the map and I doubt
Assonitis intended it to be tongue in cheek.
Anyway, a rare Italian production to be filmed in America in Savannah,
Georgia in the supposedly haunted Kehoe house, Madhouse concerns schoolteacher for deaf children Julia Sullivan (Trish
Everly in her only film role) whose violent past with her evil sister Mary
comes back to haunt her as friends and family start turning up dead.
Like
the title suggests, Madhouse gives
you a bit of everything from the giallo genre, the American slasher genre, bits
of The Omen mixed with Sisters and just enough Video
Nasty-worthy gore to keep you hooked.
Performances generally are good with Everly holding her own though
Morgan Hart is just there for her looks and Dennis Robertson’s villain is more
than a little cheesy. Visually the
Technovision cinematography by Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli with curved
wide-angled lenses looks splendid with sharp framing and handsome lighting but
the hokey visual effects, gratuitously over the top gore and tap dancing from
genre to genre make it kind of a beautiful looking mess. It goes without saying the great Italian
composer Riz Ortolani’s involvement already boosts Madhouse’s credibility, though there were times when it sounded too
much like Cannibal Holocaust for my
liking.
Overall, I enjoyed Madhouse as a standard slasher/giallo horror flick but won’t deny you can tell this is from the man who would become the head of Cannon Films. Like Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus before him, these European film producers share a kindred passion for cinema in the abstract while displaying a curious disconnect in the art of making it a reality. As a director, Assonitis understands how to direct a film production from a technical sense as well as directing actors but as a storyteller he knows know restraint and loads the proceedings with too many disparate elements before it grows crazy if not laughable. While nowhere near as bizarre as The Visitor or even The Manitou, Madhouse is just outlandish enough with some juicy chance sequence slashings to satisfy most horror fans but average in the grand scheme of the genre.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki