The Fifth Floor

Although this was made in 1978, I recall seeing this with Don't Go In The House in 1980 at the drive-in theatre. Oddly enough I was attending psychiatric technician training at the time. Bo Hopkins after introducing himself to the unfortunate disco heroine as 'your friendly psychiatric technician' goes on to deliver a good performance with convincing menace beneath a superficial cheery 'therapeutic' demeanor. Sharon Farrell is convincing as a patient. The always creepy Anthony James gives one of his best performances and, horror fans, Robert 'Freddie' Englund is also on hand as a patient. Toss in some disco and you got some kind of late 70's semi-classic drive-in entertainment.If nothing else, watching Bo Hopkins puffing on a cigarette as he worked reminded me of 1980, when it was commonplace to see staff and patients smoking on a unit. Note too, that Bo appears to be working AM, PM (Swing) and Noc shift in this movie. No doubt racking up some good OT money but perhaps driving himself to some of the behaviors he displays. (For me) nostalgic fun ** out of *****

The Fifth Floor is an engaging piece of work that was much better than I expected. Using a tag line like "From the disco floor to the insane asylum" is asking for trouble but the film deserves better than that.

Dianne Hull plays Kelly, a friendly girl who works at a disco club (not sure what as!), who has a sudden seizure one night while dancing and is rushed to hospital. When it is found that she has strychnine poisoning, Kelly claims that she has been poisoned, but alas for her, no-one believes her and she is sent to a psychiatrist as a possible suicide, which, due to a few more misunderstandings, leads her to being incarcerated on the "Fifth Floor", which is a special secure ward for the insane. Can she establish her sanity and get out of the place and back to normality? What I liked about the film is that it plays the scenario of Kelly's plight out quite seriously. The more she complains, accuses the staff of lying and refuses to take treatment ( a very good performance here by Dianne Hull), the more deeply she gets herself trapped. While watching you find yourself thinking: "Yes I guess that's exactly what a mad person would do and say as well", and her plight struck me as all too believable. The biggest spanner in the works for poor Kelly is a corrupt and lascivious orderly called Carl (effectlively played by Bo Hopkins) who likes to sexually assault the younger female inmates and then blame their later accusations on hysteria. He takes a shine to Kelly and the two scenes in which he abuses her are quite unpleasant. Thrown into this are some good minor performances by the other inmates that Kelly befriends, including a pregnant girl called Cathy and a seriously unhappy and troubled woman named Melanie, played with genuine feeling and impressive intensity by Sharon Farrell.

So, although the plot is nothing new (sane person committed to an asylum by mistake), the film does a good job of handling it. Although the situation is kept small scale, you can certainly feel for the central character, and with great performances all round and a couple of rather surprisingly brutal scenes, it all goes towards making "The Fifth Floor" a place you really should visit.

THE FIFTH FLOOR opens at the Demons Disco Club, where Kelly McIntyre (Dianne Hull) arrives to join in on whatever disco dance craze is taking place at the moment. One must say that she certainly has the moves!

Uh oh!

Something goes horribly awry, causing Kelly to convulse violently on the floor, as if she's being tortured with cattle prods! Is this just her attempt at some daring new dance routine? The next thing she knows, Kelly's trapped in the nuthouse, being examined by Dr. Freddy Krueger! The rest is a nightmare for poor Kelly, who only wants to be free to boogie once more. Nothing can prepare you for the zany "group therapy" session!

If you've been searching for a movie that captures the rigors of disco, combined with the obligatory torment of the Women In Prison sub-genre, that is set in a mental hospital, then search no more! Ms. Hull's lethargic, near-dead performance is perfectly realized, and her fretting is unparalleled.

SPECIAL MENTION: For Bo Hopkins, who plays the sleazy orderly known as Carl with all the Carl-ness that anyone could possibly muster. No one chews gum or smokes cigarettes like Bo! No one!...

"Fifth Floor" was actually better than I had expected. What makes it rise above the other, run of the mill B-movies/television movie of the week is the good performances from lead actress, Diane Hull and the supporting cast including Sharon Farrell and Bo Hopkins as an orderly who abuses his authority and terrorizes the young heroine.

Following a young college co-ed disco dancer who is inexplicably poisoned by strychnine in her drink is determined to be a suicide risk and delegated to the titular "fifth floor" psychiatric ward of a hospital for observation for 72 hours. Of course, a lecherous orderly makes things difficult for Kelly and her stay ends up being prolonged and not even her fiancee believes her cries for help. Diane Hull who played Kelly, manages to convey vulnerability and strength at the same time. The only people she can trust are the fellow patients on the ward who help her with a couple of escape attempts. The supporting cast is a who's who of character actors including a younger Robert Englund a.k.a. "Freddy Krueger" as one of the patients. One stand out performance is Sharon Farrell as Melanie, a truly broken woman who may have been made worse by her stay on the fifth floor and trapped there. Looking like Farrah Fawcett, she definitely conveyed the manic madness and becomes an unlikely ally of Kelly. Bo Hopkins, as the abusive orderly, is chilling and disturbing as the villain. The movie was made in the late 1970s and this is very noticeable with the CHIPS like background music and 3 disco dance numbers. Although a bit contrived at moments and an ending that ends abruptly, the film held it's own on it's B-Movie budget and I would go as far as to say that I liked it better than the similarly themed, "Girl Interrupted" which also was based on a true story. Nothing more is made of the true story that this film was based on or when it happened. I have heard of a similar film about an undercover reporter who poses as a mental patient and this is only known to one psychiatrist who unfortunately dies and every time the reporter attempts to tell the staff they give him more tranquilizers. It seems unlikely that this could happen but at the same time it is plausible under certain extreme circumstances where people are going to assume that you are paranoid. Very scary thought indeed.

Its obvious that some big wigs, or maybe small wigs, decided that because One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest was popular and that Disco was still flapping its huge collars and flares on the dancefloor, combining the two would be a hit. Well it wasn't.

I saw that because this only ended up on my radar after watching old Siskel and Ebert reviews, watching old trailers and somehow this entered my consciousness. The next day it pops up on Talking Pictures TV, so it would have been rude not to... The story is about a disco dancing student who ends up ingesting some drug which ends up with her being sectioned. The rest of the movie is her trying to prove her sanity, while being abused by various members of staff. This is many peoples idea of hell. And what I can tell you is that this is based on fact. A bunch of psychologists decided to do an experiment by pretending to be crazy in order to get sectioned. They were and nobody believed their stories about being psychologists. You can look this up.

So with a solid premise and with psychiatric input to the film, its strange that "the crazies" act pretty normal. I suppose real looking mental health patients aren't for show. What is surprising is the quality of the cast. There are so many faces that went on to be so well known in the following decade its a wonder this isn't more widely known.

The film does work in terms of engagement however and the story is well paced and executed. It obviously has some similarities to women in prison movies, but it doesn't really have the same sleaze or nudity. It is basically a disco-melodrama version of Cuckoos nest, without the same emotional punch. Although it does have a satisfying conclusion.