La mansión de la locura

"The Mansion of Madness" is a long forgotten surreal horror comedy from directer Juan Lopez Moctezuma. Most notorious for "Alucarda". "Mansion of Madness" contains a couple cast members from "El Topo" including cinematographer Rafiel Corkidi. The movie is loosely based on a short story from Edgar Allan Poe. The plot concerns a weird and deranged insane asylum where the patients take over and make up their own rules. Doctors out of the way! There's rooms full of crazy lunatics including people who act like chickens. Actor Claudio Brook is in charge of the madness. Fans of Jodorosky, Arrabal, Fellini and Ken Russel will definitely find this film enjoyable. It's also known as "Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon". Not to worry, there's more surreal art than torture in this flick. So why not check in, to the mansion of madness?

Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon (the more appealing a.k.a of this film) surely is one of the most bizarre films I ever saw. But then again, it qualifies as Mexican exploitation and you never know what to expect from these guys… I would love to summarize the plot a little but that's nearly impossible considering this is an incoherent series of absurdity, sleaze and semi-psychedelic stuff. The closest I can get is describing how the story takes place in a French asylum hidden in the woods, where doctor Tarr and professor Feather feast their most perverted barbarities on the poor and helpless patients…and yet they like it! My personal favorite is a guy – referred to as Mr. Chicken – who lives in a pen, alongside the other poultry. You should see how happy he is!! The screenplay is supposed to be adapted from an Edgar Allen Poe story but, even though I haven't read it, I suspect that the premise is replenished with many elements from the makers' own wicked imagination. As often the case with this type of cheap exploitation films, it features a surprisingly stylish cinematography and many addictive elements. Especially the mesmerizing opening sequence, with its wonderful blaze of colors, immediately draws your attention. The use of silly music is hilarious and you can only feel sympathy for the actor while they're attempting to rattle their exaggeratedly complex dialogues. This is the kind of cinema that normal human beings refer to as crap and complete rubbish. Only the people with a macabre sense of humor love it and regret that there aren't more films like this to find. I, for one, am proud to have it in my cult-collection.

I kinda like this bizarre Mexican flick which was a mix of "Hearts of Darkness" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Anyone familiar with these types of movies made south of the border in the seventies know that coherent plots are not to be expected. Gaston LeBlanc has come to witness the revolutionary treatments of Dr. Maillard in his spacious sanitarium. When he is introduced to the Doctor and his lovely niece Eugenie he is taken on a tour which begin an array of odd encounters with the patients who seem to roam free. As Gaston beholds the increasingly eccentric methods of Maillard's "soothing system" he begins to question the mental stability of the doctor. Chicken Man would of had me running out the front door long ago but I guess that's just me. After one of the Doctor's religious ceremonies involving Eugenie almost comes to a murderous end if not for Gaston's intervention she is taken away for punishment which for what he's witness can be just about anything. Gaston saves Eugenie, whom he has fallen for, and she tells him that Maillard is actually an escaped convict named Fragonard who led a revolt by the inmates imprisoning the real Dr. Maillard and his staff. With Fragonard's system for controlling anyone he sets out for, what else, world domination!

I can see how "Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon" can turn people off. If you are expecting a gory exploitation/torture horror film you will be sadly disappointed. This is actually more of a comedy than anything as the sheer lunacy of some of the scenes inspire some serious laughs. Claudio Brook as Maillard/Fragonard is especially entertaining as his rantings and constant cackling convinced me that nobody is more crazy in this asylum than him. It does have some slow moments when the dialogue gets a little to wordy for me but the occasional pair of naked breasts made up for that. I don't know what director Juan Lopez Moctezuma's fascination with bird people was but he definitely had an ample amount in this movie. Not everyone's cup of tea but nonetheless a movie that kept me entertained for most of its 82 minute run time which is a lot more than I can say for most of the other titles in this "Chilling Classics" collection. Give it a shot.

This is a 'quirky' (crap) seventies horror film that's eccentrically filmed (the director was on drugs) which idiosyncratic tendencies (penchant for goofy hippy shenanigans)but visually pleasing, in the aesthetic sense (please be drunk before you watch this one), the acting is almost academic in its execution (the actors are so wooden you can buy them from B&Q), the script titillating (like someone tugging your scrotum with a fish hook), and the pacing of the plot erratic (so bad I had to review this one 'live') see below: ...okay now someone's naked...and dancing...no wait she's not naked it's just so dark...why has that woman got a football strapped to her head?...is that a fish?...WHAT IS THIS RITUAL ABOUT?...no wait it's a knife...can't see a thing now...it's a law in the seventies to use xylophone soundtracks when someone has been drugged...?????????...right someone talking Poe again...sounds like that Arthur Pym one...it would help if I could see what's going on...now he's walking up a corridor he just dreamt...and I'm none the wiser as to what I'm meant to see here...'you have three shadows even though you refuse to believe me'...darkness again...that chick's covered in grapes....there's almost a story now...more 'zany' xlyophones...nothing of interest has happened for 20 mins...there's a lot of bare bums in this film...and a naked chick on a horse...wait a minute Peter Greenaway nicked this scene for Prospero's books!...now there's a band where a guy's playing a crab...and people dressed as crows...won't the torture end?

If Terry Gilliam and Alejandro Jodorowsky joined forces and made a film while tripping on acid, the result might look like Mansion of Madness, directed by Juan López Moctezuma (producer of Jodorowsky's equally bizarre El Topo).

The film stars Arthur Hansel as journalist Gaston LeBlanc, who is sent to write an article on the ground-breaking psychiatric work being done by Dr. Maillard at his remote sanatorium. On Hansel's arrival, it's abundantly clear that the man who introduces himself as Maillard (Claudio Brook) is every bit as mad as his patients, and that the lunatics have taken over the asylum, yet the journalist seems oblivious to this fact and takes a tour of the madhouse. Maillard spouts unintelligible nonsense about his radical treatment (which he calls 'the soothing method') while introducing Hansel to various occupants of the hospital, including his pretty daughter Eugénie (Ellen Sherman), a man who thinks he is a chicken, and an old codger called Dante who is chained to a cross in the dungeon.

Hansel finally cottons on to the fact that something isn't right and tries to escape, taking Eugenie with him. The writer learns from the woman that the man who calls himself Maillard is actually a brigand named Raoul Fragonard who has taken the sanatarium by force, released the patients and locked up the staff, including the real Dr. Maillard, who is Eugenie's father. While on the run, Hansel is reunited with his friend Julien Couvier (Martin LaSalle), but the trio are soon captured and taken to be sentenced by Fragonard...

Hardly a frame goes by without something incredibly weird happening, the abject lunacy accompanied by a score that would be best suited to a kids' Saturday morning cartoon (comedy drum rolls, xylophone glissandi, a penny whistle). The whole thing looks and feels like a demented comic-book, with over-the-top performances to suit, but it's all so relentlessly delirious and in-your-face that it winds up being extremely irritating as a result. I think I have a fairly high tolerance for surreal cinema, but this one was just too much for me, with patients lurking in chimneys, random nudity, a band playing bizarre instruments, people trapped in glass boxes, a nutter riding a sheep carcass, a dance routine from three weirdos covered in feathers, a man hidden by celery, and Fragonard being shot whilst wielding a turtle.