Dark Asylum - Il trucidatore

I rented this as a "throw away", just something to watch. Surprisingly, it wasn't bad. No, it wasn't Jason or Freddy but it kept the pace. Larry Drake made a good psycho and Judd Nelson did well as the "janitor". It has potential to be developed into a better movie if it were remade. Remember "Red Dragon" was a B movie in the 80's before it caught on and remade well.

I recommend it as one of the better B movie thrillers.

Okay, I didn't expect much from this movie. No big names, except for Larry Drake (when was the last time he was in something decent?), and Pauline Porizkova (Ric Ocasek's SO). Your typical idiot plot (everybody acts like an idiot otherwise the movie would be over in about 5 minutes), your unstoppable loonie, your designated victims. Refreshing change in that we didn't have to listen to the loonie babble endlessly. However, the big oddity is the implicit message: sane people are stupid, ineffectual, weak, and incompetent. Crazies, on the other hand, are cunning, tough, brutally strong, and endure gunshots with only minor annoyance. This is seen not only in our unstoppable villain, but also in the sympathetic, supportive nutcase who aids our heroine. It is even seen (albeit briefly) in our heroine herself, who has her sanity repeatedly questioned when she starts behaving with some sense of self-preservation. Add in the coffee-swilling, donut scarfing cops and you have 90 minutes of stupidity you won't want to watch sober.

This movie had a lot going for it to start out with. Excellent setting of mood during the credits and a buildup of the main character. But it loses its way. It is obvious that Larry Drake can make a great bad guy (something every movie like this needs) but the screenplay ruins the role for him once the action starts. Before that he is actually a thoughtful, resourceful operator who works by intellect as well as brute strength. By the end he is just a brute and it turns out out that there is nothing there. You're expected to believe that he somehow takes out an entire swat team single handedly. And you never get to find out what his motivation was in all this.

This is the class of movie where every active character routinely does the worst possible thing for themselves. The police (except for the opening part) seem to know nothing about police procedure. Everyone -- even the bad guy! -- gratuitously maximizes the danger to themselves. It is too obvious.

They even blew Maggie's (Paulina Porizkova) "Ripley" moment, where she saddles up with cast aside hardware and wades back in to take on the bad guy because all the people who are supposed to be doing it are too stupid to do it.

And I thought Judd Nelson's career was in better shape than this. What is he doing taking on jobs like this? Maybe he owed someone a favor. His character at one point looks like it could be interesting, then fades like everything else in this movie.

Oh, well.

It's sounds interesting with the concept, but the execution is poorly done. There's barely any story other than the main character trying to figure out how to escape from the locked up asylum with a Madman inside. It does have a decent build-up with the madman introduction and how deadly he is. But most of the movie is just the characters trying to escape while surviving against the villain. The movie has a pacing issue with the suspenseful scenes happening too quickly to have tension in it and is predictable to guess what happened next. Also, there's not that much happened in the movie to make it interesting or enjoyable to watch throughout because it's mostly just the same things. The characters try to find ways to escape or fight back, but it ends up being a failure. The climax itself isn't that bad because it's somewhat suspenseful, but the characters don't make the best decisions.

A psychiatrist and a janitor do battle with a deranged serial killer while trapped inside of a 'Dark Asylum'.

The film begins with us finding out that a serial killer named "The Trasher" has killed well over a dozen people, leaving only their blood at the crime scene which is always near a dumpster. While on the beat, a couple of cops hear screaming underground near an open sewer grate. They decide to go down and end up finding The Trasher and all of his bodies. After killing one of the cops, he is captured and taken to the Crestmore Asylum for an evaluation by our main character Dr. Maggie Belham. The serial killer quickly escapes capture killing a bunch of hospital stage and cops before setting his sights on Maggie. While on the run in the hospital, Maggie runs into someone named Quitz who first claims to be the janitor but eventually reveals himself to be a patient who fell through the cracks of the system. Maggie and Quitz will have to fight The Trasher until midnight when the feds are scheduled to arrive for the transfer. Can they make it?

'Dark Asylum' is a very straight forward horror film that doesn't involve a lot of thinking, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given it's lower budget and not having the best script. The location of the asylum was really one of the best things about the movie. It was dark, creepy, and felt very dated and desolate. It was infuriating at times, with the characters constantly making dumb decisions for 90% of the movie. But overall, it kept me invested enough to sit through the whole thing and interested to see how it all played out.

Larry Drake is a scary dude. He is huge, and played the role of the psychotic "Trasher" very well. The rest of the acting had question marks for sure, but I thought it was alright overall and didn't distract from the movie. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova played final girl Maggie pretty well, hitting all the beats of fear and strength. Judd Nelson was all over the place as the janitor/patient Quitz, but had a likability to him which made me root for his survival at least.

I would recommend giving 'Dark Asylum' at least a watch if it comes your way. It was done at a time (2001) when a ton of these straight to video low budget horror films were being chucked out, so don't expect a masterpiece. Take it for the mindless thriller it is and you may enjoy the ride.

5/10.