Hospício Maldito

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.

Larry Drake is one of the best creepy killer's ever,, aka the Dentist,, well you got Paulina Porizkova running around the movie,, that's always nice,, Juergen Pruchnow investigating,, what's not to like.. I like everything that this movie had to offer, I think a lot of people were expecting like cinema art or something,, all I wanted is what exactly the movie itself present,, shock and awe,, blood, guts,, and a killer chasing around a pretty girl..i was also pleased with the plot line of the film, the location shooting, and the setting. Larry drake just plays the creepiest of killer's something about him that makes him the perfect monster or serial killer,, I hope he doesn't get typecast in that role but if he does,, we know that we will have an entertaining bloody killer on our hands for years to come no matter what he does.

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.

Just to give an example of how poorly directed this piece of junk is: when Larry Drake is trying to escape from a straightjacket while chained to a chair, the close shots of him tearing out the seams of the straightjacket are backgrounded with Foley sound of him kicking the strut between the chair's legs - and yet he remains perfectly still! (Just try kicking the legs of a chair that you're sitting on and see if you can stay still, no matter how heavy you are - ludicrous.) Larry Drake, in the usual hackneyed role of serial killer-as-superman is badly miscast. Not to be weight-ist, but he is far too heavy to pull off the role convincingly. The film tries, for example, through shoddy editing techniques, to make us believe that a man as overweight as he is can outrun a bunch of cops. It looks so absurd that it's not even laughable. Actually everybody in this movie moves WAY too slowly. It's one of those films where the bad guy staggeringly advances on his victim while the victim, as yet uninjured and otherwise unimpaired, flounders on the floor, trying to scuttle away but managing instead to conveniently back into a wall, all the while yelling, "Nooooo! Please - aaaargh!" (Sort of like my reaction to this cinematic garbage.)