"Asylum"
2 1/2 stars
*
"And Now the Screaming Starts"
3 1/2 stars
It's ironic that the company that made these films is named Amicus, Latin for friend, since most of the friends in the company's films seem to be carrying axes and bent on remarkably unfriendly acts.
Amicus is the British company that in the '70s joined Hammer Studios as one of the greatest creators of horror films in the world.
The company specialized in horror anthologies, in which three or four horror stories were held together by a single theme.
"Asylum" is one of those horror anthologies, and isn't a bad one.
Released in 1972, it gathers some of the genre's top stars and brings their stories together with one of the studio's best themes.
A young psychiatrist is applying for a job at an asylum where the psychiatrist who preceded him has gone insane. The job applicant is told that he will be given the job if he can interview the dangerously insane people in the asylum, listen to their delusional tales and pick which one is the now-insane former psychiatrist.
He listens to horrifying tales from a variety of patients -- tales that feature a remarkable cast, including Peter Cushing, Charlotte Rampling, Britt Ekland, Barry Morse, Herbert Lom and Patrick Magee.
The theme, complete with a great surprise ending, works out better than some of the tales -- a few of which aren't as surprising or as shocking as you'd like.
And while there is commentary, much of it is not enthralling.
The result is that the stories here aren't enough to make this a great anthology, but the combination of stories, acting and the entertaining plot of the theme are enough to make this fun for horror fans.
While "Asylum" has its moments, "And Now the Screaming Starts" is the DVD you want to see if you are a horror fan.
Despite the best efforts of some rather stupid studio heads, who changed the name from "Bride of Fengriffin" to "And Now the Screaming Starts" and promoted the gore rather than the story, the film remains at its heart a creepy, atmospheric ghost story.
In 18th-century England, Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) returns with her new husband, Charles Fengriffin (Ian Ogilvy) to the Fengriffin estate, but discovers immediately that something horrible is going on.
She knows it somehow has something to do with something that occurred long ago at the estate and that it somehow involves a threatening woodsman who is allowed to live there, but the only people who seem willing to tell her what is going on seem to wind up dead.
There's good acting from the leads and a fine supporting cast that once again includes Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom and Patrick Magee. There is fluid direction by Roy Ward Baker, who directed "Asylum" as well as more mainstream films such as "A Night To Remember" and the British cult classic TV shows "The Avengers" and "The Saint."
And this time the commentary sparkles, thanks mainly to Ogilvy and the still enchanting Beacham. The latter in particular has some great stories, including one about how Ogilvy had to keep carrying her up the stairs over and over because the mechanical dismembered hand that was supposed to crawl across the stairs as he carried her up kept going in the wrong direction.
There's plenty of sex and violence -- like other Hammer horror films, there is more than one type of cleavage going on here -- but there is also a fine, atmospheric ghost story with excellent production values. This one is highly recommended to fans of vintage horror.
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