The Mansion of Madness (1976)

Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Absolutely brilliant

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Well, the film does not make any sense whatsoever: How in the heck did the patients of the asylum get all those elaborate costumes for their strange rituals and such? Since when do asylums keep such clothing? The patients couldn't have ran into town then brought them back, they are way out in the woods without a horse and carriage - it would have taken them days by foot and would have most likely not have gone back to the asylum especially with elaborate costuming. The whole film has them wearing these outfits - so that makes no sense whatsoever! The story is just OK, holds my interest just slightly but the Gothic atmosphere with all the elaborate clothing is eye-candy.Basically the film is about some lunatics that captures the doctors and nurses, has them locked up and tortures them. A man hears about this strange Dr. Tarr (an inmate of the asylum that has taken over the place) and comes to find out more, investigate the place... he is accompanied by a man and his female cousin that are the neighbors of the asylum.4/10

This is a bizarre horror film based upon an Edgar Allan Poe story . I have no knowledge of the original text but the idea of lunatics running an asylum has certainly influenced literature , cinema and television not to mention influencing real life itself . Was it Poe himself who came up with the expression of " Lunatics running the asylum " ? It's certainly made for a very memorable film . The bad news is that it's not going to be remembered in a good way The film starts with a journalist in 19th century France visiting an insane asylum to report on a new , radical technique engineered by an eminent doctor to treat lunacy . It's very noticeable from the start of the movie that it contains fundamental flaws in film making . For example a character says to himself " There weren't armed guards at the gate last time I visited " When you've painful exposition like this you know you're not going to be watching a masterwork of cinema . The film continues in this way and suffers from an entirely bizarre feel involving mood . We're treated to camp comedic incidental music and sound effects and the IMDb itself includes the word comedy in its genre main page . but at no point does the movie give the impression it was meant to be a camp affair . Everything seems made with a dead pan feel and it seems when the film was completed the director has gone back and insisted on injecting humour at several points hoping the audience believe they're watching camp cinema rather than incompetent movie making . Good try but he isn't fooling me This manifests itself a subplot involving human chickens , or rather lunatics who believe themselves that they're chickens . Again I must reiterate that this must have seemed grotesque and macabre on paper and is in keeping with Poe's themes . But to watch a climax involving a choreographed sequence of chicken people dancing in synchronized step is impossible to take seriously as it plays out on screen . In some ways it's like watching the climax of APOCALYPSE NOW with a bunch of effete go go dancers skipping around Walter Kurtz outpost , not that this film deserves to be mentioned in the same review as Coppola's classic because the chicken people are appearing in an absolute turkey

I feel much less generous with this film than others of its ilk. The portrayal of madmen in this century is always done with them being so totally bizarre as to be a different species. Their antics are so outrageous as to be totally fictionalized. Everyone is Napoleon or some other historical figure; or they have a fascination with chickens. They are on the make or beating each other up. It's as if the scriptwriter said, what can I make up for them to do, without an sense of what insanity or even mental illness is. Watch the wonderful human portrayal in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" where the illnesses are believable and real. I once worked in a State Mental hospital. I didn't see any of these guys. These are too smart and calculating to make them come to life.

All the other comments already said what I was going to say, here goes anyway. I thought this was Italian at first, sorry about that, Italy. I wasn't bored because I kept waiting for something to happen. Who did that song about Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather way back when? Was it Alan Parsons? Saw this on a Brentwood 10 pack and the quality was as expected, terrible. Full of streaks and stuff. The movie was an incoherent mess. Goofy music and clueless characters. The main guy should have known in the first minute that the doctor was nuttier than the patients. I thought the "doctor" directing the "battle" scene was never going to end. Had some good looking babes though. It seems these dumb ass movies always throw in a naked chick or two and that gets you hooked. I gave it a 2 for the nekkid women. That bird people dance made me want to pull out my own eyeballs. Poe probably did about 3,000 rpms in his grave when this thing came out because it was loosely based on a story of his.