This film is pleasantly surprising in its quality considering it is a trashy 70's B-horror film. Set in an isolated lunatic asylum, a young woman gets a job after a tragic accident kills a member of the staff. Coming at a tense time in the asylum, the woman must deal with the patients becoming more and more erratic and violent. What follows is a swirl of madness and violence that isn't as shocking as the trailer/tagline suggest, you won't have a panic attack, but there are still enough chills and frights to keep even veteran horror film viewers interested. As said before, this film is surprisingly well made for a film with such a low budget. The acting is what really surprised me the most. Normally in films of this nature we see cheesy and awful, but in this film, the cast does a surprisingly great job performing the story and their characters. While a few actors aren't so good, the rest do a fantastic job. Characters are fully fleshed out and some you will find very sympathetic, due to both solid writing and good acting. The story is also quite competent, keeping you interested throughout the film, also with some twists that caught me by surprise. While the film isn't as graphic as some movies today, the kill scenes are well filmed and frightening. Without giving to much away, the final kill is superbly directed and very effective.In short, this film is as good as it gets for low budget 70's horror, with surprising quality all around.

I happened to catch this on a channel on my Roku as part of a "Drive-In" double feature. Although it is a bit slow moving, and the background music can get annoying, it seems to have some sort of cult cheesy appeal. I had to stop the movie to go to bed, but I just couldn't rest until I finished it. Which I did the next morning. All this to say, if you like cheesy drive-in 70s thrillers, watch this one.Croz.....

"Don't Look in the Basement" is a very, very cheaply made film. Nothing about it seems very professional….yet, oddly, the film is quite entertaining. Is it really good? Nah—but very entertaining providing you are the type person who can appreciate such an odd film! This movie is set in some sort of sanitarium for the mentally ill—the very, very, VERY mentally ill. No attempt is made to make these folks seem real and it has about the same level of insensitivity you'd find in "Birth of a Nation". I have worked in a psychiatric hospital many years ago, and it was NOTHING like this place! It's pretty obvious they did not film it in a real hospital and just looks like an old house was used. And, for the parts, the 'patients' were told to act very stereotypically insane—like you might expect folks to do on "Whose Line is it Anyway?"—subtle, it ain't! When the doctor (whose methods seem no saner than his patients) is killed by one of the patients, another doctor takes his place. Soon, a new nurse arrives—and she's shocked at how ineffective and stupid the treatment is for the patients. Eventually, more folks start dying and only then do you learn some very interesting secrets. I'd say more, but I really don't want to spoil the suspense.This engaging film looks like if you were to remake "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and had it rewritten by an actively psychotic individual! It's bloody, it's scary and, what I really like is that you really have no idea who, if anyone, is sane in this film! It's one of those ultra-low budget films with no-name casts that manages to work in spite of all the many strikes against it! Clever, strange and probably not for all tastes! If you like "Carnival of Souls", "Night of the Living Dead" (the original one) or "Spider Baby", then this film is for you!

"Don't Look in the Basement" is a strange, but somewhat enjoyable little film about patients in a sanatorium who begin to take control away from the staff. We first see a patient kill his doctor (Dr. Stephens), I believe by accident. What appears to be another staff member, named Geraldine Masters, comes over and takes care of the situation just as we see a young woman approach the sanatorium. The young woman is named Charlotte, and she just got a job there as a new nurse. Over time, she see's that the way in which Geraldine runs the asylum, and is less than impressed. None of the doors have locks on them, so the patients are free to roam the house and enter any of the rooms. As the film goes on we learn each of the character's and why they are inside the asylum, leading to an interesting twist..'Don't look in the Basement' is a pretty dated film for our times, and was shot on clearly a lower budget than most horror films from that era. It focuses a lot on the characters of the asylum, and that is where the movie does well in. Each character is mentally troubled, and the film explores each of their personality traits in depth. The actors who portrayed those characters did an amazing job, surprisingly enough they are all unknown and haven't done much since this came out. All of the characters had their own quirks and stories which was fun and creepy to watch.It drags on a bit though, which is where it fails. You have to have a lot of patience to sit through a film like this, and for me it depends on my mood on that given day. If I'm in the mood to really watch it, I'll embrace it and sit through the entire feature. It's definitely a lower moving film, but worth a watch. Interesting to note; a lot of other horror films (such as Friday the 13th 5 (1985) and Alone in the Dark (1982)) have taken various plot points from this one. Check it out.6/10