This film starts really crazy (well, it's a sanatorium), with a patient handling an axe repeatedly and a stupid doctor staying too close to him... Until he gets close enough and is beheaded (no actual gore is shown). That is just a sample of the rest of the film. People dumbly do random things, for dumb random reasons (when there is any). There is no actual plot, but a bunch of weak excuses for people to kill and/or get killed, until only one is left. With almost no character development, it becomes impossible to care for anyone. Also, the random violence makes the film uninteresting, as there is no build-up of anything. The ending is ridiculous, one of the patients (a giant with a child-like mind) simply kills everybody that was left, for no particular reason (I don't know, maybe in his mind, everybody left was evil, so they deserved to die or whatever).Considering the year this film was made, I guess the production staff thought something like "everybody nowadays love to see people getting killed, so let's make a movie where everybody kills everybody", and that's more or less what goes on there, except there are not so many characters to begin with and most deaths happen only in the last few minutes (and in just a few seconds, mind you!)Even if you are a fan of gore, stay away from this one, as there is almost no special effects (I really don't remember any, and I won't watch it again just to check that!) People are alive in one shot, someone attacks them, then they are covered in red syrup the next shot, playing "dead", and that's the extent of the special (d)effects.With no thrills or plot, no memorable characters or acting, no good soundtrack or effects, no remarkable deaths or moments, and no anything or whatever, this film has no entertainment value, even if it's the only thing on television, on a rainy day, without Internet connection, with the batteries on your portable dead and no compatible recharger (plus, you can't sleep...!) I've seen worse films than this one, but they don't redeem this aimless mess.

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.....

Working at a psych ward can be a very scary thing. Especially, when you get transferred from a big hospital. For one nurse, it's an experience she will forget. Dealing with people with different psychological conditions can be a handful, but one must have a cool head for it. But during the transfer, one of the original nurses is killed by a patient who has a doll and treats it like it was a real baby. There's one who killed his own platoon; a man name Sam who had one lobotomy too many which makes act like a 8 year-old; and there's a former judiciary clerk who axed the doctor who was about to hire the nurse. When the replacement nurse takes over, it's all about to come together. This place has more secrets than you possibly know. The replacement doctor is really a patient in disguise, and she not only have the doctor killed, she also killed the telephone repair man, which one of the patients took a liking to. She also cuts out the tongue of the elderly patient so she wouldn't warn the new nurse. When Sam decided to let the nurse escape, all the other patients turned on the fake doctor, and utter mayhem is what happens after wards. I'll tell you straight, this movie is crazy. Nothing more I can say about it. 3 out of 5 stars.

"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!