Alright fellow tapeheads, dim the lights, adjust the tracking (you know you need to), and let’s talk about a true slice of late-80s video store strangeness: Richard Friedman's Doom Asylum from 1988. Forget pristine Blu-rays for a moment and picture this: you’re scanning the horror aisle, maybe past the big hitters, and you stumble upon this cover – probably promising more mayhem than the budget could deliver, but with an undeniable B-movie allure. You pop it in, maybe late on a Friday night, and are greeted not with slick terror, but something altogether... weirder. And honestly? That’s half the fun.
### A Premise Only the 80s Could Love
The setup is pure drive-in gold: slick lawyer Mitch Hansen and his fiancée Judy have a horrific car crash. She dies gruesomely (hello, opening gore!), and he’s left presumed dead but actually horribly disfigured and quite insane. Years later, wouldn't you know it, a gaggle of punk/new wave teens (including a pre-Sex and the City Kristin Davis in her very first film role!) decide the abandoned asylum where Mitch secretly lives is the perfect place for a picnic and some band practice. Our traumatized, vengeful Mitch, armed with medical implements and truly terrible one-liners, isn't exactly thrilled about the new tenants.
What unfolds is less a straightforward slasher and more a bizarre balancing act between graphic kills and groan-inducing comedy. It’s a film that feels like it couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be, and the resulting tonal whiplash is strangely compelling. Directed by Richard Friedman, who also gave us the equally atmospheric but slightly more serious Scared Stiff the year before, Doom Asylum leans hard into the absurdity.
### Splatter, Puns, and… Old Movie Clips?
Let’s talk gore, because even on a low budget, Doom Asylum delivers some memorably nasty practical effects. Remember how real those arterial sprays felt back then, even if they were just tubes and Karo syrup? This movie has that gritty, tangible quality. There’s a particularly wince-inducing scene involving a medical drill and another featuring some unsettling work with a cadaver. It's not sophisticated, but it’s undeniably physical in a way that often gets lost in today’s smoother digital effects. These moments have that messy, handmade charm that defined so much 80s horror fare.
But then, just as you're settling into the slasher vibe, Mitch will crack a terrible pun related to his latest dispatch. It’s jarring, often nonsensical, and completely undercuts any genuine tension. Writer Rick Marx, who cut his teeth on scripts for Troma, seems to be channeling that same anarchic, anything-goes energy here. Adding to the sheer oddity are the random clips from the 1932 British film Owd Bob that Mitch apparently watches in his downtime. Were these inserted to pad the runtime, a bizarre rights issue, or just a surreal creative choice? Who knows! It’s one of those glorious "what were they thinking?" moments that makes VHS-era discoveries so much fun. I distinctly remember renting this tape solely based on the lurid box art and being utterly baffled yet strangely entertained by these non-sequiturs.
### Before They Were Stars and Other Retro Finds
Seeing Kristin Davis here, so early in her career, is a definite highlight for film buffs. She plays one of the potential victims, navigating the chaos with wide-eyed earnestness. The lead is Patty Mullen, who many will recognize from her iconic titular role in Frank Henenlotter’s delightfully warped Frankenhooker (1990) a couple of years later. She brings a certain charisma as Kiki, the final girl trying to survive Mitch's rampage and the band's questionable music. The rest of the cast gamely throws themselves into the mayhem, embodying those familiar 80s teen archetypes we know and love (or love to see dispatched).
Filmed on location at the imposing (and genuinely creepy) Essex County Hospital Center in Cedar Grove, New Jersey – a real former psychiatric hospital – the movie does manage to capture a degree of eerie atmosphere. The decaying corridors and abandoned wards provide a suitably grim backdrop, even when the script veers into outright silliness. It’s a reminder that sometimes, a great location can elevate even the most shoestring production.
### So, Does It Hold Up?
Doom Asylum wasn’t exactly a critical darling back in '88, and it certainly wasn't a box office smash. It found its audience, as so many films of its ilk did, on video store shelves and through late-night cable airings. It’s the kind of movie people rented expecting one thing and getting something else entirely – a gory slasher laced with goofy humor and head-scratching narrative choices.
Is it objectively "good"? Probably not by conventional standards. The pacing is uneven, the jokes often fall flat, and the plot logic is questionable at best. But is it entertaining? Absolutely, especially if you have affection for this specific brand of 80s horror oddity. It has energy, some memorable practical gore, and that undeniable charm of a film made with passion, even if the execution is a bit haphazard.
Rating: 6/10
Justification: The rating reflects the film's undeniable entertainment value for fans of cult 80s horror, its memorable practical gore, and its sheer weirdness factor (including the Kristin Davis curiosity). It loses points for uneven tone, weak humor, and general narrative incoherence, but gains them back for its B-movie ambition and accidental charm.
Final Thought: Doom Asylum is a glorious, messy time capsule – a perfect example of the kind of wonderfully weird discovery that made browsing the horror section of your local video store such a treasure hunt back in the day. Watch it with friends, embrace the cheese, and marvel at a time when horror could be this cheerfully demented.