The Asylum
2000

Although we all bemoan the death of the British film industry and the lack of home-grown horrors, there are still a few slipping out. Unfortunately in most cases they fall flat on their arses.
The Asylum wears its roots proudly on its sleeve, the problem is that it's so obviously a fan-led production that it becomes a horrible caricature of the 70s films the makers obviously love.
It is not a remake of the much-loved Amicus anthology of 1972, which is a shame. It's also not a comedy, despite featuring horror/comedy stalwart Robin Askwith. And that's the problem. Here is a film, made in the past couple of years, which features a host of old favourites - Askwith, Ingrid Pitt, Patrick Mower - even a Doctor Who in the portly frame of Colin Baker (and his inclusion says more than a bit about where the makers are coming from, too). But the film is neither camp or horrifying, it just falls (flatly) somewhere between the two.
The story (such as it is) involves Jenny, who, along with her sister, was brought up in the lunatic asylum run by her father (Mower, fresh from camping it up in Emmerdale and actually putting in a good performance for once). She dreams that it was her who stabbed her mother to death many years ago, and makes a pilgrimage back to the now-closed institution to dispel her fears.
But she's not the only one who's planning on returning - a disparate group of ex-loonies are all receiving a swirly special effect which apparently means "return to the bin, pronto".
Once everyone is ensconced in the murky old building (including Baker, who plays a fat Northern estate agent with scenery chomping relish), people start getting messily murdered (no Doctor Who fan can really say they've lived until they seen Mr Baker covered in blood and dying, mumbling "I'm sorry, mother... I didn't mean it!").
But the problem is that the deaths aren't graphic enough for a 21st century film, and the plot doesn't make any sense at all. People get scared for no reason, they jump to huge conclusions and walk into stupid situations.
Characters such as Jenny's ineffectual boyfriend seem to have been chucked in for no reason other than Pete Walker had similar characters in Frightmare and House Of Mortal Sin (he even drives a very late 60s / early 70s foppish cliché, the Morris Minor), and no-one seems to be taking the serious proceedings very seriously. Pitt in particular takes up the ham baton and wildly runs off with it, pop-eyedly screaming lines like "Don't you understand that you murdered your mother? You stabbed her and you stabbed her and you stabbed her!"
Someone should take away the woman's Equity card and burn it.
The occasional good line ("At least when the loonies were here you couldn't hear yourself think..." and "Are you The Filth? No offence...") can't quite make up for the paucity of the proceedings, and the whole thing gets very dull very quickly, so much so that when the final revelation comes you'll find yourself in the kitchen, having wandered off to clean the oven.
When the script offers you lines like "I wish I could avoid the cliché of the deformed face and the deformed mind... I'm like a character in a bad play" you know that the smart-arsed joking has to stop and someone, somewhere needs to take this country's film industry by the scruff of the neck and give it a kick up the bum. To wallow in the past is a terrible crime (unless you run a cracking website devoted to old films...)

Note: As far as I know, this film never got a theatrical release, and hasn't even made it onto video yet (May 2002). I can't say I'm surprised.