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
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