This minor shocker from Italy has a few fairly brutal slayings and several nude scenes involving b-movie veteran Rosalba Neri, but little else to recommend it, even to jaded schlock seekers.
The setting, a high-end sanatorium set in a remote château, is completely unbelievable, as are the doctors and nurses who work there (or more accurately commit malpractice there). Who puts a psychiatric facility in an old château filled with scary medieval weaponry and doesn't keep the dang things locked up? And why is the grounds keeper always wandering around on upper floors where the patients rooms are? The average weekly ER viewer has more medical savvy than is in evidence here, and the worst offender is Klaus Kinski, who looks WAAYYY too creepy to be a psychiatrist. A patient? Yeah, maybe. Anyway, most of the screen time is taken up with patients demonstrating strange compulsions while the staff cluck tolerantly and promise to make them well. Yeah, right. I would not trust any of them to treat a cold sufferer. The main problem is the script, which has the feel of having been made up on the spot, with no research time spent to acquire a feel for how psychiatric medicine is practiced, or what a sanatorium should look like, or how psychiatric patients with real disorders act or anything. With little credible drama to drive the story forward and almost no suspense, the viewer has just about nothing of interest to watch between slayings. This is a common problem with many slasher movies: a few moments of shock punctuate long stretches of unwatchable dead time. In a well made thriller, the viewer is carried from one high point to the next by developing a suspenseful or creepy atmosphere, but there is none of that here. Boring!
The setting, a high-end sanatorium set in a remote château, is completely unbelievable, as are the doctors and nurses who work there (or more accurately commit malpractice there). Who puts a psychiatric facility in an old château filled with scary medieval weaponry and doesn't keep the dang things locked up? And why is the grounds keeper always wandering around on upper floors where the patients rooms are? The average weekly ER viewer has more medical savvy than is in evidence here, and the worst offender is Klaus Kinski, who looks WAAYYY too creepy to be a psychiatrist. A patient? Yeah, maybe. Anyway, most of the screen time is taken up with patients demonstrating strange compulsions while the staff cluck tolerantly and promise to make them well. Yeah, right. I would not trust any of them to treat a cold sufferer. The main problem is the script, which has the feel of having been made up on the spot, with no research time spent to acquire a feel for how psychiatric medicine is practiced, or what a sanatorium should look like, or how psychiatric patients with real disorders act or anything. With little credible drama to drive the story forward and almost no suspense, the viewer has just about nothing of interest to watch between slayings. This is a common problem with many slasher movies: a few moments of shock punctuate long stretches of unwatchable dead time. In a well made thriller, the viewer is carried from one high point to the next by developing a suspenseful or creepy atmosphere, but there is none of that here. Boring!