DOOM ASYLUM

 1987/79m

“It’ll send shivers up your funny bone!”

Director: Richard Friedman / Writers: Richard Friedman, Steve Menkin & Rick Marx / Cast: Patty Mullen, Ruth Collins, Kristin Davis, William Hay, Michael Rogen, Harrison White, Kenny L. Price, Dawn Alvan, Farin.

Body Count: 11

Dire-logue: “Come on Kiki, it’ll be alright…at least I think it’ll be alright.”

A long standing member on my to-see list, my buddy Ross of the fab Anchorwoman in Peril cheerily sent me his copy, I suspect dancing and cackling all the way to the post box as he finally got rid of it!

Anyway, Doom Asylum is infamous now as being the requisite resume shame for Kristin Davis, who played Charlotte York in Sex and the City – and still does so in the spin-off movies. Davis plays Jane, the big-specced know-it-all friend of Kiki, whose mom Judy died in a car accident a decade earlier that also killed Judy’s hotshot lawyer boyfriend Mitch, who then un-died on the pathology table, albeit a little too late to have prevented his face being partially cut off and killed the doctors doing the post-mortem.

Kiki and her friends – Jane, dorky Dennis, loverman Darnell and her indecisive boyfriend Mike – take a road trip out to the scene of the accident and then the institutey-hospital whatever-it-was. Why they go there is never really explained but when the titles looked like this, all hope of credibility, explanation or valuable intellectual subtext went out the window:

So far, so Slaughter High. Well, visually anyway. The kids decide to lie around in the sun outside, Kiki starts calling Mike Mom and one by one they venture into the building, which is the rehearsal space for volatile all-girl rockband Tina and the Tots. However, hurled insults between rival groups are the least of their worries when the wisecracking Mitch begins stalking and killing them one by one by one by one etc…

Doom Asylum is undeniably shite. It really is crap, further fuelling my theory that 1987 was the recipient of some kind of horror curse that rendered all slasher films made that year crud. Not so, you ponder? Watch Berserker, watch Terror at Tenkiller and Blood Lake – go on, watch them and report back!

There is some mercy in Doom Asylum‘s awareness of its ornate crapness: the killer’s comments are rubbish but Mike’s indecisive nature raises a couple of minor chuckles: “You’re in a lot of trouble, Torpedo Tits. I’m gonna get you for this. Well…maybe not me, but the cops will!” Then there’s Kristin Davis, who acts acceptably given the ‘demands’ of her role and the vile blue leotard she spends most of the movie in… She meets a gruesome death towards the end of proceedings if you’re keen to fast forward to that moment.

Dear Lord, that’s horrendous. If she even remembers making this film, let alone owns a copy of it, I’d be staggered.

Blurbs-of-interest: director Friedman also helmed the much better Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge as well as some episodes of Friday the 13th the TV series.