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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Asylum (1972)

Starring Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Barry Morse
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young doctor applies for a position at an insane asylum, and is given the test of listening to the inmates' stories to determine which of them is the asylum's director, who has become a patient.

Another Amicus horror anthology film, it's rather well-done compared to some others, although there are moments where you have to suspend your disbelief.  Although Douglas Gamley is credited with the film's score, most of the framing story's soundtrack comes from uncredited classical selections composed by Modest Mussorgsky, including his A Night On Bald Mountain playing over the opening credits, which makes more of an impact than anything Gamley wrote.  My favorite among the tales was Cushing's and Morse's, which recounts a tailor's creation of a unique suit for an astrologer who turns out to have dark motives for the suit.  Morse gives an excellent performance, although nearly unrecognizable hidden under thick spectacles, gray facial hair, and a Germanic accent, and Cushing is always worth watching.  A supernatural revenge for murder story with Richard Todd and Sylvia Syms is a bit predictable but well-executed, as is Charlotte Rampling and Britt Ekland's tale of a released mental patient who may or may not be able to see her sister in real life.  The final tale, with Herbert Lom and his character's miniature robot creations may be the most difficult to take seriously, but somehow Lom's presence and the tale's dark tone won me over a bit, if not completely.

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