MADHOUSE

Young Clark Stevens is hired as an intern at the Cunningham Hall mental health institute. His curiosity leads him to discover strange events that have occurred in the institute; this discovery and the strange and disturbing visions that torment him will lead him to investigate the troubled history of the place, helped by a young volunteer, Sara. Why doesn't the therapy used by Director Franks have curative effects on the patients? Who is the child who wanders the hospital corridors at night? Who is really the patient in cell 44? The questions multiply, as do the murders that decimate the medical staff. The truth will be found hidden in the depths of the basement, among patients buried alive, where madness reigns supreme and reality is pure illusion. The setting of "Madhouse" is frankly seen and revisited, but maintains all its charm despite the cinema having made extensive use of it and sometimes abused it. Here we are faced with a film that has its ideal place in the thriller, but which, for some visual suggestions, gore content, and literary references, suffers a strong horror influence. Director William Butler seems to have a film background of all respect, and we are not talking about previous works, but a personal baggage rich in classics of the horror genre that in this film he pays homage to in a palpable and perhaps excessive way in some cases. It must be remembered that the line between quotation and plagiarism is thin, but Butler maintains an enviable balance by giving us scenes that for passionate cinephiles become a real hunt for titles. Just to mention a few: "Halloween", "Nightmare", "Shining", "Opera"... and we could go on much longer. These films appear without ever distorting the plot that remains well defined. The suggestive photography excellently conveys the surreal feeling of displacement in which young Clark finds himself, catapulted into an environment where madness and reality intersect and patients and doctors confuse roles and personalities. The purely investigative phase allows us to collect fragments of truth never fully revealing, but that gradually accompany us to the uncomfortable and far from reassuring truth. But isn't this what we, the viewers, seek in films of this genre? The cast is a step above these productions that benefit from a medium-low budget, the protagonist, Clark, is played by Joshua Leonard ("The Blair Witch Project") while the young Jordan Ladd ("Cabin Fever") plays the fragile and enigmatic Sara. A special mention goes to two actors in particular, Dendrie Taylor who portrays the terrible and despotic nurse Hendricks (yet another citation, this time a homage to the head nurse Ratched of the beautiful "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Milos Forman) and the always appreciable Lance Henriksen in the role of Director Franks, the latter has become, along with actors like Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs, a stable presence in the landscape of fantasy cinema. Among the guests of Cunningham Hall, the freaks who inhabit the institute's basement should not be forgotten, a sort of infernal circle where they live prey to a madness that gives them no respite, devastated and desperate from minds irreparably broken by an irreparable madness. How not to appreciate the suggestive vision that the set designer and director of photography create for our use and consumption, transporting us to a dark and dilapidated underground environment that, on the one hand, disturbs us and, on the other, fascinates us. Summing up, we are faced with an excellent work, solid, which perhaps in the end loses a bit unraveling a plot that until then was intriguing, but it's only a venial sin. "Madhouse" is a film to see, to appreciate once again works that perhaps, if not rediscovered on DVD, would be lost, and all that would really be a shame.