SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

MARIO GAUCI Perhaps the late great Michael Gough's last stab at a leading role and he relishes it, but the film (made for another prominent exploitation figure, Richard Gordon) lets him down pitifully! Incidentally, I guess the reason why his name is not as well-known (apart from aficionados) as that of, say, Vincent Price or Christopher Lee is that, even at his best, the overall quality of the films were markedly inferior! Anyway, this pits him in another typical environment – people being sent to a health clinic come face to face with their worst nightmare; similarly, we have a reconstituted fire victim for a villain with a dwarf as his all-purpose servant (played by Skip Martin). The hero is the future star of the sexy "Confessions" series Robin Askwith, while his female counterpart (who does little throughout the film but disrobe and scream her head off!) proves to be the niece of Gough's assistant and lover, a former Madam whose clients had served as the doctor's guineas pigs!! Typically, he intends building an army made up of wholly subservient subjects; amusingly, they are frequently made to exercise in his private gym but this does nothing to remove the very conspicuous scars on their lobotomized foreheads! Also on hand is Dennis Price as the bemused (and openly gay) tour agent who advertises Gough's specialized treatment; a review I read claims his performance is hilarious but, to me, it only felt embarrassing! His character is eventually revealed to have been blackmailing Gough, but he is disposed of before long (as are a number of others) in inventively grisly fashion via decapitation-by-blades protruding from the doctor's Rolls Royce (with a strategically-placed basket to catch the falling head)! There is also the sinister elderly station master (perhaps intended to evoke Boris Karloff!) who informs Gough of new arrivals. What to make, then, of the slimy Swamp Thing-like monster which is revealed to be hiding under the villain's 'synthetic flesh'…?! P.S. For a more rewarding (and sobering) contemporaneous film on the same themes, try Alain Jessua's SHOCK TREATMENT aka DOCTOR IN THE NUDE starring Alain Delon and the late Annie Girardot.

dbdumonteil Another story of mad scientist who uses rock musicians as guinea pigs for his experiments?If we look below the surface of the trite screenplay we could see the revenge of the establishment against those hairy young men and the horrible sounds they make ,their silly ideas of peace and love ....What saves this flick is its black humor:from the very first line about keeping the car clean to the girl's family 's racy past:Wasn't her auntie the owner of a brothel in Hamburg ?Wasn't her mom an unwed mother? and hadn't the aunt a lot of nerve to call her names? Michael Gough is the sinister-looking saw bone;the aforementioned aunt is his assistant (sounds like Franju's classic :"Les Yeux Sans Visages" aka "Eyes without a face" );and the rockers provide the raw material.It is not food for thought but it's rather entertaining if you do not demand too much.

lost-in-limbo A worn out musician decides to take break and go a relaxing vacation. He chooses to stay at health farm located out in the country and on the way there, he meets a girl on the train going to the same place to see her aunty. The mysteriously mean, but crippled Dr. Storm, who's performing brain surgery on the holidaymakers and turning them into his obedient zombies, runs the resort. When the two teens find out about his insane experiments and learn that's their fate. They go out of their way to get away. But they not only have the doctor to face, but also his dwarf sidekick, an army of leather wearing zombies and that of a hideous monster.Just wait a second, as I just pick up my jaw from the ground. Now, what was that all about!? "Horror Hospital" has got to be one of the most ridiculous and over-exaggerated horror films that I've ever came across, but you know what? I had a real ball with this blend of macabre and camp! That's high camp of a VERY demented type. The praise that I've given makes it sound great and I had a good old time with it. Although, don't be expecting anything particularly fresh and this deranged piece is one downright messy film that doesn't have any idea of the word coherence. So from that point it recycles the same old formula and leaves a lot of things up in the air. The clichés and predictability flows freely, without any sort of constraints. Also forget about logic in the script and story as that's thrown out of the window for absurd situations that don't make much sense. Actually the whole film doesn't make a whole a lot of sense, with the so many potholes and laziness. There's so much going on in the plot that there's such vagueness to everything and the problem is it tries to squeeze too much madness without explaining what happen before it and how it came to that situation. But all is forgiven because it's so abnormal and hugely enjoyable. So, just go with the flow because if you try to decipher what's going on, you'll receive a splitting headache for your troubles. The whole mysterious awe about what's going is just so hard to shake that I couldn't keep my eyes off it.The actual story is no more then a melodrama disguised as a Gothic shocker, which spurts along some exploitation and black humour along the way. Actually, the whole thing turns into a black farce with everything being poked fun at and the blood splattering is pretty much in a comic book state. Because of that the violence isn't particularly gruesome and it doesn't make you squirm, but the gratuitous bloodletting and nudity does run freely. Damn those leather-clad zombies really do like to hand out a beating! The great thing about it is that everyone involved knows how stupid it really is and don't take the thing so seriously. The performances are plain awful and purely amateurish to say the least. But it's Michael Gough's hellishly campy performance that steals the lime light as the crazy Doctor and Skip Martin as Frederick the dwarf adds a cheeky vibe to the film. The dialogue joins it with its ineptness. But even though these things are terrible there's some energy amongst it and you can't go wrong with the tongue-in-cheek approach it takes. Another strong feature is that of the setting. The resort, which more looks like a castle on the inside, has an oppressive awe about it and the grand Gothic exterior makes it look larger and menacing than it really is. Being isolated in the countryside helps provide such a brood atmosphere too. Although, it's definitely hilariously bad, it still does have its eerie moments worked in. Also the robust score builds on the suspense and uneasiness greatly and the soundtrack is reasonably groovy. Well, what do expect from that era. Really, this is purely utter ham that breathes sadism and sleaze in a very cheap way.No way can you call this a good film, because it's not. The aim of the flick is to entertain with it being heavily laced with bloody, sleazy and humorous context. Even if the production is pure rubbish, it does it effectively enough that I can see this becoming a guilty pleasure of mine. Only for people who really enjoy camp horror and if you do, you're in for one big treat.

toryn_westcott This ranks as one of the most terrible films i've ever come across. Hidden away late at night, this little British ball of rubbish contains the following: AWFUL acting. AWFUL storyline. AWFUL progression. AWFUL photography. Actually, I don't think I can go on, because the AWFUL list is so huge, that it might take me a few days to write it all! The only safe place you can watch this film is at some ground zero in the desert, where it belongs, and where it should be blown up and erased from the face of the planet. HOWEVER, despite the terribleness and the teeth grinding ridiculousness of it, I could not stop watching. I suppose this film is just enjoyably awful. Whatever. I don't want to spare another moment of my life thinking about this film. I just lost and hour and twenty sitting through it. Watch with caution....