ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Andy McGregor A journalist, seeking an exclusive exposé visits a mysterious mental institution where he has heard of unconventional treatments for madness. At first he is made to feel unwelcome but, on meeting the head doctor, is invited on a grand tour. As he is lead around the grounds and gardens, there are few surprises with the inmates they observe. But as his tour takes him further into the asylum, these encounters become increasingly disturbing and lurid and the patients more deranged. His journey ends in the grand hall where it is revealed that the patients have overrun the place and the staff have been killed or imprisoned. The "head doctor" is their leader and styled himself on a Napolean-like dictator; he has set his sights further than just the limits of the madhouse.This bizarre Mexican surrealism reaches for the strangeness of "El Topo" and for the demented, hellish imagery of "Caligula", "The Devils" and to some extent "The Wicker Man". Unfortunately, it has not got the same quality of writing or directing as these greatly superior films. Instead it is nothing more than a psychedelic re-telling of a Gothic short-story which makes it feel too much of a gimmick. Granted, there are some heavy hitting aspects to some of the action but by that point you have been desensitised somewhat to the relentless portrayals of madness and madcappery! When the twist comes, it is hardly a surprise. Still, this passes the time and is memorable enough, if not just for the "chickens"!

melvelvit-1 A nineteenth-century NYC journalist gets more than he bargained for when he travels to a madhouse in a remote region of France to get the scoop on Dr. Maillard's "soothing system" for treating insanity...Mexican cult director Juan López Moctezuma's avant-garde adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The System Of Doctor Tarr & Professor Fether" is closer to comedy than horror and drive-in patrons demanded their money back when it was released on that circuit as DR. TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON. It's a very well-made movie that's visually reminiscent of Fellini and Bunuel but although there's a bit of Ken Russell's THE DEVILS to it, too, an opportunity to terrify was lost once the slapstick shenanigans were introduced. The premise is still spooky, however, and the setting and era are nicely realized but it's decidedly bloodless and although foreign film aficionados may enjoy it, the frightening situation needed murder (and gore, if possible) to make it work. Plot lines featuring unsuspecting visitors to insane asylums that have just had a violent coup have thrilled audiences ever since the 70s in movies like ASYLUM, DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT, and SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (with it's sepia-toned flashbacks of a madhouse massacre featuring Warhol superstars Ondine & Candy Darling) and 60s flicks like SHOCK CORRIDOR, SHOCK TREATMENT and BRAINSTORM are close kin. I'm sorry MANSION OF MADNESS didn't deliver in that regard but if there's any more movies out there with the same scenario, please let me know.

Theo Robertson This is a bizarre horror film based upon an Edgar Allan Poe story . I have no knowledge of the original text but the idea of lunatics running an asylum has certainly influenced literature , cinema and television not to mention influencing real life itself . Was it Poe himself who came up with the expression of " Lunatics running the asylum " ? It's certainly made for a very memorable film . The bad news is that it's not going to be remembered in a good way The film starts with a journalist in 19th century France visiting an insane asylum to report on a new , radical technique engineered by an eminent doctor to treat lunacy . It's very noticeable from the start of the movie that it contains fundamental flaws in film making . For example a character says to himself " There weren't armed guards at the gate last time I visited " When you've painful exposition like this you know you're not going to be watching a masterwork of cinema . The film continues in this way and suffers from an entirely bizarre feel involving mood . We're treated to camp comedic incidental music and sound effects and the IMDb itself includes the word comedy in its genre main page . but at no point does the movie give the impression it was meant to be a camp affair . Everything seems made with a dead pan feel and it seems when the film was completed the director has gone back and insisted on injecting humour at several points hoping the audience believe they're watching camp cinema rather than incompetent movie making . Good try but he isn't fooling me This manifests itself a subplot involving human chickens , or rather lunatics who believe themselves that they're chickens . Again I must reiterate that this must have seemed grotesque and macabre on paper and is in keeping with Poe's themes . But to watch a climax involving a choreographed sequence of chicken people dancing in synchronized step is impossible to take seriously as it plays out on screen . In some ways it's like watching the climax of APOCALYPSE NOW with a bunch of effete go go dancers skipping around Walter Kurtz outpost , not that this film deserves to be mentioned in the same review as Coppola's classic because the chicken people are appearing in an absolute turkey

BaronBl00d Absolutely dreadful Mexican film supposedly based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe about a newsman wanting to go into the confines of an asylum hidden in the woods to write a story about how it works, etc... When our hero, Gaston, is given the grand show by Dr. Maillard, head of the asylum, we see all kinds of things which are suppose to be horrific, such as men hanging around long in a dungeon, and comedic, such as our hero being joked upon by soldiers as he climbs down a ladder hanging over the side of a building. Then there is one sight which might have been meant to be both: a human man dressed as a chicken, yes, that's right a chicken, that pecks around the ground for chicken feed. The scene was to be a comedic highlight of the film, but, at least for me, it was the film's low point and really most revolting when you considered that grown men and women thought this might even be remotely entertaining. Ah! That is indeed the real horror that is Dr. Tarr and his Legion of Name Changes. And that brings me to this salient fact about the film which is most films that undergo multiple title changes usually have some kind of serious problem. Yes, this is obvious, but some have distribution problems and others, of which this is one, have numerous title changes so that someone might unsuspectingly buy the same garbage more than once. This is definitely garbage. It has very little going for it. The only performer worth having a look at is Claudio Brook as the head of the asylum. He is one huge slab of ham as he laughs maniacally, bellows orders, sashays with sword in hand, and praises the chicken. I got so tired of hearing him talk about the "soothing system" as his means to cure the mentally sick. What a bunch of ludicrosity(Hey, a film like this with a script like this deserves this kind of word). It won't take you long to figure out what is going on in the asylum nor will it be any more interesting. Cinematic chicken scratch!