Don’t Look in the Basement (1973)

Episode 124, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a chainsaw. I’m Todd

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Craig, we continue our month of don’t movies with a movie that I’ve been looking forward to doing just because it’s so notorious. And, I don’t know, I’ve seen the video. It it’s just one of these kind of exploitation grindhouse features called Don’t Look in the Basement from 1973. Had you ever seen this movie before?

Craig:  No. I’d never seen it and I, gosh, I don’t even really remember hearing about it, but yet somehow the title is familiar in my mind. In fact, last week when we did another don’t, when we did, what did we do last week? Don’t

Todd:  Let’s see. We did Don’t Look Now, we did Don’t Breathe.

Clip:  Then

Todd:  And then we did One other Don’t Look Into the Woods. Don’t Go Into the Woods. Oh, my goodness.

Clip:  Don’t go

Craig:  into the woods. Right. When we were planning on doing that, for some reason I had it in my head that we were doing Don’t Look in the Basement, and I almost watched it accidentally, instead of what we were supposed to be doing. And so I’m glad I didn’t. But anyway, I was intrigued by this one because I hadn’t heard of it, and it sounded interesting and, it is. It’s quite interesting.

Todd:  It’s certainly interesting. I would call it I think this movie is has real sleazy feel to it. I don’t know. It’s not like it’s offensive, but it just has that typical, what I would consider grind house or drive in feel. It’s shot in old film stock. It’s not shot particularly well. It’s, 16 millimeters, you know, almost square presentation. The acting is not the best.  Although, actually, it’s not too bad, in this movie. It just is there’s almost nothing remarkable about it. And, it tries pretty hard, but well, anyway, we’re gonna talk about it, aren’t we?

Craig:  Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing, like, I I didn’t feel like it was bad. No. It it kinda feel the quality of it, it almost feels like a, made for TV movie from, the seventies or eighties. And it’s, you know, it was it’s a low budget film. I think they shot it for around a $100,000 or something. They shot it over 12 days on a location in that in an actual building at, some college in Texas and but at the same time it’s it’s not terrible. And and you said something about the acting.  I thought the acting was really okay. I mean, we’re we’re talking about Yeah. People in a mental institution, and they play Craig, and they really dial up the crazy. And so it doesn’t play like realism, but at the same time, you know, the the characters are interesting and and the the actors and actresses really seem to be committed to their roles, and it Todd doesn’t seem like something that was slopped together. It seems like something that as you mentioned, you know, they they they gave it the good old college try and there’s something to be appreciated about that. I mean, we without question, seen far worse movies, far worse acting and and all of that.

Todd:  So Like like last week’s movie.

Craig:  I’m not gonna be too hard on it. You know, I I think I’ve said it. I may not have said it recently, but for me, the biggest crime in making movies, particularly horror movies, is if they’re boring. I don’t I wouldn’t say that this movie is boring, but it kinda takes a while to get anywhere. It’s only an hour and 20 minutes long or something like that, an hour and 25 maybe. When we were an hour in and there was still 25 minutes left, I’m like, okay. Oh my god. Are are we gonna get somewhere with this? Or

Todd:  Yeah. Exactly. That’s how I felt. I think I think I was probably about that point that I wrote in my notes, nothing is happening. Like, stuff happens, but it’s not, like, of consequence or it’s not that interesting. Right. I don’t know. Like, I I even hesitate to say not that interesting.  I guess, by its very nature, this movie is kind of interesting. But, you’re right. It’s like, where is the point? And and I think that is one of my biggest criticisms of it is that the plot is so almost not there. It’s so meandering. It’s

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  There’s no through line for it. I may be one of what I would consider subplot. Aside from that, it’s just a bunch of stuff going on and you’re waiting to see where it goes. And it kinda turns out none of it’s really going much of anywhere.

Craig:  It yeah. And and it it all kind of hinges on a plot twist towards the that that’s revealed towards the end, but if you give it really any thought at all, you can kind of figure out the plot twist pretty early on. Oh my god.

Todd:  I figured out the plot just within the first 10 minutes.

Craig:  It took me a little longer, like, I, you know, I had my suspicions, but, you know, there there came a point where I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. I see what they’re doing here.

Todd:  Well, there are a lot of characters in this film. You know, it it doesn’t even start out with a lot of shock. It it you know, usually movies like this start out with some big kill or some big spooky thing. In this case, the film starts out with Sam and Sarge, who are up in a window of a of a house looking out. And Sarge is the okay. So we’re in a a very small insane asylum, very small private insane asylum. And Sam is a bigger black guy. Sarge is a a seems like a Vietnam vet, looking out the window, and they’re kind of having some chatter back and forth.  And again, this is where you think this is gonna be kind of significant, but it’s not really. It’s just the beginning of a tour through this facility where we just get to meet all of these characters. And then a nurse comes in and she says, hello. How are you doing? And then she leaves. And just one thing after another, we see Harriet, who’s a woman who thinks that this baby doll was a baby and she’s extremely motherly and taking care of this baby as though it were real. A woman named Jennifer with really long hair, a young girl who just seems pretty mopey, kinda like a mopey teenager.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And then, we see a guy named Judge. We see that there’s a doctor who’s egging him on. Now, this is really the first big problem that you have is giving an insane man the axe as part of his therapy. Right. But apparently, we learned later that this doctor’s idea was it’s basically explained that people have these obsessions, and if it did if you push their obsessions far enough then they’ll break free from them.

Craig:  Yeah, it’s it’s pretty stupid. I mean it it’s it basically, what he suggests is that you don’t try to, in any way eliminate or suppress these obsessions, but rather the way to deal with them is to indulge them, to the point where they can kind of act out their obsessions. And, eventually, if they are allowed to indulge in those obsessions, eventually, they’ll just cure themselves. I mean, it’s just it’s a really it’s a really stupid I I can’t imagine that there’s any scientific basis for this ridiculous theory. But it’s like, if you’re, you

Todd:  know, if you’re an alcoholic, just keep keep drinking. In fact, drink a whole lot.

Craig:  Yeah. Maybe a lot. Get better. So

Todd:  Janie, goes out and visits the the judge outside, and, while he’s he’s telling the judge, while the doctor, doctor gosh, we hear his name about a 1000000000 times. Thank you, Stevens, who owns this mental asylum, is encouraging the judge to axe this tree. And it’s like he looks up, and he’s like, oh, Janie, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And suddenly, an axe comes down into his back, which was extremely shocking. Yeah. I wasn’t expecting that. And then some people come out of the asylum, and another woman in a nurse, outfit. We later learned that her name is doctor Masters.  Mhmm. Is that right? Yep. She comes out and sees that the doc just assumes the doctor is dead. Nobody’s calling for an ambulance. Nobody’s trying to get help or anything. Right. They just assume he’s dead, and she is immediately concerned for Judge.

Clip:  Come on, Judge. Don’t look at doctor Stevens. I’m gonna help you. Come on, quietly. Quietly, calmly. That’s right, Into the house. From now on, I’m gonna take care of the family. I’m gonna take care of Cameron, Janie, and all the others.  Do you understand?

Todd:  And then they all go inside. Yeah. Leave leave leave poor doctor Stevens on the ground.

Craig:  Yeah. And and, you know, this woman, doctor Geraldine Masters, you know, she’s kind of typical in her appearance. She’s got kind of like this updo and she’s kind of I don’t know. She reminded me a little bit of missus Voorhees, but, you know, she’s she’s very put together and and she, you know, she says that, you know, from now on, I’m gonna take you know, I’ll be in charge and I’ll take care of the family. I think it’s worth noting that all of this happens before we get any credits and we’re still not done. Somebody we then see a shot of somebody, we just see their hands, takes Harriet, the girl with the baby doll. They take the baby doll and put it in nurse Jane’s room And so Harriet freaks out when she realizes that her baby is gone and runs into nurse Jane’s room and apparently kills her. Like, it it all happens very quickly and it happens in really really tight close-up shots, So it’s really kind of difficult to tell what’s going on.  It it looked like she was strangling her. When I was reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, it says that, Harriet slams her head in her in in the nurse’s luggage, slams nurse Jane’s head in her luggage and kills her. Oh, that’s all I was. Seeing that. No.

Todd:  It was from inside the luggage if it was anywhere.

Craig:  Then we see this new girl, this very pretty girl shows up at the front Todd, and that’s when we start getting, some credits. So it’s gone on for a while before we even get the credits, but we it it turns out that this new girl, her name is Charlotte, Charlotte Beal. And, again, just like last week, I didn’t write down any of the actors’ names because they were all virtual nobodies, you know, the all newcomers, and none of them I mean, I looked at their IMDB pages, and some of them did, you know, another movie or a couple of other very low budget movies that you’ve never heard of, but, you’re not or at least I didn’t recognize anybody in the movie.

Todd:  The woman who plays Charlotte apparently was a playboy model and I thought, oh, well, she’s like a playmate or something. No. She just appeared on the cover.

Craig:  She’s a very pretty lady, so it doesn’t surprise me. She shows up actually right before he had gotten killed. Doctor Stevens had said because nurse Jane was quitting because Harriet had threatened her. Harriet had said if you touch my baby, I’ll kill you and and that was enough for nurse Jane. She said, I’m I’m leaving. And doctor Stevens had said, oh, you know, you can’t leave. I’ve hired somebody else. We’re gonna have more help.  It’s gonna be fine. Well, then the whole thing went down where he got killed and, Charlotte shows up and she goes inside and she meets with, doctor Masters who doesn’t know anything about her. And, like, they even have kind of this discussion where doctor Masters is like, it doesn’t make any sense that he wouldn’t have told me about you, you know. If he was gonna hire somebody, if he was gonna make that big of a change, like adding to the staff, he would have told me, which in hindsight should have been a big clue as to kind of what’s going on here because, really, it would make sense that he wouldn’t have told her ultimately. Charlotte is adamant. She’s like, look. I had this good job, and I left it because I was guaranteed a job here, and I really, need this job. And, she’s like, just let me talk to doctor Stevens and we’ll clear it all up.  And doctor Masters is like, well, she he he there was a terrible accident and he died and I’m in charge now. But eventually, doctor Master says, okay. Well, since you’ve come all this way, I’ll let you stay on a temporary basis, and we’ll see how things go. And she says, your your room will be upstairs. It’s late now, so just go up there and I’ll brief you in the morning. And so Charlotte goes upstairs and she runs into this scary old lady, who we see in, close-up. And this it ends up being another one of the patients. Her name is missus, Callingham.  But she really just serves the role of the creepy old lady who gives very cryptic kind of warnings. She says to Charlotte, get out and never come back. And then she quotes a poem which was very familiar to me because it’s the same poem that the creepy guy outside of Willy Wonka’s factory quotes to Charlie in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s

Clip:  Up the every mountain down the rushing little man.

Craig:  Just this little ominous stuff like, oh, scary. Get out of here.

Todd:  Which made a lot more sense in Willy Wonka than it did

Craig:  in this movie. Right?

Todd:  And she does it, like, 2 or 3 times. It’s so goofy. Like, the dialogue here is really dumb. I mean, like you said, you can at this point, if you’re not starting to piece together what’s going on, you’re and I think that it’s really funny that she’s saying, how could how could you how could you be of any help here? It’s like you have an insane asylum with, like, 9 or 10 people here and one doctor overseeing it all. How could how could a nurse not be of any? No.

Craig:  Well, and throughout the course of the movie, you know, this is just something it’s it’s it’s so nitpicky, I suppose, but, like, there’s really nothing as far as treatment going on the rest of the time. Like, they all just kind of live there and coexist there. And every once in a while, you’ll see, nurse Charlotte, like, doing inventory of the one tiny little medicine cabinet that they have. Like, that’s her only job is to, like, count the bottles in the medicine cabinet several times a day. And you see her doing that.

Todd:  And speak condescendingly a little bit to the, to the other, inmates. Like, oh, how cute. Or, oh, well, this is a little silly what you’re saying. I mean, it’s just she’s absolutely not equipped to be here even though apparently the doctor was impressed with her. And like you said, there’s nothing happening.

Craig:  Yeah. I don’t know. Well, and then yeah. This is where it gets difficult to really talk about the plot because honestly really nothing happens like it’s it’s just Charlotte kind of interacting with all of the other characters and, you know, Sam, who you mentioned before, he’s this, big black guy. He’s like this gentle giant, and the doctor, Masters, explains to Charlotte at some point that, Sam is one of their most long standing patients and the the doctor used to do surgical procedures, on on his patients and Sam was the last one. Like, I guess Sam was like a violent criminal, and so they lobotomized him. And in the process of lobotomizing him, it took away all of his violent tendencies, but it also reduced him to the mental capacity of an 8 year old. And so that’s how he acts.  He acts very childlike, but at the same time, you know, very gentle and and nonthreatening.

Todd:  And and I actually kinda dug Sam. The if you’re if you’re to say that there’s a central character in this film, it’s almost him. There’s a while here, and it’s probably about now when we we leave Charlotte entirely. Like, you feel like the movie is going to revolve around Charlotte. Oh, it’s this newcomer who comes to the insane asylum, almost like Suspiria, you know, the new new person comes in. That’s just the typical way things go. And and here, like, we just leave Charlotte for quite a while and all these other things are happening with all the other inmates with each other and around the around the place. It makes it seem like it’s a big place even though it’s absolutely not big at all.  It’s not like anything that goes down in this place couldn’t be heard, and it’s not like people would be able to run around without bumping into anybody else. Although the movie shoots it in a way that you would think that that was the case. Mhmm. You know? Again, another nitpicky thing. But it’s just funny because then the the film just doesn’t revolve around Charlotte. It just pops in with her toward the end. Like, some of these people pop in and seem to be main characters for a while and then they just disappear. But but the one constant throughout it all who keeps springing in just from scene after scene is Sam.  And I really liked his acting. I thought his acting was pretty good for what it was. I mean, it’s probably not hard to play that kind of character.

Craig:  Well, yeah. I mean, it’s he’s very reminiscent of, like, Lenny from of Mice and Men, you know, kind of just this gentle giant kind of character and and you do and he is. He’s childlike, like, he eats a lot he eats a lot of popsicles. And and it seems like of all of the inmates, he’s the one that everybody just kind of talks Todd, like he’s kinda the little brother, of the ward. But you’re but you’re right, like, we spend a lot of time just kind of getting to know some of these other characters and they all have distinctive character traits, but like you said it ultimately isn’t particularly significant. Like, one of the main ones is Allison and Allison’s story shit. Her story is kind of messed up, like, I guess I don’t know. Her her dad died.

Todd:  So not PC.

Craig:  I know. Her her dad died. She loved her dad, and then her dad died, and then her mom married some other guy, and she loved that guy Todd, but then he left. And then, she married some guy, and she devoted herself to him, but, like, he pimped her out and then eventually Like, literally. Yeah. Literally. And then, like, I guess, the doctor master says and then he found somebody younger and cuter, and so he kicked her out, and so she craves love. So, basically, she’s the nympho of the ward and she’s constantly throwing herself at every man except for Sam.  She doesn’t throw herself at Sam, thank goodness, but the rest of them you know And, like, when I say throwing herself at them, she’ll, like, go and, like, try to talk seductively to them for, like, 10 seconds before just ripping her clothes off.

Todd:  That’s right. She fulfills the the t and a quotient of the movie, which which isn’t even that much, but you’re right. It’s so funny. And it’s funny because you could you could see it coming a mile away. Like, at one point, she comes in and I could see that her dress had, like, a zipper all the way down the front. And I was like, well, we know what’s gonna happen later in this scene.

Craig:  Yeah. Well and and the thing I mean, I guess maybe this is a credit to the movie because it’s not sexy. Like, it’s it’s it’s desperate and sad. Like, it’s it’s kind of almost hard to feel sorry for her because she’s so aggressive and, like, as as soon as she’s rejected, she always, you know, kinda freaks out and she’s trying to throw herself at these guys. So I I don’t know. She’s not a particularly likable character, but it is desperate and sad. I I guess that’s what they were going for.

Todd:  This well, I don’t know. You know, maybe they were going for it, but I feel like that’s just how it comes across. I mean, this is why I think the movie just has a little bit of a sleazy feel is that you feel like they’re shoehorning her in there for that. Yeah. But it’s not done very well, and so it does just come across as desperate and sad. And and it’s funny because it’s like, it’s also clear that maybe either the director was shy about putting too much of the t and a on the screen, or maybe she was shy about having too much of it on there because it’s not like in your face. It’s like she’ll rip her top off and you’ll see it for about a couple seconds and then it’ll be gone. Or she’ll rip her top off and then she’ll run into a room and and fall down on the bed, you know, and stand up from the bed covering herself.  It’s like all of it just feels a little icky to me. No. Not in in in the way it’s shot, in the way it’s presented, not just her character.

Craig:  Yeah. No. I get it. Looking back, I kind of get what was going on. But in the moment, it just felt kind of random. Like, one of the next things that happens is, again, we see a pair of hands. We don’t know who it is, but it cuts some what look like electrical wires. And I’m and I was thinking in the moment, I’m like, I don’t even really understand what is happening.  But then the movie immediately explains itself by showing that Charlotte tries to make a phone call out of her room, and she can’t. So, obviously, somebody has cut the phone lines. It it seems so random. Like, Charlotte has a moment where she talks to missus, Callingham again when miss Callingham is in bed, and they had had a scene earlier where they had walked together in a field. And, miss Callingham’s like

Clip:  You liked our walk in the garden didn’t you? Yes. I did. Well, don’t be surprised if we never go again.

Todd:  It’s funny because the doctor bastards kind of pops in during that. And I guess she must have said too much because later on, maybe it’s as as after

Craig:  the scene. Morning.

Todd:  It’s the next morning. Suddenly, there’s screaming or no. It’s not even screaming. I think just the nurse goes in and says, hello, missus Callingham. How are you doing? And she looks down and there’s blood on the on the pillow. And missus Callingham is on the floor next to her and she’s got blood all over her and I’m like, what is going on? The nurse just flat out says that, oh my Todd, your tongue has been cut out.

Craig:  Yeah. And then doctor Masters comes in, and and I I guess they get missus Callingham, you know, to the infirmary’s I don’t know. They they get rid of her. And doctor Masters is talking to Charlotte, and she’s like, oh, don’t worry about it. You know, when people work them up selves up into psychotic states, they move beyond the threshold of pain. She probably didn’t even feel anything. And and then she’s like she’s like, she did this to herself. She’s just gonna have to learn to deal with it.

Todd:  This is a fantastic hospital to send your relatives to, by the way. There’s no treatment going on. And then the the phone repairman shows up. It’s so silly. There’s it’s just chewing time. You know, he comes in. He goes upstairs and meets Judge. And Judge says some ominous things to him.  He’s like, hey, look, I’m just the repairman, and then somebody else comes in.

Craig:  It’s missus he meets missus Callingham who, you know, like, I don’t know if you cut your tongue off at what the procedure, you know, like what the healing process would be there, but she’s apparently fine except for the fact that now she talks likes an old person who doesn’t have their dentures in and she’s like it’s really it it plays kind of funny. I mean, it’s it’s really kind of exploitive, but, like, she just mumbles.

Clip:  Poor lady, I hope that isn’t catching.

Todd:  Is this supposed to be funny? Anyway, then doctor, Master shows up, and she’s furious at him for coming in. How did you get in here? What did what is the meaning of it? And he’s just affable in the face of it all. Hey. Look. I’m just a telephone repairman. I’m I’m just here to fix your phone. We noticed that the voltage had dropped. And she’s like, why didn’t you tell me you were coming? He’s like, well, you didn’t have a phone.  I couldn’t call you. So, yeah. He goes downstairs and starts to repair things. Now, in the meantime, Allison comes in and starts seducing him.

Craig:  Pulls her boobs out.

Todd:  Pulls her boobs out, shuts the door, behind her in there, and then boom, we’re into another scene.

Craig:  Yeah. With Allison in it. Right? Like Yeah. And I I was like, what is happening? Because the door closes behind them. Like, this guy, he’s trying to ward off her advances. Like, at first, he kind of tries to play along a little bit because she’s being so aggressive, and she’s like, tell me you love me. Tell me you love me. And he’s like, okay.  I love you. Oh, I love you. Oh, I gotta go now. And then she gets all aggressive and, like, you know, jumps them, and the door shuts behind them. And like you said, it cuts to another scene, and she’s in it. And I’m like, what happened? Like, where did Ray the telephone guy go? I and I still really don’t understand. I mean, I I I think I ultimately understand what is implied happened, but in the moment, we have no idea. Like, we don’t have any idea if he’s still there, if he left, if and did something to him, and and there’s a lot of that going on.  Just these little things that are dropped, like, Sam keeps talking about doctor Stevens as though he’s still alive and, he keeps saying things like doctor Stevens told me all about Charlotte, and doctor Stevens told me this and told me that, and I’ve got a secret, and I won’t tell anybody but miss Charlotte. And, like, I didn’t know if he was just crazy or if there was something going on and Yeah. It feels like it’s trying to set up for a payoff, but then the the payoff is lame. It’s pointless. Basically it. It’s stupid.

Todd:  Well, it’s trying it’s trying to weave all this intrigue, like, you’re supposed to be but but things just get dropped left and right that you just forget about them. Yeah. This thing that happens, the the scene that Allison’s in is and this is where it really starts to go off the rails, I think, is that Charlotte’s in her room. Suddenly, the closet door swings open, and Jennifer attacks her with a knife.

Craig:  Yeah. For no apparent reason.

Todd:  For no good reason. Well, I think the doctor comes in at that moment and wrestles her off. And then and then she calls Allison, and that’s when Allison comes in to help. So Allison walks Jennifer out, and then the doctor turns right around to her and says, well, Jennifer’s alright. I really don’t know what happened.

Clip:  What? Yeah.

Craig:  It is

Todd:  Doris just got attacked by an inmate. And and so Charlotte doesn’t wanna stay. She’s like, oh, I don’t think I belong here. I don’t think I belong here. And now doctor Masters has got completely the opposite tact. Now she’s, of course, you’re gonna stay.

Craig:  Right. And there’s even a whole another character that we haven’t even talked about. There’s another character named Danny who is just this fro headed kid, who, I guess, plays pranks on people all the time and just laughs maniacally. Like, that’s his character Craig. Like, just maniacal laughing, and mischief making. You know, I say that like we haven’t mentioned him yet. He’s around all the time and he’s constantly causing trouble and pulling pranks on people, like, he’s the one that stole, Harriet’s baby. At one point, he puts the moves on Allison and then as soon as she gets into it, he just starts his maniacal laughing like it was a big joke.  Like, it just it just it feels kind of like a hodgepodge of scenes that don’t really seem to be going anywhere. Ultimately, like, ultimately you get to the end and you’re like, okay. Well, I guess we’re here, but we could have cut out the last hour and it wouldn’t really have made any difference. Like, it’s like it just let we need an hour Todd establish that these people are crazy. Okay. Well, I got that in the first five minutes, so let’s pick up the pace a little bit here, folks.

Todd:  Sam gives a watch to Charlotte, and it’s engraved on the back. And that’s supposed to mean something, but I guess it was the doctor’s initials, you know, doctor Stevens.

Craig:  And he and he tells her he wants to help you. Well and yeah. And then that doesn’t go anywhere. And and right before that okay. So I’m clearly more dense than you are because even though I had suggestions of what was going on, it really wasn’t until this scene where I was like, oh, okay. This is obvious. In fact, I think it just gets laid out. The doctor goes into whose room does she go into?

Todd:  Oh, sergeant.

Craig:  She goes into sergeant’s room and he has, like, a a big note card with her name on it. And I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so maybe you could see it, but it seemed like it was kind of intentionally fuzzy. I think so. Yeah. But, you know, she gets really mad when she sees it and she crumples it up and she sets it on fire and she makes him hold it in his hand while it’s burning as punishment, but it’s it becomes obvious in this moment that doctor Masters is also a patient here, like, she’s not a doctor or at least she’s not a practicing doctor. I think when we later find out, you know, when Charlotte eventually confronts her, it turns out that she had been in medical school or she had been training to be a doctor or something, but then there had been some sort of accident where she had been responsible for the death of a patient and that had derailed her medical career and I guess drove her crazy. And so just like with every other patient in the ward, the doctor had indulged her fantasy and had allowed her to pretend to be one of the doctors on the ward. So when he was gone, she just carried on playing that role.  But the truth of the matter is she’s really crazy too. Surprise. Woo hoo. There’s your big twist.

Todd:  The inmates are running the asylum. The next two scenes are 2 of my absolute favorite scenes in this movie. This is after Sam gives the watch to Charlotte. Now now we suddenly have another random scene where Charlotte is outside talking with Danny, and they’re in this field. And it for no good reason, it’s like a close-up on Charlotte’s legs. And then it like, it’s supposed to be sexy or something, and then it zooms out through their I don’t know, they’re standing in a field of daisies or something. It’s really tall flowers. And Danny’s sitting, and Charlotte’s trying to make conversation with him.  And even though she’s supposed to have gotten to know the back stories behind all these characters, she’s talking to him like some guy at college she’s just getting to know for the first time. So tell me about your family. And then Danny gives her a flower, picks a flower and hands it to her. And she holds the flower and she goes, oh, this is so sweet. Thank you. Okay. Time to go inside now. And she throws the flower down and walks off.  Yeah.

Craig:  Well, he also he also kisses her, like, just on the cheek. I mean, it’s relative it’s relatively innocent, Like, he kisses her on the cheek, but she just doesn’t really respond to it at all. Like, one would think that a professional would say to this crazy kid, you know, that’s really not appropriate. But, no, she just stands there. It’s like, oh, that’s nice.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s just it’s so it’s such a weird scene because it feels like it was again, like, what are they trying to do here? Are they trying to set up something here? Is she gonna is there something between her and Danny? No. It no. Absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s really ridiculous because then she tosses the flower down and runs away, which is a very insensitive thing for her to do. Danny picks up the flower and is he, like, wailing? Is he crying?

Craig:  No. I think he’s just, like, crazy laughing again. That’s all he does.

Todd:  I thought he was super upset. Anyway, that was it. Then again there’s that have no that scene had absolutely no point.

Craig:  Well, and then the next scene made no sense to me at all. Charlotte’s in bed asleep. Right? Yeah. And and then and then Judge is standing over her, like, with his axe raised over her while she sleeps, and then it’s almost as though Dani comes in and just kind of nudges Judge away and tries to get in bed with her. Right. And then she wakes up and she’s, like, what’s going on? And Judge has some creepy monologue.

Clip:  We can be sure there will be other times. Other times for other things. Unlike your friend, Danny, I I choose only perfect moments. Perfect moments to work out perfect destinies for so many lives.

Todd:  He leaves and she’s, like, clearly visibly distraught. She’s laying in bed. Now, first of all, I’d be leaping out of bed and leaving that place. And I thought, what, is she gonna go to sleep after this? And then it kicks to the very next scene, which is her taking inventory. Yeah. Like like that whole previous scene never happened.

Craig:  And as she’s taking inventory, she finds that some meds are missing and, you know, masters freaks out about that, but she immediately goes and searches Moody Jennifer’s room and she finds the drugs there and she takes them. Meanwhile, Sam looks into the closet where Allison had had her tryst with the telephone guy and we don’t see what he sees, but, he freaks out. And it was it it it was at this point that I was thinking, is there a basement in this movie? I know. I was like,

Todd:  where is the basement gonna come into play?

Craig:  It does eventually in the last few minutes, but I I was like, what’s in the basement? Like, they’re not supposed to look in there, but I don’t know. You know,

Todd:  I was really hoping that the beginning of the movie when the doctor was giving Charlotte a tour of the place, she would have said something about the basement. Now now don’t look in the basement. Right. You can go anywhere else on the grounds, but stay out of the basement. Yeah.

Craig:  Todd doesn’t come up until, like, the last 5 minutes.

Todd:  Well, to be fair, the movie was originally called The Forgotten. And you can tell that it’s an alt you can tell that it’s an alternate title because as soon as that title sequence begins, it’s it’s one of these title sequences where the titles are carefully placed over the action as the action is going along as she’s walking up there and everything. And then when it gets to the title part, suddenly the entire image is replaced by a big title screen that looks absolutely nothing tonally like the what you’ve been seeing before. Yeah. And it’s just a freeze frame called don’t look in the basement, and then it pulls away. So

Craig:  Oh, man. Well, Jennifer freaks out when she finds the drugs missing out of her room and so she tries to she goes in and she tries to steal more, but then again, we don’t see who it is, we just see hands. But as Jennifer is leaning over the desk, somebody grabs her head and thrusts her face down onto one of those dangerous office spikes that we have said nobody should have because they’re dangerous. And it goes right through the goes right through her eye. What are

Todd:  the chances that we would review? What it’s only been like a month. Right? Yeah. Maybe on the laptops, 2 films where somebody gets an eye an office spike in the eye.

Craig:  And then things move I’ll say things move pretty quickly from here. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re particularly exciting but because

Todd:  it’s not really coalescing into anything. No. All of the things that we’re talking about, they’re just random things that are happening. It’s not like there’s one killer doing all this or there’s some motivation behind it. That’s the big problem.

Craig:  Yes. Okay. So Sam Sam grabs Allison and and shows her what he found in the closet, which is the telephone guy dead. And so she freaks out. And as she’s freaking out, Charlotte is trying to calm her down. And, Allison’s this is where she she just lays it all out.

Clip:  Master. Master killed him because he loved me, Charlotte. She’s just like the rest of us here and she killed him. And you didn’t know that, did you? She’s a patient that I could see with she was schizophrenic just like me.

Craig:  My favorite part of the movie is that then Allison goes running around and To everybody. To everybody. And she she literally says, I’ve got to hear it from all of you. Why? Why do you need to hear it from everybody? Just take Allison at her word. You know? Like, come on.

Todd:  So bad. What’s so funny about this is this could have been explained at any time. There was no mystery here except to Charlotte what was going on. Just so the fact that Allison decides to reveal it all to her now is kinda like, oh, okay. Really? And then like you said, now we see her stumbling around the house aimlessly just like, you know, she can be threatened with a knife from the closet, and she can be threatened by a guy with an ax at her bed, and then go back to checking medications the next day. She doesn’t seem to know how to go to the front door and leave the house. She just wants to stumble around, talk to everybody, confirm her suspicions 5 you know, confirm what Allison said 5 or 6 times, and then, again, wander around aimlessly not knowing not knowing how to get out.

Craig:  Well, right. I mean, the way that they explain it is Todd doctor has locked all of the doors. I just never buy that. Like, come on. I there’s gotta be a way out of this stupid house. But, anyway, she’s she’s running all around. And and and it’s very much, you know, like, lots of slasher movies that we’ve seen when the final girl finally realizes what’s going on out of nowhere and then runs around and finds all this carnage. So she runs around and finds all the dead people.  And and also something else that I found odd was that at this point, it seems like everybody in the asylum who has been, you know, they’ve been fairly non threatening, up to this point, all of a sudden now they’re all incredibly menacing. And Yeah. The judge, you know, says to Charlotte, the verdict is in on you and you’re guilty and you’re, a patient. You’re not really a nurse. Which, you know, for a second, I was like, oh, that might kind of be an

Todd:  twist too. I was I was I was hoping for that, like, the double twist.

Craig:  Yeah. But no.

Todd:  Well, at this point I wrote on my notes, do we really still have 15 more minutes to go in

Craig:  this movie? And we may as well not have because, I mean, you could wrap it all up in 5 minutes. Basically, everybody just kinda goes crazy. At one point, Allison has blood on her hands and is washing them off. What was that all about? Did you know? Did Allison kill somebody?

Todd:  Well, she had a a tryst. She had a tussle with the doctor, and I and the doctor was trying to stab her with a needle or something, but it looked like she turned the table on her instead. The doctor was giving her something to sleep or whatnot. And she turned the tables on her, but it was just a needle stab. And when she was washing the blood off, I thought, oh, she must have done more, you know, to the doctor after that. But, no. No. It didn’t.  I don’t know why she was bloody. I don’t know why Charlotte tried to go to the phone again. And then, she runs into Sarge’s room. And we forgot about Sarge at this point because, again, he’s only in one place ever and is only in, like, 3 scenes. And she asked Sarge, is there an attic or an outside door?

Craig:  Why why would you be looking for an attic? Like, this is a 3 story house. What are you gonna do in the attic? It doesn’t even make any sense.

Todd:  I I wanted to know why she was asking for an outside door. I’m like, yeah. There’s the door you came in from.

Craig:  Front door. There’s a front door.

Todd:  There’s a back door. I mean, it wasn’t till later. It wasn’t until after that line that somebody explained that, you know, she had locked all of the Right. The doors from

Craig:  Well, and then finally, Charlotte goes to the basement and I I just feel like this was so they could have done so much more with it, like, we see like as she’s walking down the steps, we see some, like, bloody hands, like, reaching up towards her feet, but then she gets down there and whoever it is that’s down there scares her so she beats him to death and it’s doctor Stevens who apparently has been alive this whole time down in the basement, but there’s absolutely no payoff to it because as soon as she goes down there, she beats him to death. Like, he doesn’t even say anything.

Todd:  No. And suddenly, the doctor appears again. So I guess she wasn’t incapacitated after all

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  At the top of the steps, and she orders Sam down and Sam suddenly, nice congenial Sam, is stricken with anger over the fact that now he didn’t see this happen. He I think he just puts 2 and 2 together that she took his toy boat Mhmm. Which was on the steps and beat the doctor to death with it. And so now he’s angry, and he’s taking her upstairs. So now she’s got no friend in the world. And honestly, there’s still there’s no point. Like, okay. So he was alive in the basement the whole time.  What good does that do anyone?

Craig:  None there’s there’s absolutely no point to it. It doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, like, I don’t know. They so so Sam takes her upstairs and and she’s pleading with him and saying that the doctor is crazy and but he’s not really listening. It’s only when masters comes upstairs and says, you know, she’s she’s evil, you know, she killed doctor Steven, she’s not your friend, so we’re gonna have to cut the evil out of her just like we did with you. And, like, he has kind of this fuzzy flashback of doctor Stevens and doctor Master standing over him presumably when they lobotomized him. And I guess he has negative feelings about being lobotomized. So he doesn’t want Charlotte to be lobotomized. So he let he lets her go and throws doctor Masters over the bed and she kinda lands in the corner between the bed and the wall.  And then all of the other patients walk in like they’re right out of Night of the Living Dead and just surround her and throw her down on the bed and, like, rip her to pieces. I mean, I get okay. Fine. They’re crazy. Some of them have exhibited violent tendencies in the past, Allison you know, some of them have personal grudges against her because you know, like with Allison, she killed her boyfriend or whatever, Ray the telephone guy. So it’s not like it’s entirely unmotivated, but it comes so far out of left field that just all of a sudden they become like this zombie horde and literally just tear her apart. And then Sam takes Charlotte, like, out the back door, like like Yeah. Here it is.  Here’s that mysterious door you’ve been looking for for the last 20 minutes. And he he he pushes her out and he goes back in and he goes upstairs and kills everybody. It kills everybody else. And the film ends the film ends with her. Charlotte stands outside and listens to all the screaming going inside for a minute, and then she turns and runs away. And the last clip we get is of Sam sitting covered in blood, sitting and eating a popsicle and weeping. The end.

Todd:  So weird. It just feels like a movie written by 14 year old boys. And at this point, it it it really feels sleazy. You know, it’s got that icky grind house feel to it. And I think a lot of it has to do with the way the director shoots it. He just loves close ups. And it’s close ups maybe because they’re in a confined space. It’s close ups because, he’s really trying to get in their face or he thinks it’s artistic.  And it really gives a claustrophobic feeling to the movie. And I’d like to say that was intentional, but I really don’t think that this was competently made. And so I’m not gonna give him I’m sorry. I’m just not gonna give him a lot of credit for it. And then when it gets to that scene, where they’re in that small room and everybody’s hacking away at the doctor, and then he goes in and he’s hacking away at the rest of them, you know, there’s no there’s just blood squirting in places. There’s just blood on things. And it’s done with this handheld close-up quick cuts everywhere. It just feels gross.

Craig:  I I know what you mean. It does. It it does feel kind of sleazy and but I think to be fair, this movie is kind of the product of a bygone era. You know, I think that this was kind of a genre of films. You know, this played as a double feature with Wes Craven’s Last House on the left, which is just, like, terribly sleazy. You know, I love Wes Craven, and I love his movies. I even can appreciate Last House on the Left for what it is, but it’s hard to watch. I mean, it’s it’s it’s dirty and gross and violent and and really and exploitive and and it’s nasty.  A It was a genre film especially in the mid to late seventies, you know, that played well in drive in theaters when people were probably a little bit more And so, you know, that’s fine. I and so, you know, that’s fine. I I really I didn’t hate it. I I actually thought there were some things, you know, I’ve got some positive things to say about it. I thought that the actress who played Doctor. Masters, she did a pretty good job of

Clip:  of She did.

Craig:  You know showing a contrast in her character whereas in the beginning she plays fairly believably the professional, and then towards the end where things are getting revealed you get to see her far more unhinged, and and so there was, you know, some good performance there. I liked the guy who played Sam. As you said, maybe that type of character isn’t particularly challenging, But nonetheless, I thought that he did a good job and he was endearing and I liked him as a character. Some of the other characters were, you know, like Allison, I didn’t like her as a character, but I thought that the actress who played her did a pretty good job, Yeah.

Todd:  For what she had to do.

Craig:  Right. Right. And that, like, some of the characters were so silly like Judge and Sarge and Harriet. They were and and Danny, they were just so they were written so silly that it was difficult to take them seriously, but I didn’t think that anybody did a terrible job in terms of performance. It’s not something I would care to see again but you know it wasn’t wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Todd:  Judge reminded me so much of Orville Ketchum from Sorority House Massacre 2.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  I mean, spitting image and just the way that he played him. Although, I have to say, I thought Judge was played pretty well. I mean, to to be that intense all the time, it could come across as extremely campy. And he’s written campy, but I I could believe that there was a psycho like this. Sure. You know? And it’s felt like there was an an internal struggle going on with this guy. Like, he had his in his little script where he would just start reciting. Mhmm.  I am judge whatever blah blah blah blah blah of the yada yada yada circuit court and yada yada. And it was like he would slip into that when he was uncomfortable or when he didn’t know what else to do, and there was a change that would come across his face. I I just thought, in a poorly written movie that’s really cheap, I thought that he actually did a pretty good job for playing the kind of character he had to play.

Craig:  I I loved Missus Callingham. I thought she was hilarious. I I think that maybe my biggest complaint, and and I don’t even know if it’s really a fair complaint, the movie looks cheap. Like, even though it’s shot on location, everything looks really sparse and it almost even kind of dirty, like, you know, it’s it’s shot in this big house and when you see these huge hallways and they’re completely empty, the bedrooms are, you know, it’s just an empty room with a bed and maybe a dresser, you know, like, there’s Yeah. Doctor Masters goes on and on and on all the time about, oh, we’re a family here. No. This doesn’t look like a family. This looks like a jail and, you know, like, there’s there’s nothing warm or inviting about it at all.  And and so and it’s, you know, like you said, it’s it’s shot on cheap film and and it looks like it. And so from a modern perspective, it doesn’t really look very good. It it looks cheaply made.

Todd:  No. You know, it you know, to date myself a little bit, it it had the distinct feel. You said made for TV movie. I was even thinking public school filmstrip, educational filmstrip.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Like, when they would actually set up a projector in our classroom and show you some movie about the importance of washing your hands or something like that. This this had that feel to it.

Craig:  Yeah. They it’s funny, you know, they, there was a a remake was announced I think in like 2,000 8 or something, but I don’t think that it ever at least what I read, I don’t think that it ever got off the ground. They did make a sequel, that I think came out in like maybe 2015 or something like

Clip:  that.

Todd:  Yeah. The director’s son did it.

Craig:  Gotcha. And I know nothing about it except for that they returned to the same location, I think, and and it was a direct continuation of the story, I think. I don’t know. I’m not gonna be racing out to see it anytime soon, but there must at least be enough of some sort of following if if I can’t imagine who was out there, like, we need

Todd:  a sequel to Don’t Look in the Basement.

Craig:  Apparently, somebody did.

Todd:  We need more basement. Well, the the writer of this, Tim Pope, interestingly enough, directed almost all of, The Cures Yeah. Music videos. And, there’s quite a few other music videos, like, for Wham and Queen and Hall and Oates and stuff. It’s it’s really pretty interesting. He even directed The Crow City of Angels, which I think was a sequel to The Crow. Mhmm. Is that right?

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  Probably like a direct to video thing. Yeah. Still, that I think that’s the most remarkable thing anybody from this film has gone on to do. The the director, SF Brownrigg, which is a great name

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  Only did, like, 3 or 4 other clearly exploitive movies like Don’t Hang Up

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Which is I think alternatively titled Don’t Open the Door. See, we could have, like, covered 2 titles.

Craig:  This guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  We really

Craig:  should’ve. No. It’s okay.

Todd:  Just come yeah. Probably not. I’m I’m not really rushing out to see the rest of his ouvoir, I’m afraid to say. But, yeah, it’s it’s an interesting artifact of a different time, and you’re absolutely right about that. And I like those kind of movies. I really do. I just don’t think that this is is the the more enjoyable of them.

Craig:  No. It’s it’s not great. I I I I can’t imagine who I would recommend it to except for except for you.

Todd:  Sometimes we just do this for ourselves, don’t we? Alright. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Like us on Facebook. We have a page there where you can tell us what you thought of this movie if you happen to have seen it as well as any other films you’d like us to to watch. Also, you can catch our website where every Thursday, we post a written review of another film. Until next time, I’m Todd and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.