Video Nasty #32: Don't Look in the Basement AKA The Forgotten

Synopsis: Nurse Charlotte has arrived for her first day of work to discover that Dr Stephens, her would be employer, was recently killed in a tragic 'accident'. Under the watchful eye of the Dr Geraldine Masters, Nurse Charlotte discovers that accidents aren't uncommon at the Sanitarium. Maybe giving an acute paranoid schizophrenic an axe as part of their treatment isn't such a good idea.

Regardless of any merit in Don't Look in the Basement, the debut and last notable effort of 'classic horror director'* S.F.Brownrigg, it has to be acknowledged that its treatment of mental health is incredibly offensive. A few of the film's i've previously reviewed have dared to go 'full retard' (see I Spit on your Grave), but this film makes them look like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in comparison.

The mental patients of Dr Stephen's sanitarium are one-dimensional plot fodder, painted using the full gamut of mental health cliches. There's Sergeant, a man who recently returned from an unspecified war and is now permanently guarding the house from the telephone repairmen. Judge, permanently laying down the law and dishing out draconian punishments. Allyson, a nymphomaniac who takes her top off at the drop of a, well, top. Sam, a post-lobotomy man-child with a predilection for popsicles. And that's only half of the sanatarium's occupants; the full set is available as part of 'Mental Patient Top Trumps', available in the foyer and all questionable toy shops.

Oddly, the way it mishandles mental health is part of its charm. The patients are ill-informed caricatures played wonderfully and with full conviction by a bunch of unknowns who probably weren't aware of the career kamikaze they were partaking. The most offensive turn has to be the film's finale, where all the patients turn on the mad matron and literally tear her apart. The assertion that anyone with a mental health issue is one plot twist away from cannibalism is so patently ridiculous it makes me want to tear the writer limb from limb and eat his guts. The insensitive bastard.

Offensiveness aside, the script is actually quite good and deserves better treatment than this low-budget grindhouse effort. The twist of the film, if you haven't figured it out, is that the hard-nosed matron that rules over the Sanitarium is in fact a patient, something which Nurse Charlotte discovers in the third-act. And, much the like the inexplicably inferior Shutter Island (SPOILER AHEAD), there's even a sub-plot suggesting that Nurse Charlotte was one of the patients all along, an intriguing idea that unfortunately fades a little too quick.


What the film lacks in quality film-making, it makes up for in silly gore. The film opens with a doctor being axed and later on a spike is jammed in a patients head, an old woman's tongue is cut off for talking too much and the grand finale sees the man-child Sam axing 6 patients to death whilst they're too busy tearing the matron apart.

I can't say I wholly recommend Don't Look in the Basement, but if you want to sample a slice of low budget exploitation, you could do a lot worse.

* As the DVD cover declares