Doom Asylum Review

Incest jokes, misdiagnosed death, and murder oh my! Yep this is indeed Doom Asylum.

The Scores

Interest: 7/10

Acting: 5/10

Storyline: 6/10

Intensity: 2/10

Fights Guns or Otherwise: 6/10

Nudity: 8/10

Director Score: 6.5/10

Musical Score: 6/10

Dialogue: 5/10*

Logic In The Film: 5/10

Doom Asylum is a 1988 film. It is a Comedy horror movie. The run time is one hour and seventeen minutes. The three main stars are Patty Mullen (Best known for Frankenhooker, The Equalizer, Doom Asylum, and Clash of the Champions), Ruth Collins (Best known for Moving America Forward, Death Collector, Witch Academy, and Galactic Gigolo) and Kristen Davis (Best known for Sex and the City 2, Sex and the City (TV Show), Sex and the City, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island). The Director is Richard Freeman (Best known for Acts of Desperation, Halfway to Hell, Ground Zero, and Street Knight). A quick summary of the film is “A terribly disfigured lawyer thought to be dead after a car accident, is taken to an asylum to be dissected, only to come back to life and start killing everyone who dares come to the asylum.” Let’s take a look at this film shall we?

Interest: My interest of this film was kept throughout the whole movie. It is a goofy, yet strange horror movie, with comedy coming from unlikely things, and in general was just pleasing. Gorehounds will find the movie pleasing with all of the blood and guts in the film, but a bit cheesy. The movie is realistically not very scary, but is good for a slasher film. The films held me the whole time, but also it could have been a forty-five minute movie is all honesty, there were some just obscure choices of things that made it into the movie, but all in all I stayed interested.

Acting: The acting in the film was okay. It was at times rigid, and other times twinkles of something better than good. It is honestly a roller coaster of acting with this film, from going from serious scenes, to more or less slapstick comedy. No one gave an award-winning performance though, but not every movie needs to do that either.

Storyline: The storyline is pretty alright. It is a bit jumpy and seems to skip over some parts that may have been nice to see (like how did a guy that’s deformed and murderous survive for any amount of time especially after a near fatal car crash?), but it doesn’t really hide it, although it also doesn’t just present itself. I feel like they hoped you wouldn’t notice that things were missing, because the rest of it is a fun ride.

Intensity: The Intensity in Doom Asylum is very lacking. The movie goes from no intensity, to trying to be very intense, without any scene helping lead you to the intensity. Everything that is intense is an instant use and doesn’t try to hold onto it for a later scene. It is a frustrating time because I think the movie had everything it needed to do it well, but it just fell short.

Fights, Guns or Otherwise: Physical fights are okay, and verbal lashings are also just okay. Physical fights tend to come from the villain murdering people, but once or twice, it is the other characters that are at least hitting one another. The opposite is true of the verbal lashings, where other characters insult one another and the villain says only a few things. It sounds dull in writing, but all in all it is pretty solid.

Nudity: There is some nudity in the film. And it is in a stereotypical slasher film, boobs because of boobs. There is no deeper meaning, no moving the plot forward, no sacrifice happening, just boobs, and well yeah.

Director Score: So the director I think knew what he was doing. I think he did a great job getting this movie made. From info I could find the movie was made on a budget of $90,000 and shot in 9 days. That is damn impressive. But this also being said, you can tell that it was made in 9 days. I’m mixed on if I love or hate the zombie costume. The kills were thought out as if 12 year old me did them, and with blood that was in my opinion, much to thin and runny. The film though manages to make it through all the bumps twists and turns which must be to some credit of the director.

Musical Score: The musical score is decent. I believe it is an original composition. It is more of a mood set piece of horror and dread than a typical music soundtrack. The music also acts as a cue for when something scary is about to happen. Otherwise, it isn’t bad, and it isn’t good either, it is just there.

Dialogue*: This has been the hardest area that I have been trying to not spill over into for the rest of these categories. Dialogue is an extreme mess that makes you giggle and also go “What the Fuck?!” In the first twenty minutes the two “lovebirds” discover this is the place the main girls (Judy) mom was taken to as well as her step dad, and she really gets down emotionally. Her boyfriend thing (Mike) just says, I think as a joke “ Will it be better if you call me mom?” WHAT?! And then she agrees! And to top it all off it referenced later when Mike asks Judy if she will have sex with him. I laughed so hard at this and it made me question the sanity of people that I was watching, It was quite bizarre and I loved it. Otherwise, the dialogue worked well, albeit a little stereotypical, but again it is a slasher movie.

Logic in the Film: The logic is okay in the film. One of the things that really bugged me though was they voluntarily went to this asylum. They could have left and lived, called cops, all sorts of things to prevent pretty much everyone's death in the film. Physics also may of also been neglected as well, people hanging up on nearly nothing, and a teleporting bad guy, but this is also a slasher film troupe, so I guess I can’t get to mad.

So did I enjoy the film? I did, probably more that I should have. Do I suggest it? Yes I do. It is a strange and visceral experience, where blood and gore is spread nearly everywhere, but the movie tries to use some sort of comedy to make it funny. I think it is more funny with just dialogue than the goofy situations (although a few scenes are fairly funny). It is a mixed bag of fun, it is bad (in a fun way) for I think everyone can enjoy at least a single watch. The score I give Doom Asylum is a 56.5% which sounds bad, but it’s a movie that doesn’t take itself seriously. Give it a watch! Until Next Time!