TUBI, NO!!!
Main Cast: Lori Hassel, Matthew Lewis
Director: Todd Sheets
I’m the first to admit that I love crappy horror movies, but you gotta draw the line somewhere. That line, I’ve just discovered, is on the opposite side of a movie like Todd Sheets’ 1992 mess NIGHTMARE ASYLUM. It’s only 69 minutes long, but its effect is powerful enough to make even the most hardcore fan scratch their head and say WTF???
Without preamble, Lisa is running through the halls of some unknown building, being chased by some unknown pursuer, when she happens upon a man held in a giant mousetrap, gnawing on the innards of a decapitated head. Before Lisa can help the man out of his predicament, her assailant shows up brandishing a chainsaw. Lisa screams and runs off and the attacker digs into the mousetrap man. But not before his chainsaw inexplicably becomes a circular saw.
Lisa is understandably upset, which makes that smile actress Lori Hassel is constantly on the verge of cracking just a bit easier to control. Then she runs into Spider played by Matt Lewis who wants to be Matthew Lillard (Lewis must have seen Lillard’s performance a year earlier in GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE, credited as Matthew Lynn, because it was the only thing he’d been in up to that point) on massive amounts of speed. The effect is gut-wrenching. The humanitarian in me wanted to reach into the screen and pat poor Lewis on the shoulder and advise him that less really is more and maybe he should tone it down a bit, but the moviegoer in me just wanted to punch him in the kidneys and drop him like a sack of potatoes.
Spider, who is out searching for food, takes Lisa back to meet his family, a group of redneck idiots living deep in the bowels of whatever building this is (we never do find out. Is it an abandoned amusement park attraction—there IS a wax museum—an abandoned theater—it’s all got a very backstagey feel to it—or an abandoned Skynard show—come on, you KNOW each and every one of these “actors” had Free Bird blasting out of his Camaro or pick-up on the way to set every morning), who have no memory of this “outside” Lisa mentions and who claim they’ve “always been here.”
It’s clear, at this point, that we’re supposed to feel some degree of menace. A group of people obviously trapped for a very long time within this building, terrorized by someone or something that’s in here with them and won’t let them leave. They’ve been here so long they have to wear pancake make-up with fake dark circles under their eyes and pretend to eat latex Halloween body parts, which just happen to be scattered here and there throughout the building.
Spider takes Lisa back to his room—hey, dimwits need love, too—where Lisa falls asleep. Spider, meanwhile, goes in search of food. What he finds is a can of whoop-ass which he promptly tears open and devours.
Lisa is kidnapped and taken to some other location where she wakes up tied to a chair in a room with two other victims, all being terrorized by … actually, he looks like this guy I work with and I have to tell you this guy’s about the reddest redneck sumbitch you’re ever gonna find. The problem is, the “Doctor” (played by our writer/director and credited as Edgar Lovecraft) thinks he’s Leatherface. But not the full-movie version of Leatherface, he only thinks he’s Leatherface in the one scene from the original movie when LF starts freaking out and mocking Sally. And he does this through the entirety of his part in NIGHTMARE ASYLUM. Much like Matt Lewis’s performance, it’s just painful to watch.
It’s not often I feel embarrassment for a bad actor in a bad movie, but I spent a good deal of NIGHTMARE ASYLUM hanging my head in shame for these poor bastards.
By the time I reached the 45 minute mark or thereabouts, I think the gist of the movie had finally begun to reveal itself. If I’m understanding it—as much as it is meant to be understood, which I honestly don’t believe is a LOT—the redneck killers are demons. At least the “Doctor” is as evidenced by one scene where he’s sporting horns for a moment. The demons snatch people from the street, bring them into their labyrinth where they’re starved and driven insane. Then the Doctor captures them again, kills and eats them, and they in turn become zombie demons who assist the good Doctor in his kidnapping and insane-driving efforts. At least that’s what I take away from this movie, your interpretation may vary.
Either way, an interpretation is all you’ll get because the movie itself doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Extreme Entertainment boss Todd Sheets wants to be the Man. Wearing his influences for all to see, he’s made a movie that pays definite homage to Tobe Hooper’s CHAINSAW classic, while showing us one scene with the mock gravestones of genre legends Carpenter, King, and Craven. Perhaps in a bid to claim the throne of Horror Master himself? Could be. Personally, I hope it’s only his gesture of acknowledgement and not a boast of superiority, because better than them he is not. In 1992, Sheets may have been trying to travel the path of more “graphic” horror most popularly explored (up to that time) by Clive Barker, but big dreams will only get you so far.
Lots of quick cuts, funky angles, and intense lighting may be a rush to the senses and help establish that vigorous pace he wanted to set, but let’s be honest, a story helps. If all we’re getting is a lot of this and that thrown at us and we don’t have a basis for how it all fits together, we’re not going to follow along on whatever journey this is you think you’re taking us. Even at his most gruesome, Barker was telling a STORY.
NIGHTMARE ASYLUM, on the other hand, not so much. At the end of the day, I can’t fault Sheets for the insanity of his movie. Sometimes a little confusion can add to the recipe. But I believe even the most well-versed horror movie fan will agree: no matter how graphic your visuals, no matter how surreal your scenes, in the end they’d BETTER tell a story that we can get. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of crap you shot with your camcorder while from off-camera you kept telling your drunken buddies, “Don’t laugh!” As much as I love the really bad horror movies, there is a line you just don’t cross, and NIGHTMARE ASYLUM was not only a waste of my time, but, sadly, a waste of its cast and crew’s time as well. Normally, I’d say “On the bright side, they weren’t out jacking cars and mainlining heroin”, but … well, I guess if you want to see that as a positive. Sit through this piece of crap, and your outlook may change.
NIGHTMARE ASYLUM is somehow currently streaming on Tubi.
Sue reads a lot, writes a lot, edits a lot, and loves a good craft. She was deemed “too picky” to proofread her children’s school papers and wears this as a badge of honor. She is also proud of her aggressively average knitting skills. TV and indie movies are her jam.
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