Synopsis: A horribly disfigured lawyer, wrongfully pronounced dead after a terrible car accident is taken to an asylum for dissection only to come back alive, kill everyone and make the asylum his killing playground.
Mitch (Michael Rogen) rises from an autopsy table after a horrible car accident leaves him disfigured and his girlfriend dead. 10 years later after taking up residence in an abandoned asylum, he preys on unsuspecting teens and a 3 piece, all girl punk band that happen to cross his path. Little do we know but Kiki, one of the youngsters, is actually the child of Mitch’s deceased girlfriend.
This is another one of those low budget, pure trash (said lovingly) 80’s slashers that lays on the parody thick. There’s a small subset of folks that really appreciate this type of schlock and I’m one of those people. These are the types of films I really love. Everything from the over-the-top gore effects to the absurd kill methods is pure gold. Yes, the comedy is cheesy but that’s the intent. When put all together, this is textbook “B” movie slasher material.
There are little things Friedman does that just add to the character of the movie itself (and bump my rating up a little). For example, the flick opens up in 4:3 ratio and looks like it was completely shot on a handheld beta-max. Then at the 6:53 mark it shifts to widescreen and looks a little upscaled, conveying that 10 years have passed. Then again, that could have just been that the cut I watched was altered later but I would like to give the director the benefit of the doubt and the credit.
Doom Asylum clocks in at 77 minutes with a good portion of that being taken up by clips from The Crimes of Stephen Hawke spliced in and still accomplishes what some movies today can’t. With a $90,000 budget and a cast that includes Kristen Davis of Sex and the City fame in her first ever role, Friedman created a parody of 80’s slashers filled with dark humor and enough gore to satiate any genre fan and it only took him 8 days.
If you want to check this one out then head on over to Tubi. It was streaming there as of this writing.
Join me again tomorrow as we continue this strange little journey down the horror rabbit hole.
