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Dis­cov­er the co-ed carv­ing thrills of this clas­sic 80s slasher

16 Jul 2018

Words by Anton Bitel

Woman with long, dark hair wearing glasses and a blue top, reacting to a power tool blowing her hair back.
Woman with long, dark hair wearing glasses and a blue top, reacting to a power tool blowing her hair back.
Shot in a real aban­doned asy­lum, Richard Friedman’s gore-fest shows a sub­genre in microcosm.

Pic­ture the scene: it’s 1987, and the slash­er – the sub­genre that dom­i­nat­ed the hor­ror land­scape for the first half of the decade – has also been steadi­ly killing itself off, one film after anoth­er, until there are few new ideas left to be had. The Night­mare on Elm Street fran­chise, intro­duc­ing a refresh­ing kind of slash­er icon in 1984, who cracked wise where oth­ers mere­ly breathed heav­i­ly, is present­ly being instan­ti­at­ed in its sec­ond sequel, Chuck Russell’s A Night­mare on Elm Street 3: Dream War­riors.

There will be three more night­mares on elm street in the cur­rent run, but they will also suf­fer the slow and tor­tur­ous death of their own dimin­ish­ing returns, as will the slash­er in gen­er­al – and it will not be until 1994 that the fran­chise will be reboot­ed and reviv­i­fied by a return­ing Wes Craven’s thrilling­ly metacin­e­mat­ic Wes Craven’s New Night­mare, ush­er­ing in a whole new cycle of hor­ror that comes with a post­mod­ern, self-ref­er­en­tial bent.

In Doom Asy­lum, which also came out in 1987, you can see both the whole his­to­ry of this subgenre’s decline and the seeds of its renew­al engaged in a game of cat and mouse. The film, direct­ed by Richard Fried­man and shot in a real aban­doned asy­lum, fea­tures a plot that is purest slash­er: 10 years after a trag­ic car acci­dent killed Judy LaRue (Pat­ty Mullen) and left her pal­imo­ny lawyer/​lover Mitch Hansen (Michael Rogen) with hor­rif­ic scars, a group of five prep­py teens (includ­ing Judy’s daugh­ter Kiki, also played by Mullen) go pic­nick­ing out­side an old aban­doned asy­lum which a three-woman punk/​industrial band, Tina and the Tots, is using as its rehearsal space – only to dis­cov­er that the dis­fig­ured Mitch is still haunt­ing those halls with mur­der­ous intent and a bag of coroner’s tools. From here on, co-eds are killed, one by one, in a series of semi-inven­tive­ly bloody ways, before a final girl con­fronts the killer.

So far, so stan­dard. But it is in all its bizarre lit­tle details that you can see Doom Asy­lum strain­ing to escape its own con­ven­tions with rel­a­tive integri­ty. Mitch falls very much into the Fred­dy Krueger camp of slash­er, punc­tu­at­ing all his kill with hit-and-miss quips and still, despite hav­ing earned him­self the nick­name the Coro­ner’, hang­ing onto the legal jar­gon of his pre­vi­ous pro­fes­sion. Yet he also appears to be inspired by the mous­tache-twirling vil­lainy of actor Tod Slaugh­ter, tak­ing reg­u­lar (sur­re­al) breaks from his own bru­tal slaugh­ter­ing to watch videos of the 1930s melo-hor­rors (Maria Marten, or The Mur­der in the Red BarnSweeney Todd: The Demon Bar­ber of Fleet StreetThe Crimes of Stephen HawkeIt’s Nev­er Too Late to MendThe Face at the Win­dow) in which Slaugh­ter starred.

This embry­on­ic self-con­scious­ness (more typ­i­cal of late-’90s hor­ror) extends to the ensem­ble of co-eds. Both par­ents of Jane (the screen debut of Sex and the City’s Kristin Davis) are psy­chi­a­trists, and so she feels qual­i­fied to sub­ject her co-ed friends to the kind of cod-psy­cho­log­i­cal analy­sis that crit­ics often bring to slash­er movies. That said, they are an eccen­tric bunch. Dar­nell (Har­ri­son White) is an African Amer­i­can who dress­es and acts like a WASP – although he is still black enough to earn his inevitable place as Vic­tim #1.

Den­nis (Ken­ny L Price) is reten­tive”, as Jane puts it, in his obses­sion with base­ball and base­ball cards (this obses­sion being quite lit­er­al­ly his only char­ac­ter trait). Kiki’s hunk­ish boyfriend Mike (William Hay) is chron­i­cal­ly inde­ci­sive, while Kiki her­self is the arche­typ­al dumb blonde’, insist­ing, when Mike offers to sup­port her in moth­er Judy’s place, on call­ing him Mum’ (a gen­uine­ly Freudi­an touch), and lat­er refus­ing to have sex with him on the absurd grounds that That’s incest.”

Best of all, though, is Tina and the Tots’ epony­mous singer (played by Play­boy cen­tre­fold Ruth Collins) who, despite engag­ing in a moment of top­less­ness that is gra­tu­itous even by slash­er stan­dards, proves to be more like Tura Satana’s Var­la in Faster, Pussy­cat! Kill! Kill! than some pas­sive bim­bo. She eas­i­ly bests Mike in a fight (that she also picks), and as he dan­gles pre­car­i­ous­ly from the roof of the asy­lum, stands over him cack­ling tri­umphant­ly – and she alone active­ly pur­sues and con­fronts Mitch, want­i­ng active­ly to kick his ass rather than mere­ly, like the oth­ers, to escape his clutches.

Apart from this, there are top­i­cal ref­er­ences to Rea­gan­ite Repub­li­can­ism, safe sex and the Just Say No’ cam­paign against drugs. Always goofy and occa­sion­al­ly gory, Doom Asy­lum is utter­ly dis­pos­able – but it knows exact­ly what it is. As Mike puts it, In all those hor­ror movies, when­ev­er a girl leaves by her­self, she gets in trou­ble.” It is the kind of genre rule which, almost ten years lat­er, char­ac­ters in Scream would be artic­u­lat­ing with a sim­i­lar­ly savvy self-awareness.

Doom Asy­lum is released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray in a brand new 2K restora­tion from the orig­i­nal cam­era neg­a­tive, on 16 July.

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