Doom Asylum (1988)
Directed by Richard Friedman
When you’ve seen nearly every 80s slasher movie of relevance, you search and search for something of any form of value. Sometimes you find gems, other times you find turds. Doom Asylum was brought to my attention from a twitter friend, and I just bit the bullet and bought the damn BluRay, because A, I’m crazy and B I trust his taste him slashers. Well was it worth the purchase?
Doom Asylum is about a group of “teens” in their 30s that have a picnic near an old insane asylum, because why the fuck not I guess. An awful excuse for a punk band is also in the asylum to practice. Soon they get picked off one by one by Mitch Hanson, an attorney that was horribly disfigured in a car crash ten years (naturally) prior.
Marketed as a slasher/comedy movie, the dialogue definitely it’s the latter of those claims. Man some of it is so clunky and awkward, but that’s really part of the charm of this movie. The acting is atrocious, just so bad. Kristin Davis of Sex and the City fame, is basically the only actor of note. She’s halfway decent and obviously the most talented of the bunch. The killer drops some pretty craptastic one liners that will garner up a few laughs. His face looks like a mixture of Freddy Krueger and a pepperoni pizza. The makeup effects on Mitch Hanson are decent enough, he looks creepy and original.
While the acting and dialogue is terrible, the special effects are far from. The kills are amazingly gory and twisted. Kristin Davis meets her fate to a saw blade on a cordless drill. Another girl gets her head dipped into acid and we get a goopy close up of the aftermath while Hanson spouts out a one liner. Drills to the head, severed toes, skull piercings round out some of the best slasher effects I’ve seen in a long time.
While it is no doubt just trash, Doom Asylum doesn’t take itself too seriously, and for that I can respect it. It is a footnote in the history of the slasher genre but the kills and strange humor set it out above the rest of the pack. I would say my purchase was worth it, I enjoyed this and again the kills, I just can’t talk enough about the kills haha. If you’re a big fan of the slasher genre, like I am and you’re looking for something different, check it out. Don’t expect it to be top shelf like Halloween or Friday the 13th, otherwise you’ll likely hate it. I give Doom Asylum a C+. It is a fun dumb movie, but it isn’t something I’ll want to watch every year.
