Doom Asylum (1987) is a classic slasher gem currently available on Tubi for free. The story involves a lawyer who was wrongfully pronounced dead after a horrible car accident who now resides in an abandoned asylum in Essex, New Jersey. He makes the asylum his killing grounds. When some high school kids and a rock band visits, a killing spree of epic proportions begin. This movie is directed by Richard Friedman (Halfway to Hell) and stars 1988 Penthouse Pet of the year Patty Mullen (Frankenhooker), Ruth Collins (Galactic Gigolo), Kristin Davis (Sex in the City) and William Hay. This movie doesn't take itself seriously at all but does contain some great kill scenes (the cutting off of the toes scene is excellent) and contains some cheesy one-liners by the killer. I strongly recommend this movie to horror and slasher movie fans. I'd score this a solid 5.5-6/10. PS - I looked up this asylum hoping to go take some photos from scenes from this movie but it has unfortunately been demolished.
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Finally I found this hard to find cheap Slasher flick. I watched it for the first time on USA NETWORK several years ago, and it stayed in my memory to these days. I explored the catacombs of a rare video store after digging and getting dust all over me, I found it under the title "The House Of Horror".
"Doom Asylum" is a Slasher flick that you have to watch it with very low, (I mean VERY low) expectations because it offers the minimal entertainment for fans of the subgenre. You have to choices: The first is to watch it as a very low budget spoof of Slasher flicks or as a low budget straight Horror flick. You get gore, a deformed killer, sharp instruments to perform kills, hot chicks in bikinis, a cheesy soundtrack, and a very creepy asylum.
The death scenes are as cheesy as you want, probably made by an amateur f/x artist. Although I love the drill kill(come on! in slow motion you can see how the drill has a tube that pumps fake blood as it makes pression with the guy's forehead) and the slashed face death; both scenes are extremely cheesy and laughable. I won't even get into the other death scenes because there's almost no production value or even decent fake blood. As a hint, check out when "Mr. Killer" cuts a guy's toes but before doing it, he smells his shoes.
There's a lot of black humor in the parody scenes. For example, when the black guy finds the black punk girl both fantasize about running in a green valley and then start to make out and simulate sex. Other example is the scene where the (at the time) survivors go to a chapel and pray for their dead friends! while a maniac is on their hunt. Now that I think, the whole movie is a joke! every scene has some humor , involuntary or not.
There are many goofs to laugh about. For example, on the beginning after the supposedly "fatal" car accident, you can see that the Mrs. La Rue's arm is hidden under grass! to produce a visual effect where the audience is supposed to believe that she lost her hand. Also, the killer doesn't seems to be badly burned and even moves without problem; seconds later he appears in the morgue horribly burned. The two main heroines are extremely hot! beautiful, sexy. I really cared for them. That could be a reason to watch the movie. Although there are many reason for not watching it. The killer spends almost 10 minutes of the movie watching black and white movies from Tod Slaughter! Also, the killer looks like a different person on several scenes. First, the make up makes him look like Leatherface, and then like Freddy Krueger (in half of the movie). Well I bet that filming lasted for 3 days.
Something to notice about is that the movie's events take place ONLY in the day. There aren't any night scenes, no budget for lightning?! Anyways, I haven't seen that in any other Slasher flick.
The movie has no plot. You just see the teens getting killed by the deranged coroner. What really got me about "Doom Asylum" are it's WEIRD dialogues. Check out for lines including Mickey Mantle, Ronald Reagan, the right to choose political preferences, incest, and the weird ending dialogue between the Coroner and his ex lover's daughter. The ending. Oh well, one of the worst in cinema's history. You need to watch it to believe it.
I may be out of my mind, but I recommend "Doom Asylum" if you want to laugh about it because all of it's goofs and weirdness. Grab a pack of chips, coca cola, and enjoy this ultra low budget. A hidden gem and almost impossible to find. -
As a boy growing up in NJ I had the privilege of knowing one of the crew of this film and living 20 minutes from Essex County where this now demolished asylum once stood. Back in 1987 we got to see them filming the part where they were praying in the chapel of the asylum. I remember the killer Mitch scared the bejesus out of me as a kid and I think I even had some nightmares. That old asylum was damned creepy and there was a lot of supernatural presence. Today my brother and I still have the autographed photograph of the actor who played the killer. I'm 26 now and I'm a die-hard fan of the genre for those that want to talk horror movies, you know how to reach me!
Dave -
joehed5 March 2000What a smoker. Actually this movie was pretty funny. The acting and make up job was so bad that you couldn't help but slap your knee and giggle like a third grader. This isn't a film that will scare you, or win an Oscar for that matter, but it's totally Friday night entertainment.
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TheforgottenAvenger3 August 2022Yeah, it's pretty horrific. The killer is one of the most irritating ever, but Kristen Davis. Damn. Spending the bulk of the film in a skin tight swimsuit and big dorky glasses, she is worth the price of admission on her own.
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paul_haakonsen20 July 2018I used to watch a bunch of horror movies back in the late 1980s, but I haven't seen "Doom Asylum" before now in 2018. And let's just be bluntly honest, I hadn't been missing out on anything.
This movie was a horror comedy of sorts, but it failed on both fronts. There was nothing funny about it, and I wasn't laughing even a single time. Nor were there any real horror to it, unless you count some questionable slasher feature as being proper horror.
The storyline was generic and straightforward, albeit weighed down by laughable dialogue and horrible characters whom were more jokes than actual characters.
It should be said, though, that they had someone of an adequate cast to perform in the movie, despite the acting performers having very, very little to work with. It was somewhat of a surprise to see Kristin Davis in a movie such as this. And she was actually the one and only one that was somewhat famous here.
While we are on the topic of the characters, what was going on with this three girl musicians? First of all, the music act was just horrible. And they weren't even playing in the movie, they had drums, but the "music" (actually noise) had no drum beat, and the singer was mouth-synching to something that was nowhere near the noise in that "music". It was just atrocious.
As for the killer, well they managed to pull off the special effects well enough, taking into consideration the age of the movie. But was he scary or menacing? Not even in the least bit.
"Doom Asylum" is a movie that you can easily skip, because there is truly nothing unique or interesting here. -
Steve_Nyland14 January 2007DOOM ASYLUM is a pretty nifty little B movie relic from the home video era that succeeds by refusing to take itself seriously for even one minute. A gaggle of college aged nitwits decides to spend a relaxing day sunbathing and hanging out in & around an abandoned, run down insane asylum that is the home of a deformed, deranged serial killer. Meanwhile and all-girl new wave punk band has set up their gear & is rehearsing in one of the operating theaters (insane asylums have operating theaters?), with a Punks Vs. Nerds confrontation looming as the kids wander around inside of the shabby, spray paint festooned interiors of the asylum. One by one they are abducted by the maniac -- dressed in doctor's garb and prone to use medical tools as his torture weapons -- and hacked up until only the blond in the red bikini is left as sort of a male gaze oriented Jamie Lee.
That should be enough information to intrigue horror fans to take a look, and even the most jaded amongst you will be delighted by some of the gore & splatter effects, dabs of welcomed nudity and Kristin Davis reclining on the asylum lawn in a figure defining one piece swimsuit. She has quite the bod. The film earns some points by having the two "nice girls" spending the entire movie skittering about in their bathing suits, with plenty of time for ogling their delightful forms.
Some of the 1980s anachronisms might annoy contemporary viewers, such as the smack talking black knucklehead character dressed in fluorescent colors who is the inevitable first victim of the deranged killer. The maniac also spends a lot of time sitting around watching old Todd Slaughter movies, and sadly the film incorporates far to many clips of the old B&W films as a way to sort of suggest some form of contextual meaning. After a while it becomes annoying though, and the meaning of why the clips are used is never made manifest by the script. They are just kind of there because the editor apparently thought it would be a cool device.
The only thing about the film that I genuinely found to be annoying though was it's tone. Let's face it, horror movies are absurd & silly to begin with, and this one slips up a couple times with smarminess beyond what was really needed, threatening to turn what could have been a taut little exercise in Asylum Horror exploitation crossed with a Freddy Kreuger serial killer into a self-aware parody. If it wasn't for the relatively high body count, amusing gore attempts and nonstop T&A of the lead girls showing off their bodies this might have gotten a thumbs down. The best aspect of the movie really is this big, creepy, run down asylum, which never looks like a movie set so much as an actual place -- which turns out to be the case, and might have served as the inspiration for 1989s THE DEAD PIT by Brett Leonard, which would make an effective double bill with this one, or maybe DR. GIGGLES with Larry Drake.
The bottom line is that movies like this require the presence of an interactive, unruly loud audience to be enjoyed as they were intended: Watch it with your friends and make sure to have plenty of beer. It's very much a party movie and recommended for some night when you just want to get drunk with the crew, dig some gore and check out the babes. By keeping it's sights focused squarely on the gutter this movie maintains it's fun factor right up to the ending ... even if it isn't very good.
4/10: Grab me a fresh one too while you're at the fridge, there's a good Hoss. -
This movie is great for a few laughs. One of the victims of the nefarious coroner is so indecisive it is hilarious. He makes a statement and then second guesses himself with his following sentence. The acting in this movie is awful, the production is terrible, and the plot is ridiculous (but that's ok in a "horror" movie). This makes for a terrible movie that can be very funny at times.
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daniel-mannouch22 August 2018Doom Asylum is divisive as it's a late in the day 80's slasher with sardonic, post-punk pre-grunge 'edge', low-fi aesthetic and is presented in distracting aspect ratio(s). What a Doom Asylum defendant's biggest hurdle to jump is the film's attempts at 'comedy'. Troma is obviously an influence here and i can dig that, but it is inconsistent and the film feels as if it's trying to deny to the audience it's own self awareness. A similar discrepancy found in those obnoxious faux-grindhouse films of the late 2000's. This awkward smarter than thou attitude came to define the horror genre from Nightmare on Elm Street onward until Saw and it is one that keeps me steered well clear of 90's horror even to this day, with examples such as Hellgate (1990) being a supremely irritating piece of nonsense to sit through.
I don't know whether it's because of it's release in a much misunderstood time period for cinema, the late 80's, the fact that is was shot in an actual asylum that treated STD's or that enough tropes of the slasher film remain in tact, but Doom Asylum has 'it'. It remains authentic and sincere despite the comedy. In fact, due to the inept delivery, it has it due to the comedy. It's a weighty time capsule that tells you so much about the period it was made in, it feels at times like a stream of consciousness taken straight out of the head of a horror fan from the time. A Fangoria subscribed, bougie crass video store geek who thinks he should know better but doesn't, but he just doesn't know in the first place.
Now before i go on about how post-modernism will lead to a satanist overlord uprising, i'll conclude by saying Doom Asylum IS a wildly entertaining independent horror film from a time when the industry had more money and enthusiastic contributors than it does now. It's a manic depressive, head on car crash combination of knowing parody and cynical exploitation and if you like your horror Gothic, esoteric and opaque like i do, then look no further. -
Mr Blue-43 November 1999There might be a worse movie out there than this one, but I wouldn't want to see it. This is bad enough. Completely unfunny, and needless to say unscary, horror spoof of slasher films. The longest 90 minutes since "Pink Flamingos". BTW, the film is padded with 10 minute sections of the creature watching TV-public domain stuff, of course. The worst!
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It is the holy grail of B movies! The acting is sad, but that only adds to the laughs! Effects? Well in the opening scene where a girl loses an arm, you can clearly see her arm "hidden" under some hay. Which only adds to the laughs! And such classic lines as "But, mom! That would be incest!", "I voted for Reagan", and "I hate rap music!!" You would just have to see the movie to really appreciate these lines! If you see it to rent/buy/steal whatever... PICK IT UP!
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HumanoidOfFlesh10 September 2012Kiki's dad died in car accident 10 years ago.His body was taken to local sanitarium and two autopsy performers were killed.Since then this creepy mental hospital becomes the place of brutal murders.After 10 years Kiki is back there to see what happened 10 years past and brings her boyfriend Mike and friends Darrell,Jane and Dennis.There is also a noisy trio of female Goth rock band.And Coroner with an autopsy equipment who promptly starts butchering teenagers whilst spouting unfunny one-liners."Doom Asylum" is an extremely cheesy and tongue-in-cheek slasher spoof with some nasty gore on display.The acting is gloriously wooden,the script is inept and there are some of the silliest moments ever captured on screen.I would recommend this for all fans of truly goofy slasher films.7 coroners out of 10.
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treakle_197821 July 2020The worst film ever. The acting,effects,writing and directing were God awful. Even Kristin Davis couldn't save this movie. The only positive thing about this movie is the girls are hot.
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hey! it's slasher 80's fun, I agree with the guy that said that this is pure Friday entertainment, we have gore, a deformed killer, some hot chicks, and creepy settings. One thing that creeped me out, is the way this killer uses the instruments to kill,, it's so primitive! Don't be fooled by the box of the film, though it looks stupid, and the killer seems to be a joke, the movie is not that terrible. It's a baaaaaaaad movie, but after you watch you can say , that you can watching ANYTHING. Just recommended for true slasher fans!!!
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dood1529 July 2001a friend of mine rented this on a whim and we watched it thinking it would me MST3K quality schlock... but it's not... i think this is really the worst movie i've ever seen. no plot, horrible effects, just plain bad. interesting deaths, but with the 25 dollar budget, it just couldn't deliver. this movie was worse that April Fool's Day. i highly recommend that you never ever see this movie.
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This is easily the worst movie ever made. Apart from a pair of very nice boobs and a pretty face, every single thing in this movie is just plain terrible. It really sucks big time. If you are in the mood for being tortured (almost to death), watch it.
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CuriosityKilledShawn24 November 2019He 80s was the decade of schlock horror at its most earnest and exploitative. The video stores were packed with more cheap trash than you could possibly count, all with vivid cover art and giant 18-certificates. As a kid the 18 logo meant that you were in for the good stuff (and I suppose it still does, to lesser standards). Despite their low budgets the vast majority of these movies were shot on 35mm, often by contemporary cinematographers in the infancy of their career. The gore effects were practical, the filmmakers were hungry, and there was always an earthy realness to them.
However, about 80% of these movies featured a killer-on-the-loose plot that copied the one-by-one falling dominoes structure of everything from Halloween and Alien all the way to present day trash. Doom Asylum is no different and features a thin plot of a crooked lawyer horribly injured in a car wreck that killed his girlfriend stalking the hospital where they brought his body after the accident. A group of teens arrive to explore and waste the day but confront an all-girl punk band using the building to practice their songs. Thirty years after its release these girls are pure alt-left nutcases. Unknown to them, the horrifically scarred lawyer prowls the grounds and offs them in various gory way.
Doom Asylum makes no effort at seriousness, instead embracing the camp and stupidity in much the same way as Lloyd Kaufman did with his Troma movies. Produced on a meagre budget of $90,000 and shot in an actual abandoned insane asylum there's enough here to warrant curiosity. Writer/director Richard Friedman is clearly struggling very hard to make this movie feature-length, but the material just isn't there. The silly sense of humor and gore effects work well, though the jokey villain is no Freddy Kruger, no matter how hard he tries. The acting is broad and terrible, but acceptable given the nature of the movie. A young Kristen Davis shows up as one of teens looking incredibly cute and wearing a very revealing bathing suit. I'm glad to see that modern women's grooming styles were being pioneered by her in 1987.
The cheap, cheap, cheapness of the movie means it all had to be shot during the daylight, which indirectly gives it a bright and peaceful feel. A lot of horrors use rain and thunder as a way to add easy tension to a scene but Doom Asylum takes place entirely on a quiet and sunny summer day, lending it an odd edge.
Had a better writer given the script a redraft and beefed up the story a little then we could have had a fairly decent 85-minute funhouse. It just barely limps over the finishing line though. Not terrible, but not enough redeeming factors to make it a classic, just notable. -
michaelw8516 August 2019This movie is low budget cheesy horror at its finest. Ignore the reviews that are trying to critique the acting performances etc. Just watch it and be thoroughly entertained!!
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Scarecrow-8819 February 2010A terrible girl metal rock trio and five annoying teenagers crash at the sight of an old asylum, in ruins, closed ten years after a lawyer went berserk on two morticians due to the loss of his girlfriend(..we see at the opening that Mitch, the lawyer, had won a settlement for Judy as they were planning a trip to Palm Springs, having to swerve off the road before hitting a van while engaged in kissing while driving, resulting in a devastating car crash). The lawyer, pretty much a rotted corpse, stalks those in the asylum, killing each with a coroner's tools of the trade.
For bad movie lovers Doom Asylum is a pot of gold, for everyone else, except REALLy tolerant slasher fans, will probably wish they'd chosen their time more wisely. I've never seen such characters willingly invite execution when there were plenty of chances to scoot. I imagine that a good scary movie could've been shot(..particularly at night) in the dilapidated asylum, but unfortunately Doom Asylum was made in it's stead. This will undoubtedly be of interest to fans of Kristin Davis, of Sex and the City fame, but I have to imagine she has disowned it. I watched a badly cut VHS version so my rating could go up once I check out the Code Red release(..even if the movie sucks, those guys at CR always put together excellent special features, going out of their way to get the goods on the goings-on behind-the-scenes), because a good bit of obvious gore was plucked from our eyes. Patty Mullen, as a dense blonde(..modeled as a nincompoop for laughs)is a major league babe, mostly in a tiny bikini as she attempts to flee her pursuer when her dim-bulb hunk Dennis(Kenny L Price, whose indecisiveness is played for giggles)gets his piggies clipped. The filmmakers put these huge glasses on Davis, having her talk like psychiatrists(..both her parents are shrinks), so that she'll appear dorky, but we can see even in a one-piece bikini there's a hotness there. The grotesque make-up work for Mitch(Michael Rogen), the psycho, is strictly so-so, but adequate enough considering the low budget the producers probably had at their disposal. Despite the sadism, the tone remains goofy..whether you find the movie funny or not will determine the viewer's sense of humor. The acting, while cringe-worthy, might be a plus to fans of rancid cinema. The girl rockers I found insufferable, particularly the lead singer with a cackle laugh. -
When I started watching "Doom Asylum", I was soon cringing at the performances and stupidity before I realized that I am basically watching a horror parody. It seems like people making the movie knew they don't have enough money to make a proper horror, so they opted to make it a parody. And interestingly enough, despite what the low rating could make you think, "Doom Asylum" is a funny and entertaining ride for horror fans featuring some hilarious jokes and laughing out loud moments. Grab a mate, some snacks and something to drink and enjoy. I'm giving it a 6/10, but I recommend it only to the genre fans looking for something bizarre to laugh at. Everyone rest, treat it like it's 4/10...
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BA_Harrison17 October 2014A terrible car crash leaves the driver, Mitch (Michael Rogen), horribly disfigured and a little bit deranged, and his girlfriend Judy (Patty 'Frankenhooker' Mullen) just plain dead. Ten years later, Judy's teenage daughter Kiki (also played by Mullen) and her obnoxious pals visit the supposedly deserted asylum where Mitch now prowls the corridors, looking for victims to hack up with his autopsy instruments.
I can appreciate the appeal of an unintentionally bad horror movie, but really don't understand why anyone would go out of their way to make deliberately atrocious garbage like Doom Asylum, which knowingly serves up irritating characters, terrible acting, abysmal dialogue, and lousy spoof horror gags. All attempts at humour are absolutely pitiful, with killer Mitch spouting crap one-liners that make Freddy Krueger look like a comedic genius. The film also resorts to padding out the running time with lengthy clips from old black and white horror movies that the killer likes to watch when not out slaughtering teens.
Working slightly in the film's favour are the cheap but delightfully grisly make-ups effects, with the goriest moments including a drill though the head, a victim drenched in acid, a circular saw in the face, and some nasty toe-snipping. There's also a fair bit of female flesh on display courtesy of Playboy Pet Mullen and a young Kristin 'Sex in the City' Davis as sexy nerd Jane, both of whom spend the entire movie in their swimsuits, while Ruth Collins, as screechy punk rocker Tina, briefly bares her tits.
For the blood and the babes, I award Doom Asylum a rating of 4/10, which is probably more than it really deserves. -
lee_eisenberg7 January 2015The title "Doom Asylum" should identify that this is not a movie to take seriously. Indeed, it's all about having fun. Every stereotype of a slasher movie that there is, you'll find here. Of course, the movie's main significance nowadays is that it's the film debut of Kristin Davis, best known as Charlotte on "Sex and the City". So, the main thing that I took from this story of a disfigured man inhabiting an abandoned asylum is that Kristin Davis has a fine pair of legs on her. And that the leader of the punk band shows everyone her breasts. It definitely looks like a movie that they had fun filming. You're sure to love it.
House of the rising sun indeed! -
Leofwine_draca7 November 2016DOOM ASYLUM is a surprisingly graphic little independent horror film from the 1980s. The plot is predictable stuff but the execution is better than expected for the era, and this has more real horror in it than something contemporaneous like MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE. The main character is an unlucky chap who's involved in a car accident at the outset and then gets skinned by a blundering pathologist during his autopsy. The only problem? He's still alive!
The story then fades away as the setting moves to a real-life abandoned asylum. The killer bumps off a random bunch of annoying characters one by one but the real surprise is just how gory the deaths in this film are. The gore is achieved via prosthetic effects and make up and all of it is remarkably complex and original with some truly bizarre and sadistic ends for these annoying folk. The bloodshed is comparable to something like Scott Spiegel's INTRUDER and makes the film worth watching, more than compensating for the deficiencies in script, budget, and talent. Watch out for SEX AND THE CITY actress Kristin Davis long before she became famous. -
abduktionsphanomen47114 January 2022Doom Asylum - 1988 (This film rates a D-) Right off the bat you know what kind of movie you are in for. It's part comedy, Troma trash and horror. A coroner and his dumb blonde girlfriend are involved in a car accident where she dies. The coroner ends up on the autopsy table but isn't quite dead (even if he looks all torn up). He kills the two hapless medical examiners.
Flash forward ten years.
A group of kids decide to spend some time at an abandoned asylum. They talk of rumors they've heard about the coroner killing people since that time. The kills are bloody but more comedic than horror. Most of the victims made no attempts to flee the killer when there were clearly ways out. Though the cutting of the toes to "this little piggy" was cringe worthy. Also, the killer must scrub his tools really well after each victim since they were bloodless and squeaky clean (even during the same scene sequence). The acting is poor poor poor. The script is lame, waaaaaay over dramatized and so wordy. An example "We can go to the right or the left. Geez, I don't know? Well we've been to the right but we haven't been to the left. Which means the killer is where we were or he is where we're going. Let's go to the right". The character development is weak and non existent. The comedy is very sophomoric and hit or miss (mostly miss). The sound track is worse than cheap homemade porn. And only one instance of boobs? And why would you stop at the asylums chapel, pray for your safety and offer God sex while a psycho killer is stalking you? The twist ending is predictable and not very satisfying, but you'll be happy it's over! This film is such a mess and has very little going for it. You'll root for everyone to die because there is only so much dumb and annoying one can endure. Watch this only because you don't believe my review. -
chriscuomo14 October 2002Filmed on location at the long-abandoned (and since demolished) Essex County Sanitorium in Verona, NJ. The film boasts some incredibly creepy atmosphere. The asylum itself is the real monster here, enormous, labyrinthine, scarred by neglect and vandalism, and scary even when filmed in broad daylight. This could have been the perfect locale for a low-budget horror classic. Give the producers THAT much credit. All that great scenery is squandered on another witless rundown of '80s slasher cliches. The special effects are nothing special either. As for Essex County Sanitorium, you may have seen some of the smaller buildings were used in episodes of the Sopranos. For a far better, but far from perfect abandoned asylum flick, see Session 9 with David Caruso.