To kick off our first day of 31 Days of Horror, we have a Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray restoration: The Mansion of Madness from 1972! Known as La Mansion De La Locura, directed by Mexican director Juan Lopez Moctzeuma, and based loosely on the Edgar Allen Poe tale "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether," this is less of a horror film and more of a sort of weird, 70's style surreal satire, the kind that could only have been produced in that era of film making.
The story focuses on our protagonist, Gaston LeBlanc, a reporter for an inquiring newspaper sometime in the 19th century as he seeks to investigate the nature of a series of innovative treatments at a remote sanitarium run by the enigmatic Dr. Maillard. As Dr. Maillard takes him on a tour of the maddening facility it becomes apparent that the inmates are running the asylum, and Maillard is the maddest of them all, perhaps. Other characters are woven in, including the woman Eugenie, who is the daughter of the man who previously ran the sanitarium, as well as some hapless allies of LeBlanc who are unable to escape the clutches of the madmen.
The movie has a number of elements typical of the more experimental (and often foreign) films of the late 60's and 1970s. The perspective of the mad, the nature of madness, the relationship of the insane to those who try to cure them. The further back you go, the more exotic and strange perceptions on psychiatric treatment tended to be, although this movie hardly tries to portend to such matters; the Dr. Maillard of the film is a doctor in name only, and his bizarre method of treatment for his patients is basically to let them do as they will, and to indulge in his own control fantasies in the process.
One side effect of being a film of its time is that the orchestration for the movie is completely batty. For the time this movie came out one must be mindful that we were still a few years away from John Williams redefining film scores with Jaws and Star Wars, and I imagine that contemporary viewers of the day would be more in tune with the tonal incoherence of the film as dictated by the disjointed choice of music from scene to scene. Some of the music sets a disturbing and menacing mood; other pieces emphasize a unique early seventies take on "the sound of madness" which to today's viewer makes the pieces sound absurdist (and maybe they did then, too). I have to admit, I feel like someone could completely redo the music in this film and get a shockingly different feel out of it as a result.
All things considered, this isn't a scary movie by any stretch, though it might be a bit disturbing or even just unsettling, though I think deliberately uncomfortable portrayals of madness have been outdone by subsequent films over the decades, making this one feel a bit quaint. At one point I sort of felt like, "This is what the crowd at a free love Ren fair in 1972 looked like if you got them to work as extras on a film set for a couple days," and that's probably not far off the mark.
Choice bits:
Apparently, the director was friends with and influenced by Alejandro Jodorowsky, which explains a bit.
Ellen Sherman, who played Eugenie, was the only American actor in the film.
Check out the third act sequence as the Godiva-like woman on horseback is led through the vast chamber of glass coffins...would love to find out where this was filmed, as it is an excellent visual to steal for a future horror game!
The main protagonists of this film are almost amusingly incompetent in their fighting skills, though they do at some point rally a bit. The basic, almost mundane nature of physical conflict portrayed within the film is oddly refreshing in how "normal" it is, contrasted by the aberrant behavior on parade.
Who Should See This: I would suggest this film is best enjoyed by film viewers into studying that era of film-making from the 70's in particular, and I also think anyone into surrealism in films might enjoy it a bit. I wondered to myself if this was a film a very young David Lynch might have seen early in his budding film career, as certain moments felt like they might have been influential.
Available in restored 35mm from Vinegar Syndrome here. The restoration is actually quite striking, and gives the film an interesting vibrancy that makes it stand out. The greenery of the filmed outdoor locations are especially striking, and many of the set locations are fascinating and suitable locations for depicting the labyrinthine sanitarium.
All in all, a solid C, but with the caveat that this film is meant to be an interesting (albeit not at all contemporary) experience...and may not always feel entertaining so much as perplexing to younger film goers.
