Mental Asylum settings in late 80s slashers

I'm at work at the moment ( a sort of asylum all its own), but WILL be revisiting this topic later. This is one I think we can all sink our teeth into. Nice one, Bartleby.

Not to mention that specifically for the Elm Street movies a mental asylum is a great fit. For starters it ties directly to Freddy's origin and the obligatory use of tranquilizers removes from Freddy's potential victims their only potent, albeit temporary, defense against him. Not falling asleep is much more difficult if you're pumped full of drugs.

The first point you raise, about society's need to diagnose & treat all these mental "disorders" we've seen of late, is a good one, & one I hadn't thought of. But it could be turned on its head, in that the insane is becoming moe commonplace & arguably more accepted. Kids w/ ADHD on Ritalin are not institutionalized; they're medicated & living in society. As are Prozac popping depressives. But this trend developed later than the 80's time frame speculated upon in the opening post, and probably does little to explain its prevalence in any event.

Your second point, about the budget cuts forcing the mentally defective back on to the streets is one I had thought of, and damn you for mentioning it first. this was something those of us who lived in or near big cities saw a lot of in those days, with seeming legions of muttering or tic laden homeless people on the streets (I know I saw a fair number in NYC, where I spent a good deal of time in my later HS & college years in the mid to late 80's & early 90's). There was a bit of a contraversy during the latter years of mayor koch's last administration about whether or not the homeless former mental patients could be forced back into asylums if they didn't want to go & preferred living on the streets, as it was presented to us that many did by the news media. If that was the case, one had to wonder why they didn't want to go.

While I'm sure the atrocoties of the Victorian & Edwardian eras in Bedlam were by then a thing of the past, I imagine even more modern asylums were not pleasant places. Everyone around you other than the medical staff is by definition also insane, & hardly a barometer by which one patient can measure his own tenuous grip on reality. And being subjected to, nay, immersed in, the manias of so many others - the screaming, the crying, the angry outbursts, possibly even violence - of the people one is surrounded by in such a place must be harrowing indeed. And there are methods of treatment that were only fairly recently done away with that bordered on the barbaric: shock treatment, restraints (the ol' rubber room and straitjacket, cuffs tying you to your bed, etc.), stupefying drugs and lobotomies leap to mind. The fear that one of these methods could be tried on you if your illness was intractable enough must have been paralyzing. I think basically they all boil down to the same thing: a loss of volition & freedom of action or thought. Even in court, you as a mental patient could be decalred incompetent & have almost allrights stripped away, all decisions made for you by (if you're lucky) a family member who may be fed up with dealing with your illness or view you as an embarrassment or worse, a court appointed stranger who looks on you & your welfare as just another aspect of their job. We rightfully fear being relegated to such a place & put in such a position.

Of course, there's also the fear of the danger the criminally insane, especially, could pose to one's physical safety. These are people who murder with axes, and in thier hundreds rape nuns & beget the spawn of nightmares. Getting locked up with them, in a place designed to prevent escape, is a terrifying prospect, particularly for somone who still has all thir marbles & can fully appreciate the danger they're in.

Lastly, I think is the idea that one's grip on reality is a fairly fragile thing, and the prospect of losing that grip is profoundly scary. I took a couse in psych in college, and in the textbook the author, a psych prof, related a story wherein he asked the students in his 101 class to raise their hands if they felt their backgrounds could possibly account for a mental abnormality in themselves. He wrote that he was shocked to see a "sea of hands" raised into the air. We've all been at least a little out of our minds at one time or another; stressed to the point of incoherence, or in the crushing depths of despair that could probably be classified in today's liberal diagnostic climate as clinical depression - acute, or thrown into a rage that might have turned violent (although hopefully only against property or at worst resulted in a fight & ot murder). We can probably easliy see ourselves falling into the abyss of insanity, doubting the evidence of our own senses. Is this real or hallucination? I think one film that portrayed this last idea very effectively was the first "Candyman". Helen is committed after it appears she committed some horrific murders. She tries to tell a shrink about the Candyman, and he shows her a video surveillance tape of one of her supposed visitations, and she's alone in a room, strapped to abed, screaming at empty air. Virginia Madsen did a wonderful job of expressing the terror we'd all feel if confronted with such evidence. You can see it hit her like a splash of cold water as the thoughts race across her mind: Did I imagine all that? Is none of that real? Am I really guilty of committiing these crimes they're accusing me of, hiding in my own mind behind the elaborate fantasy of the Candyman? have I lost control of my own thoughts & actions to such a frightening extent that I'd mutilate someone with a meathook for no reason & not remember doing it?

All that and more are symbolized by the insane asylum as a cinematic or literary device. One that remains effective, IMO.

Again, my compliments on starting a wonderful thread. I hope more will join the discussion (DM8, I'm looking at you).

Horror films in their way, I suggest viewing the antecedents to the trend: Titicut Follies and Shock Corridor. You will feel horror. Both are from the 60s, but both preface the horror film's eventual adoption of the "nervous hospitals" or "homes" that would provide horror settings down the road (give or take a Bedlam).

No-budget personal favorite: SF Brownrigg's Don't Look In The Basement (1973).

Sorry for the slight derail - How's about Bad Dreams?

Exorcist 3 is another example. But in that film the asylum is used as a haunted house.
In movies like Bad Dreams and Elm Street 3 the asylum is used as a metphor for the clueless establishment that doesn't recognize the horrors of youth.
I don't know if there's a common thread to be found.

Other early asylum references in horror would of course include Bram Stoker's Casa de Renfield, Lovecraft and his Arkham Sanitarium, plus a Poe story the name of which I'm blanking on. I love a good funny farm flick, it's one of the most unsettling locations you could ever choose for a horror story. A good one will really hit you with the architecture, the history, the miserable oppressive baggage of the place. I have to say though, I do prefer the cool asylums that only exist in movies (the kind where they keep huge serial killers and cannibals and creepy psychic chicks), over the more realistic/mundane kind of asylum where the most exciting part of the day is some Schiaveli-looking dude watching CHiPs reruns while smearing his own shit on the walls.

Another 1980s asylum based flick would be The Dead Pit, though it's more of a Fulci homage than a slasher. From the director of The Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity, recommended for some fun zombie mayhem and multiple scenes of the rather nicely built Cheryl Lawson running around in her skimpies.

If we're talking personal faves though, I would say either Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (the great Terry Fisher's last Hammer film, and Cushing's final Frankenstein, dig that asylum atmosphere and nasty ending), or Session 9 (filmed at the Danvers State Hospital for the Weak and the Wounded). Looking forward to Shutter Island!

What of the common cinematic-horror element that the people who run these institutions (like evil prison wardens) are often depicted as Mad Scientist types? Torturing their patients, experimenting on them, lobotomizing, electrocuting, medicating them unneccesarily? These untrustworthy doctors feed into the viewer's common fear of the medical establishment (surgery, needles, losing control due to meds or a straight jacket). When you've opened yourself up to these respected members of the community (psychologist or even general Dr.) and shared your deepest fears and secrets, only to be manipulated/eviscerated/imprisoned, the betrayal is all the sweeter.

Isn't that right, Dr. Decker?



Hospitals and Doctors are meant to make you well. Babies aren't supposed to eat your face off. Nursery rhymes, children's toys, and clowns are supposed to be benign. Not so in horror flicks. It's a twist!

EDIT: Plus, an insane asylum is often depicted as an oubliette ("It's a place you put people... to forget about 'em!!" -Hoggle, LABYRINTH). And who wants to be forgotten?

I think mental institutions/"insane asylums" have always brought out that fear in many people. It's unknown what will happen in there, how or if the sick person will be fixed, how the sick person will behave until they're cured, etc. It's a complete loss of control.

If you really examine them, 80s slasher films portrayed mental institutions the way they were in decades past. They were thought to be terrifying, and the 80s movies perpetuated this. Go back 20 years earlier to a non-horror film: the scenes in Valley of the Dolls where Neeley is committed are far more "normal", more like a regular hospital (for the 1960s anyway - not by today's standards) than the way mental institutions were depicted 20 years later in 80s slasher films. It's like the 80s slasher films went backwards. That's an example of how, although there's been progress, we're still conditioned to be afraid of them.

Here's a little family history of mine: in 1944, my grandmother had a nervous breakdown. My mother (it was just Mom and Nonna back then) skipped her first two years of high school to keep my grandmother at home and nurse her back to health herself (which she did). First of all, back then, my mom said that if someone you loved went into a mental institution, odds are you were never going to see them again. Second, she said that back then, they were still referred to as the much harsher "insane asylum". Third, people didn't understand mental illness - it was something they thought was "contagious", so as a result, mom and nonna got very little help from relatives who lived nearby.

All of which is my way of saying - yeah, I think the horror movies do play upon that old-school 1930s and 1940s view of mental hospitals. Is this something I can catch? Is this something where I'll disappear into an abyss of sorts and never see anyone again? Will I die here?

Plus, I think the mental hospital thing fits so well with horror movies because it does lend itself to that total loss of control, and that terrifying thought of - is this happening because of Freddy/Jason/whatever monster taking over my mind, or am I indeed insane?

Yeah, they really are settings that give you "instant horror" (like carnivals, graveyards, etc). You're making a haunted house flick and you're looking for a good location? Insane Asylum.

Not only are you dealing with ghosts, but they're CRAZY ghosts.

Not to mention the fact that mental asylums have a long rich history of horrific abuse and sadistic personnel. Modern institutions aren't that far removed from Bedlam itself. There are still many amoral practitioners and abusive staff members.

Bob, Bob, Bob, didn't you see Post #9? Time to take your medicine...



Make sure you swallow this time. That's a good Bob.