"Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a hunting
For fear of little men..."
William Allingham (19 Mar 1824 – 18 Nov 1889)
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a hunting
For fear of little men..."
William Allingham (19 Mar 1824 – 18 Nov 1889)
(Spoliers.) Made as The Forgotten, this infamous little low-budget independent picture from Planet Texas — shot on the grounds of the no longer existent Westminster Junior College and Bible Institute in Tehuacana— later hit the grindhouses mostly as Don't Look in the Basement (and sometimes as Death Ward #13 and/or The Snake Pit*) after Steve Minasian, Phil Scuderi and Robert Barsamian's Hallmark Releasing Corp took over the distribution. Hallmark, some might remember, had previously released another gritty, low-budget grindhouse staple a year earlier, Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972 / trailer), the famous tag line of which, "To avoid fainting keep repeating it's only a movie", they reused for Don't Look in the Basement (not to mention a number of other movies as well).
*As Death Ward No. 13, among other places it was screened, going by the ad above, was at the Wamesit Drive-in (R.I.P.) in Tewksbury, MA, where it was perfectly paired with Paul Bartel's excellent feature-film directorial debut, Private Parts (1972 / trailer). As The Snake Pit, a title stolen from the 1948 Oscar-winning drama, The Snake Pit (trailer) — which was directed by Anatole Litvak, stars Olivia de Havilland, and is based on the semi-autobiographical novel written by Mary Jan Ward– it got screened, among other places, at the Pittsfield Drive-in (likewise in MA and R.I.P.) with Mario Bava's "extreme"Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971 / trailer).
Trailer to
Don't Look in the Basement:
Written by Thomas Pope,* the scriptwriter of grindhouse auteur William Girdler's final directorial effort, The Manitou (1978 / trailer), and the arguably justifiably forgotten comedy Cold Dog Soup (1990 / trailer), the basic idea behind the plot of Don't Look in the Basement, like other movies before and since (e.g., Unheimlichen Geschichten [1932 / trailer], Manicomio [1954 / full Spanish film], Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon [1973 / full movie], Jan Svankmajer's Lunacy [2005 / trailer], Stonehearst Asylum [2014 / trailer] and etc.), is taken (in this case without credit) from Edgar Allen Poe's short horror story, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845).
*Contrary to recent, inexplicable popular lore, music-video director Tim Pope, who was a 16-year-old lad living in Great Britain when Don't Look in the Basement was made, had nothing to do with this movie. To date (19.04.25), his only feature film credit is the laughable time-waster The Crow: City of Angels (1996 / trailer).
Shot in 12 days on a budget of under $100,000 — which, considering how the movie actually looks, seems a bit high — Don't Look in the Basement was the directorial debut of regional filmmaker Sherald Fergus Brownrigg (30 Sept 1937 – 20 Sept 1996), a man whose prior movie credits were diverse production credits on early Irvin Berwick (6 Jul 1914 – 29 Jun 1997) or Larry Buchanan (31 Jan 1923 – 2 Dec 2004) flotsam — indeed, S.F. Brownrigg possibly met his future wife, hobby nudist Elizabeth Ann Booth (a.k.a. Libby Hall), while he was doing the "sound" (what little there is) on Buchanan's The Naked Witch (1961), in which Ms. Booth/Hall played the titular role.
It is safe to say, for all the flaws that Don't Look in the Basement might have, it displays more filmic talent than is found in all of Buchanan's films together, and unlike that Texan's movies, is not a movie to watch just for laughs. Browning's film actually has (misshapen) balls.
When it comes to laughing, actually, Don't Look in the Basement has less laughs, intentional or otherwise, than its immediate grindhouse sibling, Last House on the Left, which even included laughs on purpose, or its similarly in-your-face and cheap distant grindhouse cousin, I Spit on Your Grave (1978 / trailer). But just like both those films, Don't Look in the Basement is a poorly made, threadbare production that cannot help but wear its cheapness on its sleeve.
The movie opens by introducing the viewer to a few of the patients at Stephens Sanitarium — the lobotomized Sam (Bill McGhee [24 Jul 1930 – 17 Feb 2007] of High Yellow [1965 / trailer] and Drive-In [1976 / trailer]), a big Black man with the mentality of a child; Harriett (Camilla Carr of Brownrigg's Scum of the Earth [1974 / trailer] and Logan's Run [1976 / trailer]), who is convinced that the plastic doll in her hands is her real, living child; Sgt. Jaffee (Hugh Feagin), forever on the lookout for the oncoming attack of enemy forces; Danny (Jessie Kirby), an annoying Richard Simmons lookalike with a pathological need to aggravate others. But the true nutcase of the house is probably the man who runs it, Dr. Stephens (Michael Harvey [21 Jun 1917 – 15 Oct 1995] of Berlin Express [1948 / trailer], The Velvet Trap [1966 / full film] and Encounter with the Unknown [1972 / trailer], here in his final feature-film role), something one realizes the minute one sees him out on the lawn with the beady-eyed and sweaty former judge Oliver W. Cameron (Gene Ross [24 Oct 1930 – 23 Mar 2006] of Angel [1983 / trailer] and Lost Highway [1997 / trailer]), cheering the obviously disturbed man on to let out all his aggression by chopping away at a log with a big, heavy axe.
And just how nutty is Dr. Stephens? Well, when Nurse Jane (Jessie Lee Fulton [14 Jun 1912 – 29 Jun 1983] of Buster and Billie [1974 / trailer] and Brownrigg's Keep My Grave Open [1977 / full film]) comes to tell him that she has decided to quit and leave the sanatorium, he turns his back to the axe-yielding judge — with the expected results. Oddly, while Dr. Geraldine S. Masters (the busy regional actor Annabelle Weenick [5 Nov 1924 – 27 Aug 2003] of Strange Compulsion [1964 / trailer], The Black Cat [1966 / trailer], Quadroon [1971 / clip] and Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing [1981 / trailer]) is upset over his death, she is far more concerned about the future of the patients and institution and chooses not to inform the police. And it is into this situation that Nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik*) shows up, coming to take on the position that Dr. Stephens had promised her....
*The attractive Roise Holotik, whose diaphanous gown partially hid her female charms on the cover of the April, 1972, issue of Playboy (below), had an extremely short, three B-film career — consisting of this one, Brownrigg's Encounter with the Unknown (1972 / trailer), and the ever-popular Horror High (1973 / trailer) — before moving on to become the wife of footballer Charlie Waters and a successful (by now retired) Dallas real estate agent. She is not the strongest thespian of movie, though she does have a good set of lungs and screams like a professional.
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If you know the plot of Poe's original short story or any of the movies it has inspired, then you know the situation at Greenpark Asylum. Namely, it is just like with the current US government under Emperor Trump:
The Lunatics Have Taken over the Asylum
(by the Fun Boy Three):
But if Nurse Charlotte isn't crazy, she is somewhat naive and dense, and she sticks around much longer than any normal, sane person would, especially since there are so many road signs that all is not normal at Greenpark. The phone is dead, the rooms aren't lockable, patients warn her that she should leave — and more than one patient proves to have homicidal tendencies and actually tries to do her in.
She, in any event, has better luck than some of the patients in the house: poetry-spouting Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams [15 May 1884 – 20 July 1982] of Brownrigg's Don't Hang Up a.k.a. Don't Open the Door [1974 / trailer]), for example, has her tongue ripped out, while drug-addled Jennifer (former Lake Highlands High School and University of Texas alumnae Harryette Warren) gets a receipt-holder spike through the eye. The nymphomaniac Allyson King (Betty Chandler) unexpectedly survives till the end, but then she is so distracted by her dead telephone-repairman lover (Ray Daniels [?]) that perhaps the killer didn't see her as a threat. (Yep, the movie has a nod to necrophilia — in the Golden Age of Grindhouse, taboos were made to be broken.)
The gloomy narrative of Don't Look in the Basement may be beyond irrational, and the entire production looks both bargain-basement and ragtag, but that combined with the constant presence of over-the-top nutcases works in a manner that defies all logic. Those who don't like their movies cheap and sleazy and jugular probably won't like this movie, but they still might find themselves jerking in fright now and then (yep, there are a few effective jump scares). Those who open themselves to the overall vibe, look, and scurrility of the movie will definitely and unexpectedly find themselves looking beyond the cheese to feel an increasing unease and dread, and might probably even put the movie down for future re-watching.
That, in any event is what we plan to do. The scanned and panned version of Don't Look in the Basement we watched was the second of two films on a cheapo release from the now-defunct public-domain-trawling firm Digiview, where it was combined with the far older Creature Feature fave, the original House on Haunted Hill (1959 / trailer). The version of Brownrigg's movie on that DVD is scratchy and faded, and sometimes even gives the feeling that some scenes might also be slightly cut. (In truth, the movie could also just be poorly edited — but some jumps just come across as too extreme to be intentional.) Should we ever find a better copy, we would rewatch Don't Look in the Basement in a flash: the movie is truly an excellent example of mangy but efficient grindhouse product that delivers much more than it logically should. And for all its obvious grindhouse intentions, it also offers multiple possibilities of interpretation and intellectualization — something we'll save for when we finally see a restored version. (And, yes, Don't Look in the Basement is a movie that deserves restoration. Are you listening, agfaor byNWR?)
Diverse remakes or reinterpretations of Don't Look in the Basement have been announced over the years, but none have ever seen fruition. For that, however, S.F. & Libby Brownrigg's actor/director son Tony Brownrigg did make a sequel with a supernatural bent in 2015 titled, creatively enough, Don't Look in the Basement II (trailer).
Edgar Wright's
Don't (faux trailer):