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Doom Asylum (1987) - Blu-ray Review

4 beers

“What have you done to Judy?!”

It begins with a godawful cover of “House of the Rising Sun” and it ends with the world’s longest (and highly preventable) head-on collision as Judy LaRue (Penthouse's own Patty Mullen) and her fiancee are thrown from the car and she loses more than a limb.  Think Doom Asylum doesn't have anywhere to go?  WRONG.  This campy shitfest is just getting started. 

Body parts are flying around soon.  An undying love is promised as Death takes two victims from an otherwise sunny day.  Unfortunately, as the skin is being removed from one of the car crash’s victims in the coroner’s, it is discovered that Death himself fell down on the job.  Mitch Hansen (Michael Rogen), the driver of the car, is still alive.  And he’s not happy about his current state.  And thus, an urban legend is born.

 

"this is New Jersey as seen through a lens where Return of the Living Dead is King and all other flicks bow to it."


 

Welcome to New Jersey!  This is not Bruce Springsteen’s version of the Garden City, though.  No, this is New Jersey as seen through a lens where Return of the Living Dead is King and all other flicks bow to it.  Doom Asylum, in which one hard-up brother begs his sister to call him “mother”, is low-grade horror.  It is also very funny in that cheapo depot kind of way. {googleads}

Directed by Richard Friedman, Doom Asylum thankfully NEVER takes itself seriously.  It remains over the top and completely goofy.  And so does the gore.  We get a wisecracking mutilated killer in Hansen who, ten years after the accident, still walks the halls of a real life insane asylum looking for teenagers to off.  He comments on their make-up and their music and jokes his way toward the next kill.  And, thanks to pranks involving condoms filled with water, the audience is never short of something or someone to laugh at as these picnicking teenagers are picked off one after another, more ridiculous than the last. 

Starring Ruth Collins (and her boobs), a second role for Patty Mullen (in a red bikini no less), and Kristen Davis (in a blue bikini that shows more of her body than Sex and the City ever did), this bargain basement slasher spoof is pretty uproarious.  The absurdities in the script are not limited to just the dialogue.  Even the kills – in which one poor dude meets his maker thanks to an oversized pair of clamps and another gets his toes removed one digit at a time – are through the roof.  Blood squirts everywhere.  And industrial strength acid is used to clean the blood from our killer.  He’s supposedly dead, remember?

Complete with an all-girl noise rock band, Doom Asylum can’t help but be ridiculously entertaining.  It’s quotable (“Fuck you, Tina!”), has a great location (as it was filmed in an actual abandoned asylum), and filled with black-and-white horror films (to pad the running time I guess), the movie often refuses to even make a lick of sense.  We even get a Wade Boggs comedic relief moment as one of our characters chases a baseball card down the road when the wind carries it off.  And then he gets a drill right to the center of skull.  OUCH. 

Doom Asylum (1987) - Blu-ray Review

All of this gooey nonsense adds up to a pretty fun (and funny) movie that - because we honestly don't know what else to do with this zaniness - makes for an entertaining horror film filled with groan inducing one-liners thanks to the undead antics of a palimony attorney turned maniac killer due to the death of his lover...by his own bad driving.

Arrow Video, rescuing this title from obscurity, present Doom Asylum with a stunningly fresh blu-ray release.  Fans of the movie (and who isn’t?), get a brand new 2K scan of this B-grade horror flick, a bevy of supplemental items, and cool reversible cover art with this release.

It’s raining frankfurters!  Again!  Doom Asylum gets sawed once again…on blu-ray.

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Doom Asylum (1987) - Blu-ray Review

MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime:
77 mins
Director
: Richard Friedman
Writer:
Rick Marx
Cast:
Patty Mullen, Ruth Collins, Kristin Davis
Genre
: Horror
Tagline:
It'll send shivers up your funny bone!
Memorable Movie Quote: "Show me what you've got!"
Theatrical Distributor:

Official Site:
Release Date:

DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
July 17, 2018
Synopsis: When a group of horny teens wind up on the grounds of a creepy abandoned asylum, they think they’ve found the perfect place to party. Little do they know that inside the building’s crumbling walls lurks a freakishly deformed maniac, driven to madness by the tragic loss of his fiancée in a car accident. With an array of grisly surgical tools at his disposal, it’s only a matter of time before the youngsters begin meeting various splattery ends at the hands of the ghoulish Coroner.

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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

Doom Asylum (1987) - Blu-ray Review

Blu-ray

Blu-ray Details:

Home Video Distributor: Arrow Video
Available on Blu-ray
- July 17, 2018
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles
: English SDH
Audio:
English: LPCM Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A

Doom Asylum is presented in both the 1.85:1 and 1.37:1 aspect ratio with mono audio.  Colors are bold and clean and dark levels are solid, too.  The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 2K resolution, graded and restored at OCN Labs. The original video masters were sourced for the video inserts. The grade was supervised and this restoration was approved by director of photography Larry Revene.  The soundtrack was sourced from a set of original tape masters. The audio synch will appear slightly loose against the picture, due to the fact that the soundtrack was recorded partly in post-production.  This information is all included in the insert booklet that accompanies the blu-ray release.

Supplements:

Commentary:

  • There are two fun commentaries.  The first is with Screenwriter Rick Marx and the second is with The Hysteria Continues.

Special Features:

New interviews abound in the supplemental department here.  A choice of frames (1.78:1 and 1.33:1) are included, too.  Ruth Collins comes clean in her new interview about the movie.  Director of Photography Larry Revenge does the same with his time.  There’s also a discussion about the film’s gore.  With archival interviews included and a stills gallery, this release is bound to reward all buyers.

  • Tina's Terror (18 min)
  • Movie Mad House (19 min)
  • Morgues & Mayhem (18 min)
  • Archival Interviews (11 min)
  • Stills Gallery (3 min)

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Doom Asylum (1987) - Blu-ray Review

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