« Back to Beat the Dust home page


Tony O'Neill
Author: Tony O'Neill
  Tony on Don’t Look In The Basement: “Some of my earliest writing was movie reviews, for fanzines.  I started doing this again on the Guardian's movie blog, but I really hate most blogs.  I’m beginning to hate the internet.  The internet depresses me because people depress me.  On the internet everybody has an opinion.  Some people think it’s funny to laugh at all the idiotic comments people leave on youtube, or on news sites, but for me it just makes me sad.  Sometimes not being aware of how utterly fucking stupid most people really are, is a good thing.  With the internet, people seemingly can’t wait to reveal what idiotic shit suckers they are.  Anyway, this is a movie review I wrote a long time ago (maybe around the time I was writing digging the vein).  Can’t remember who or where I wrote it for, but I don’t think it was ever published.”
Submission Date:
15 Jan 2010 Category:   Review In Chap-book

Don’t Look in the Basement! (1973)  Dir:  S.F. Brownrigg

In the 1970’s there was a definite trend towards exploitation movies warning us not to do stuff.  “Don’t Answer the Phone!” the posters screamed, “Don’t Go Near The Park” they warned. “Don’t Torture A Duckling,” they confusingly advised.   Some were good, some bad, most were just plain strange.  One of my favorite movies to emerge from this trend was “Don’t Look In The Basement.”

When it first started showing at drive theatres in the early 70’s, “Don’t Look In The Basement” had the good fortune to be paired with one of the most notorious exploitation movies ever made: Wes Cravens’ rape/revenge shocker “Last House On The Left”  (you know, the one with the great tag line “To avoid fainting, keep repeating… it’s only a movie… it’s only a movie…”) The coupling was incredibly successful, and both movies ran for years on the grindhouse circuit, horrifying and disgusting audiences the length and breadth of America.

“Don’t Look In The Basement” is a grimly effective, low budget shocker from trash auteur S.F. Brownrigg.  If you haven’t come across Brownrigg before, his movies include “Don’t Open The Door” (you might be noticing a theme with his titles here), “Scum Of The Earth” (a kind of “Deliverance”-influenced tale of psychotic hillbillies), and “Keep My Grave Open” (a gender-bending slasher movie).  The Michigan Daily reportedly called “Scum of the earth” one of “the worst movies of all time”. They obviously hadn’t seen The Da Vinci Code yet.

Besides having a fantastic, evocative title, “Don’t Look In The Basement” is also a very creepy movie.  Brownrigg was a master of “less is more” and he managed to make a very small budget go a long way.   It had the tagline “The Day The Lunatics Took Over The Asylum!” and although it was no “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” in amongst the tongue removals, axe murders, eye gougings and hideous overacting, there was a pretty neatly scripted thriller.

The story opens in an isolated asylum, where Dr Stephens takes a very unusual approach to treating his patients’ mental disorders.  Instead of suppressing their fantasies, they are encouraged to live them out.  So we have one guy who calls himself “The General”, running around in full army gear, and shouting orders at everyone.  One woman cradles a raggedy-looking doll, convinced it is her dead child.   When Dr Stephens receives an axe in his back for his troubles, the sadistic Dr Geraldine Masters takes over.  This happens just before the arrival of the new nurse, who then spends the rest of the movie being menaced by the inmates and trying to work out why people keep showing up with body parts missing.  Is Dr Masters hiding some kind of grim secret…?

Now, I don’t wish to oversell this movie: the acting is theatrical and hysterical, and although Brownrigg may have been a master at churning out movies quickly and cheaply, he was certainly no Hitchcock.  Most of the movie has the terrified nurse running through corridors that all look exactly the same as the one in the previous shot.  Although the plot twist towards the end is clever, it takes maybe 20 minutes too long to get there.

That said, “Don’t Look In The Basement” is the kind of movie that is easy on the eyes (and the brain) and unlike some of the “cult movies” that are being dusted off and released onto DVD, it won’t bore you in between the gory bits.  It also has a finale so gory and hysterical, that it almost topped the final scene of the 1980s’ slasher classic “Maniac” for sheer brutality.

I love these movies because of their lack of pretension, and because they were made in an era when low budget mavericks could still get their movies onto a cinema screen.  A bad movie from a major Hollywood studio usually involves Will Smith and 30 million dollars’ worth of special effects.  Even the very worst 1960s/70s exploitation movie will usually have the good grace to be entertainingly inept.  I know I would rather sit through 10 Herschell Gordon Lewis flicks than another Ron Howard snoozefest.  How about you?


Video trailer for Don’t Look in the Basement, 1973



  click to add comments



« Back to Beat the Dust home page