by Tim May
Doom Asylum begins with a couple cruising down the highway, listening to a horrible cover of “House of the Rising Sun.” The car crashes, and the girl dies, while the dude seems to walk away relatively unscathed. Cut to the morgue, and somehow, it’s the dude on the autopsy table. The doctor is too cool for school, wearing sunglasses while performing the autopsy and making the deft observation on car crash victims, “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” The crash victim looks like he had all of his skin burned off, yet in the last scene where he was crying over his dead girlfriend, he simply had a few scratches. The guy is (of course) actually alive, and he kills both doctors in the autopsy room.
The film then jumps ahead ten years to a group of four kids driving down the same highway, listening to the same shitty cover of “House of the Rising Sun,” on their way to a campground for vacation. It’s quickly revealed that one of the kids, Kiki, is the daughter of the woman who died in the opening scene. The mother and daughter are played by the same “actress,” Penthouse Pet of the Year Patty Mullen (who also appears in Frank Henenlotter’s FrankenHooker).
The group reaches their destination and discovers an abandoned hospital nearby where a “concert” by Tina and the Tots is being held. This is the worst, least melodic, most non-musical music I’ve ever heard in my life, and the sequence goes on forever.
After that we’re introduced to the lead singer of this “band,” Tina (or, as she’s affectionately referred to later on in the film, “Torpedo Tits”), who may just be the most annoying character ever committed to film (and edited on video).
The only black guy in the campers’ group, Darnell (who looks like a poor man’s LaVar Burton) catches the fancy of the only black girl in Tina’s crew, Godiva, which leads to a pretty hilarious dream sequence where they run toward each other in a meadow for about a minute before finally colliding in a loving embrace.
Then, we see Darnell having a picnic with his friends, all the while having the exact same daydream. It’s even funnier the second time around.
After he allows his imagination to get away with him, Darnell decides to go see Godiva and try to woo her. Before entering the hospital, Darnell spouts one of the funniest lines ever uttered, “Honey, Darnell is about to show you the meaning of God.” That’s a pretty bold claim, sir. Are you sure you’re up to the challenge that none of the great thinkers and philosophers in all of human history have been?
Darnell, of course, gets killed before he can rendezvous with Godiva, thus beginning the relatively typical slasher film that Doom Asylum becomes. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, the hospital where Tina and the Tots like to fill condoms with coffee is the hospital where the guy from the beginning of the picture had his autopsy. Apparently it was abandoned after the mysterious murders of the the coroners.
The villain (or, as credited, “The Coroner”) will sometimes be shown watching old public domain horror films, such as It’s Never too Late to Mend and The Face at the Window. My guess is that the filmmakers found the first cut of Doom Asylum was somewhere around 60 minutes long, so they went and did a couple shots of the Coroner looking at a TV and inserted about twenty minutes of stock footage from all of these old movies. It completely interrupts the narrative and the clips are chosen seemingly at random, with no comment being made on the actual events of the picture. It’s almost as if they were trying to impress us by showing that they know who Tod Slaughter is.
The film was shot in a real abandoned insane asylum, with graffiti all over the walls and tons of garbage strewn everywhere. It’s a great location with a good moody atmosphere, but the filmmakers realize this, and waste a ridiculous amount of time showing it off. There are some sequences where the camera follows no action and simply shows us empty hallways filled with Metallica tags.
Doom Asylum has most of the tropes of your typical slasher film, including the “know-it-all” nerdy girl, who’s really just about as attractive as the the other girls, but she wears glasses (this one played by Kristin Davis of Sex and the City, for whatever that’s worth), a villain who feels alienated from the rest of the world in some sad attempt by the filmmakers to create sympathy for a murderer, and the black characters dying first. It checks every box on the checklist, except the one that says all of these things will eventually mix together into an entertaining movie. Doom Asylum has no idea whether it wants to be a tongue-in-cheek parody of slasher films or if it wants to be taken seriously, and this indecisiveness becomes the film’s greatest downfall.
Note: This entire film is available on YouTube, as well as other streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. The YouTube video is embedded below. Also, thanks to Cory Enns, who sold this film to us.