User reviews

This is another film I remember from childhood, from the days of regular TV (free, broadcast, and adjust the "rabbit ears" for reception), as a crappy but atmospheric British monster picture.

Now, not only on cable, but on a premium service, I came across it again - and in letterbox format no less. Well, the film is still basically very flawed, but it really shows how much better crafted films once were.

While it remains a simplistic lots of onscreen gore effort, this picture is so much more beautiful to look at than many produced today. The cinematography is consistently superior, and well supported by excellent lighting and generally well scored music. And even though the special effects don't match up to todays films they retain some value in that they have more visual "weight" than some of the CGI crap routinely inserted in modern movies.

Unfortunately the wacky plot and mediocre (well, sometimes bad) acting show through in the end. It may be that the director was trying for a lot of humor at points but it only worked for me towards the end of the film when one of those fleeing the burning building stops for a snack in the kitchen.

As for the beheading car mentioned in another review: that particular element is worthy of Austin Powers' "Dr. Evil." I can see the good doctor in this movie also calling out "All I'm asking for is for some frickin' sharks with lasers on their heads."

If you've seen this before on broadcast TV, it may be worth a second look on video or DVD for the cinematography and for the sexual elements which explain the plot a little more. In the TV version I saw as a kid, the sexual theme was not at all evident, and so, the plot seemed even more outlandish than it actually is.

Still, if you happen by this big-time cable it may catch your interest, but all the way along you'll wonder why any premium channel could have chosen this film from their catalog. There are quite simply so many more old British shockers which are better than Horror Hospital."

-SCG

It's one of those creaky British horrors that always show up on the BBC in the early hours of the morning. The reason for this is that the only ones watching are the drunks staggering in from the pub, or the insomniacs interested in a thrill to pass the time away with. The former are the better off because this is a film where not being of sober mind can only aid the viewing.

It's bonkers in plotting, Robin Askwith (just prior to his shift into a sex comedy franchise) is a stressed out singer with a pop group. He decides to go for some R&R at a country retreat. He hooks up with Vanessa Shaw on the train journey in, and once they arrive at the retreat they find it's a bizarro world inhabited by mute bikers, lobotomised robots, a malignant dwarf and a mad doctor (Michael Gough) in a wheelchair!

That's pretty much it, not much makes sense, there's a little sexy nudity, a whole host of sequences where the zombies do nothing of interest, some scenes of the dwarf (Skip Martin) mixing potions and puddings, and some cool fake fights between Askwith and chums and the crash helmet bikers. It plods along gleefully to the finale's big reveal and chase/escape sequence, to round it off as car crash cinema. Splendidly bad and joyful in subtexts. 5/10

This of course is not a "great film", but its heart is in the right place and many of the characters really go with it, despite the preposterous plot.

Michael Gough, in particular, is great as the evil doctor, and Skip Martin has a lot of fun with the "igor" role, as does Dennis Price with his cameo. The main couple as also good - so much so that I was intrigued to see that Vanessa Shaw apparently never did another film. Robin Askwith of course went on to create a reputation of enduring fame.

What I found most evocative, strangely, were the scenes on and about the railway - it looked convincingly like Victoria and the Brighton Line, and the interior carriage scenes took me straight back to commuting to school on trains that looked exactly like that.

I didn't find it as funny as I think I was supposed to, but it must have worked very well as a late-night TV horror treat as a complement to the Hammer canon.

Another story of mad scientist who uses rock musicians as guinea pigs for his experiments?If we look below the surface of the trite screenplay we could see the revenge of the establishment against those hairy young men and the horrible sounds they make ,their silly ideas of peace and love ....

What saves this flick is its black humor:from the very first line about keeping the car clean to the girl's family 's racy past:Wasn't her auntie the owner of a brothel in Hamburg ?Wasn't her mom an unwed mother? and hadn't the aunt a lot of nerve to call her names? Michael Gough is the sinister-looking saw bone;the aforementioned aunt is his assistant (sounds like Franju's classic :"Les Yeux Sans Visages" aka "Eyes without a face" );and the rockers provide the raw material.It is not food for thought but it's rather entertaining if you do not demand too much.

The atmosphere of this movie is unmistakably '70's like, with ridicules hair-cuts and outfits. The movie is like many other genre movies from the '70's, meaning that it features nudity, lots of gore and yes also a dwarf. The movie further more of course also features some really bad sound and fake looking reddish '70's blood. The acting is below par, as you would expect, with the exception of course of Michael Gough, who's presence alone is good enough to uplift this movie. He is not as well known as a Peter Cushing or a Christopher Lee but his acting is always excellent.

The movie is unnecessarily slow at times. Some sequences go on for too long without really adding something to the build up or the overall story and movie. It doesn't make the movie always flow really well and make the movie feel overlong, even though it's well below 2 hours short.

The atmosphere and horror elements of the movie are rather good. The movie uses some nice and atmospheric settings and some effective but simple cinematography. Michael Gough also adds to the movie its atmosphere and horror, also with the help of his killing automobile and mysterious henchmen and other strange characters.

The story itself is quite ridicules, mainly because it isn't going anywhere really. Therefor the movie perhaps makes a bit of a pointless impression but overall the movie is entertaining enough to consider this a simple and typically enjoyable '70's genre movie.

Obviously a movie for fans only.

4/10

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'Horror Hospital' is a cheap and very cheerful slice of sexy, early '70s horror sleaze. It's probably the most polished director Anthony Balch made before his untimely death at the age of 42 in 1980. It was also the final acting job for Vanessa Shaw (Judy) who seems to have retired after this.

The cast is impressive. Robin Askwith - whose roles in often hugely un-PC fare such as 'Bless This House', 'Confessions of a Window Cleaner' and 'Carry On, Girls' haven't stifled a prolific career - plays Jason, a true-to-form randy twit who emerges as a kind of hero toward the end (his first words to Judy are, 'Relax, I'm not gonna rape you'). Skip Martin, fresh from Hammer's 'Vampire Circus', is Frederick. Also starring are Eileen Pollock, Dennis Price and top-billed Michael Gough, who puts far more effort into his role as Dr Storm than he did for Hammer's ground-breaking 'Dracula'. You might wonder what these people are doing in gory nonsense like this among a supporting cast of mostly non-actors, but the fact remains - it's gruesomely good fun.

This lands about halfway between a straight-faced (if over-the-top) horror film and a "Carry On" spoof of the genre, plus some sexploitation catering to the audience of the smutty softcore farces the male lead spent much of his big-screen career in.

The veteran actors are having fun, and the movie has a weird sort of generation-gap air to it in having hippie-ish youth used, abused and murdered by their elders at the titular "resort" where Robin Askwind is lured for a holiday. But the kids (also including the female lead, a pleasant presence who seems to have retired from the profession after this--maybe because she's so frequently and brusquely disrobed here) really seem to be present not so much to be "turned into zombies" as to offer sexy young bodies the camera can ogle. The male lead is an OK farceur in a rather manic, Michael Crawford/Tommy Steele-ish way, but god, he is hard to look at, like Mick Jagger's pugly brother.

The film has some energy and eccentricity that make it watchable, the problem being that it doesn't take itself seriously enough as a horror movie to be frightening (despite some rather surprisingly zesty, beheading-focused gore), while its silly humor isn't clever enough to be particularly funny. It doesn't blend the two angles with any confidence, either, yet the combination here is odd enough to raise it a notch or two above routine horror comedies of the era. As others have noted, the macabre camp tone that doesn't quite work nonetheless feels like an intriguing warmup for the future likes of "Rocky Horror" (and there's even a cross-dressing rocker at the beginning, though that's the end of the musical interludes, alas). Anyway, worth a look, but you'd have to be a big fan of lower-brow 1970s British film comedies or all things Hammer-esque to think it's more than an almost-good curiosity.

A worn out musician decides to take break and go a relaxing vacation. He chooses to stay at health farm located out in the country and on the way there, he meets a girl on the train going to the same place to see her aunty. The mysteriously mean, but crippled Dr. Storm, who's performing brain surgery on the holidaymakers and turning them into his obedient zombies, runs the resort. When the two teens find out about his insane experiments and learn that's their fate. They go out of their way to get away. But they not only have the doctor to face, but also his dwarf sidekick, an army of leather wearing zombies and that of a hideous monster.

Just wait a second, as I just pick up my jaw from the ground. Now, what was that all about!? "Horror Hospital" has got to be one of the most ridiculous and over-exaggerated horror films that I've ever came across, but you know what? I had a real ball with this blend of macabre and camp! That's high camp of a VERY demented type. The praise that I've given makes it sound great and I had a good old time with it. Although, don't be expecting anything particularly fresh and this deranged piece is one downright messy film that doesn't have any idea of the word coherence. So from that point it recycles the same old formula and leaves a lot of things up in the air. The clichés and predictability flows freely, without any sort of constraints. Also forget about logic in the script and story as that's thrown out of the window for absurd situations that don't make much sense. Actually the whole film doesn't make a whole a lot of sense, with the so many potholes and laziness. There's so much going on in the plot that there's such vagueness to everything and the problem is it tries to squeeze too much madness without explaining what happen before it and how it came to that situation. But all is forgiven because it's so abnormal and hugely enjoyable. So, just go with the flow because if you try to decipher what's going on, you'll receive a splitting headache for your troubles. The whole mysterious awe about what's going is just so hard to shake that I couldn't keep my eyes off it.

The actual story is no more then a melodrama disguised as a Gothic shocker, which spurts along some exploitation and black humour along the way. Actually, the whole thing turns into a black farce with everything being poked fun at and the blood splattering is pretty much in a comic book state. Because of that the violence isn't particularly gruesome and it doesn't make you squirm, but the gratuitous bloodletting and nudity does run freely. Damn those leather-clad zombies really do like to hand out a beating! The great thing about it is that everyone involved knows how stupid it really is and don't take the thing so seriously. The performances are plain awful and purely amateurish to say the least. But it's Michael Gough's hellishly campy performance that steals the lime light as the crazy Doctor and Skip Martin as Frederick the dwarf adds a cheeky vibe to the film. The dialogue joins it with its ineptness. But even though these things are terrible there's some energy amongst it and you can't go wrong with the tongue-in-cheek approach it takes. Another strong feature is that of the setting. The resort, which more looks like a castle on the inside, has an oppressive awe about it and the grand Gothic exterior makes it look larger and menacing than it really is. Being isolated in the countryside helps provide such a brood atmosphere too. Although, it's definitely hilariously bad, it still does have its eerie moments worked in. Also the robust score builds on the suspense and uneasiness greatly and the soundtrack is reasonably groovy. Well, what do expect from that era. Really, this is purely utter ham that breathes sadism and sleaze in a very cheap way.

No way can you call this a good film, because it's not. The aim of the flick is to entertain with it being heavily laced with bloody, sleazy and humorous context. Even if the production is pure rubbish, it does it effectively enough that I can see this becoming a guilty pleasure of mine. Only for people who really enjoy camp horror and if you do, you're in for one big treat.

Computer Killers is bloody, campy, goofy, sleazy awesomeness. I originally found this film titled as Horror Hospital.

I enjoyed the acting style because it is over the top and different from what we generally see today.

The film takes place in only a few settings but the one I'm drawn too the most is the train early in the film. The two stranger meet in a simple way but their dialog made me want to laugh and wonder how and why it was chosen. This goes for most of the dialog throughout the film. It is strange, straightforward and wacky without completely going to crazy town.

Overall, the film feels like a good combination of horror and comedy.

I would watch this again, and I will be recommending it to friends. This film is a treat for 70's horror fan. It may be a bit hard to watch if you are not a hardcore horror watcher. If you are on the fence about seeking out this movie, I say go now!

1973's "Horror Hospital" is never as amusing as it would like to be, a script full of witty asides, just not enough incident and too much padding to kill an hour and a half. The great Michael Gough does get one of his rare starring roles (usually in low budget horror), as resident mad scientist Dr. Christian Storm, whose 'hospital' is located at a huge country estate guarded by motorcycling hoodlums, a former brothel madam, and a dwarf caretaker (Skip Martin), who effortlessly steals his scenes (watch out for the car that gets a head of yours!). Into this outré menagerie come Jason (Robin Askwith) and Judy (Vanessa Shaw), ostensibly for a holiday, which lasts approximately five seconds before they realize something strange is going on. One tends to wait patiently for the next amusing line as one attempted escape after another is predictably foiled; meanwhile, Gough's relatively restrained (for him) deadpan works wonders when he finally enters a half hour in, relishing his sexual power over his mindless, beautiful subjects. Director Antony Balch harkened back to Bela Lugosi and Angelo Rossitto in fashioning the scenario, particularly 1942's "The Corpse Vanishes." In his next-to-last role, genre veteran Dennis Price is reduced to playing a camp travel agent, appreciatively eyeing Jason's crotch, but does enjoy one priceless moment in a 'mirror mirror on the wall' routine. In what turned out to be her very last role, Vanessa Shaw is never less than appealing, but fades into the background halfway through. What really drags it down is the appalling Robin Askwith (coming off like a poor man's Nicky Henson), still a year away from his successful quartet of "Confessions" features, where a bevy of luscious Hammer starlets such as Linda Hayden assured their immortality by disrobing for the camera.

Rock and roll enthusiast, Jason Jones (Robin Askwith) needs a vacation. Luckily for him, a magazine ad leads him to Hairy Holiday, where Mr. Pollack (Dennis Price) sets Robin up with a suitable getaway.

Next stop, the enormous Brittlehurst Manor, where Jason and his new friend, Judy (Vanessa Shaw) encounter Dr. Christian Storm (Michael Gough) and his creepy crew of nefarious cronies. These include the diminutive Frederick (Skip Martin), the devilish Aunt Harris (Ellen Pollock), and various, cadaverous zombies and bikers. Will Jason and Judy ever leave this terrible place?

HORROR HOSPITAL is a crackpot menagerie of the macabre and maniacal. Dr. Storm is carrying out unholy experiments, while something resembling a man made entirely of Silly Putty roams the mansion. If absurdity is what you seek, then seek no more! Gruesome and beyond bonkers, HH delivers the ghastly goods!

CONTAINS: Mad science, brains on a plate, nudity, and decapitation as motor sport!...

Two dumb 20 somethings, Jason (Robin Askwith) and Judy (Vanessa Shaw) travel to a remote castle in the middle of nowhere in England--him for a vacation, her to meet her aunt (Ellen Pollock). Unfortunately, the place is run by mad Doc Storm (Michael Gough) who, with the aunt and his dwarf assistant (Skip Martin) have some interesting ideas for the two.

The film opens with a great double decapitation and has a creepy moment when Shaw discovers a "dormitory" but that's about it. The plot is vague...to put it nicely and has really stupid dialogue and scenes (i.e. Doc Storm tells Jason all about his experiments out there...for no reason at all). There's plenty of blood but the "special" effects are pitiful and there's way too much gratuitous female nudity--one very ugly scene has a nude women brutally beaten to death with a cane. Also the movie moves very slowly and is dull.

The acting varies: Askwith is ugly and annoying with a horrible 70s hairstyle; Shaw is beautiful but wooden; Pollock looks embarassed...only Gough seems to be enjoying himself while chewing the scenery as Storm. Skip Martin, on the other hand, REALLY overacts...he makes Gough look like a Method actor!

I give this a 2 for Gough and the cool guys in leather on the motorcycles. Otherwise this is vague, boring and stupid. Don't bother.

Ah, the stresses of a young rock and roller, they can drive you to Horror Hospital! (Cue the scary organ chord), where you'll be a fine young specimen for the Evil Doctor's nefarious ends. I enjoyed this satiric romp thru old-time British horror movies. Doesn't hit you over the head with Ha-Ha funny, but it keeps the subtle little drolleries coming, and I found myself amused with a little smile on my face most of the time. The "vacation package" to hell that our hero purchases is targeted "for under 30's" and clearly so is this film. Having been well under 30 myself in 1973, I could relate. The villains, however, are seasoned old pros, perfectly balancing the tightrope of both menacing and amusing. The arbitrariness of the action is part of the fun, and i couldn't believe some of the far-fetched elements they threw in that kept me interested and entertained . . With emphasis on humor rather than horror, effects are outlandish and cheesy. But there is a Death Car worthy of a James Bond Baddy

Perhaps the late great Michael Gough's last stab at a leading role and he relishes it, but the film (made for another prominent exploitation figure, Richard Gordon) lets him down pitifully! Incidentally, I guess the reason why his name is not as well-known (apart from aficionados) as that of, say, Vincent Price or Christopher Lee is that, even at his best, the overall quality of the films were markedly inferior!

Anyway, this pits him in another typical environment – people being sent to a health clinic come face to face with their worst nightmare; similarly, we have a reconstituted fire victim for a villain with a dwarf as his all-purpose servant (played by Skip Martin). The hero is the future star of the sexy "Confessions" series Robin Askwith, while his female counterpart (who does little throughout the film but disrobe and scream her head off!) proves to be the niece of Gough's assistant and lover, a former Madam whose clients had served as the doctor's guineas pigs!! Typically, he intends building an army made up of wholly subservient subjects; amusingly, they are frequently made to exercise in his private gym but this does nothing to remove the very conspicuous scars on their lobotomized foreheads!

Also on hand is Dennis Price as the bemused (and openly gay) tour agent who advertises Gough's specialized treatment; a review I read claims his performance is hilarious but, to me, it only felt embarrassing! His character is eventually revealed to have been blackmailing Gough, but he is disposed of before long (as are a number of others) in inventively grisly fashion via decapitation-by-blades protruding from the doctor's Rolls Royce (with a strategically-placed basket to catch the falling head)! There is also the sinister elderly station master (perhaps intended to evoke Boris Karloff!) who informs Gough of new arrivals. What to make, then, of the slimy Swamp Thing-like monster which is revealed to be hiding under the villain's 'synthetic flesh'…?!

P.S. For a more rewarding (and sobering) contemporaneous film on the same themes, try Alain Jessua's SHOCK TREATMENT aka DOCTOR IN THE NUDE starring Alain Delon and the late Annie Girardot.

When I saw that Robin Askwith headed the cast of this British 70's horror flick I instantly thought of the brilliant bawdy comedies The Confessions series which he starred in and were delightfully mucky and low-brow. Perfect for the era. If Mr Askwith could prove a huge hit with the sexploitation brigade surely he could score big when it came to another low brow form of entertainment, the horror film.

Here he plays Jason Jones who works in the music industry but after his manager rips off one of his songs he decides to escape via a company offering getaway breaks ('Hairy Holidays'!) and heads away from London and the music scene. He meets a girl on a train and they get on handsomely. She is even going to the same 'health farm' that he is headed to.

And so the adventure begins. Even the ticket collector at the station they arrive at is like someone from a Hammer horror film. However, this holiday destination is actually a hospital in which the residents are wayward hippies and permissive types who are then lobotomised.

The resulting adventure is part horror film, part groovy campathon which it accomplishes with relish. There is a cast of various oddball supporting characters that are just as entertaining as the main players and there are great touches such as the car fitted with a huge knife that shoots out to behead anyone brave enough to try and escape.

This film captures a great time in British film when films were made for the young with their content being just as boundary transgressing as the youth of the day themselves. Hence genres such as bawdy, racy comedies and bloody (but humorous) horror was the order of the day. A golden era.

As lurid as the paisley underpants Askwith wore in the Confessions movies.

This ranks as one of the most terrible films i've ever come across. Hidden away late at night, this little British ball of rubbish contains the following: AWFUL acting. AWFUL storyline. AWFUL progression. AWFUL photography. Actually, I don't think I can go on, because the AWFUL list is so huge, that it might take me a few days to write it all! The only safe place you can watch this film is at some ground zero in the desert, where it belongs, and where it should be blown up and erased from the face of the planet. HOWEVER, despite the terribleness and the teeth grinding ridiculousness of it, I could not stop watching. I suppose this film is just enjoyably awful. Whatever. I don't want to spare another moment of my life thinking about this film. I just lost and hour and twenty sitting through it. Watch with caution....

Horror Hospital is an excellent slice of vintage British horror, produced in the early 70's when films were getting gorier (notice the numerous decapitations). Michael Gough is on top nasty form as a doctor who performs brain experiments (sound familiar?) on his young victims, and Robin Askwith is the unsuspecting youth caught up in his evil schemes. Dennis Price has an amusing cameo, and there's even a 70's guy called Abraham with big hair. Lots of comedy action scenes too with motorbike-helmet wearing leather-suited baddies. This is a must see!

This movie in itself is the evolution of hundreds of horrible seventies horror films. The plot doesn't exist, the characters are unbelievable and the comedy is juvenile. Some of my favorite scenes involve Fredrick, the Dwarf, and the fact that they spend 15 minutes of the movie making fun of the fact that he's short. First he moves the bodies, then he finds out he needs them again to be able to reach the lever on the door, so he piles them up, then he has to move them again to open the door. Fifteen minutes at least. Two things to note 1) the lightbulb in the Zombie flashback sex scene needed to be bigger, I did not rent this movie to see Zombie penis, 2) You would think that they would come up with a better ending than stealing it right out of The House of Wax with Vincent Price. The Decapitating Limo was a beautiful addition as well as the biker boys, even though one was obviously female. Captain Sask