Excellent but underrated film

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I don't know much about William Girdler (I've seen only one other film that he directed, "Three on a Meathook", which wasn't nearly as entertaining as this one), but it's obvious that he put a lot of heart into "Asylum of Satan". Remember the horror movie you wanted to make when you were a kid? Well, Girdler made it for you. The plot is thin: a beautiful concert pianist (Carla Borelli of "Days of Our Lives" and "Another World") suffers a minor breakdown and ends up at an old, scary-looking asylum in the country, where she hears sinister chanting and has a number of extremely vivid nightmares. What's going on at Dr. Jason Specter's Pleasant Hill Sanitarium? You'll have to find out for yourself! While most of the cast fails to impress, Charles Kissinger (as Dr. Specter) makes a good bargain-basement Vincent Price. Nick Jolley must have known even at the time that he was delivering a stupendously awful performance as the heroine's hot-tempered, houndstooth-clad boyfriend, and a couple of the bit players--Mimi Honce as another patient at the asylum and Jack Peterkin as the physician who reluctantly transfers Borelli to Kissinger's house of horrors for "special treatment"--recite their lines in the corny, mock-dignified cadences of daytime TV, suggesting that Girdler plucked them from the same talent pool as his female lead. (Honce sounds like she's doing a Correctol commercial, and Peterkin reveals, in unintentionally hilarious fashion, a gaping continuity error in the script: he says he warned Borelli a year earlier that she was overworked and, literally in the next breath, splutters that "she's only been under my care a short while!") To a great extent, "Asylum of Satan" works because of its imperfections, not in spite of them--and, believe it or not, is formidably eerie in spots. Watch this film a few times and you'll develop a soft spot in your heart (or your head) for it ;)

A scrubby but efficient dollop of occult nonsense, ASYLUM OF Satan finds an attractive young woman being subdued within a strange private hospital. Waking from sleep in fear and confusion, she is told by staff that she has been placed under special care of a certain doctor, along with a handful of other patients. It latterly becomes clear that these patients suffer from various personal afflictions which said doctor insists he can cure. As it turns out, his sure-fire cure is the same for ALL ailments...and the most common side effect is rigor-mortis.This mystifying conundrum advances as patients disappear one-by-one, leaving our young heroin to find a means of escape before it's too late. The bizarre finalization of this nightmare is a Black Magic ritual conjuring Satan himself...and he is one scrawny, bedraggled looking Lord of Darkness, I must say.While this is doubtlessly lower-berth material of questionable quality, a fairly nice job is done keeping things interesting and steeped in a creepy, otherworldly atmosphere. As 70s drive-in fodder goes, ASYLUM OF Satan might be a bug's nose above the median...I neither enshrine nor crucify this movie...it ably serves its primary function to entertain, even if it is on the verymost base level.4.5/10

..it would have won 10 oscars compared to this turkey! I have only one thing to say about this film. BAD!!!

This movie...where to begin. A heavily mustached Nick Jolley runs around smoking Slim Jims,wearing plaid bell-bottoms, and telling cops how to do their job. Zombies lose their teeth, Dr. Spector has a glued on beard, the "decapitated head" blinks, there's some sort of wormhole at the end of the film taking you to the beginning for a brief moment...one could go on and on. Put bluntly, this movie is one of the most horrid pieces you could ever hope to avoid. But after a while, you kind of start liking it! One might wonder why Nick Jolley wasn't in anything else. This film puts all questions to rest