Don't Look In The Basement (DVD)

== The big red button phenomenon ==

Throughout your life, I am sure that you have had a moment when you know you should not do something, but you really want to. Like in the film's, when there is a big red button with 'don't push' written beside it. Try as you might, you cannot resist the urge to press it. Well, in my life this phenomenon has led me to grow my collection of films to include several movies from the 'video nasty' genre. ...
...reason for you to want to watch them. However, there is something niggling me, right at the back of my otherwise empty head. Why was it banned? What is the reason why this film was initially not put up for public release?

Occasionally a real cracker comes up, like the scarily gory 'Cannibal Holocaust', or possibly the most disturbing film in the shape of 'Salo'. More often, though, is the result of me watching 90 minutes of the poorest ... more

The big red button phenomenon

Throughout your life, I am sure that you have had a moment when you know you should not do something, but you really want to. Like in the film's, when there is a big red button with 'don't push' written beside it. Try as you might, you cannot resist the urge to press it. Well, in my life this phenomenon has led me to grow my collection of films to include several movies from the 'video nasty' genre. Generally these films are terrible, and there should be no reason for you to want to watch them. However, there is something niggling me, right at the back of my otherwise empty head. Why was it banned? What is the reason why this film was initially not put up for public release?

Occasionally a real cracker comes up, like the scarily gory 'Cannibal Holocaust', or possibly the most disturbing film in the shape of 'Salo'. More often, though, is the result of me watching 90 minutes of the poorest quality movies ever made. 'Basement' was suggested to me by a friend, but I must confess I did not hold out much hope, as it was originally released as a double feature in American picture houses, alongside the dire 'last house on the left'. Last house was the directorial debut of one Wes Craven, and has been previously reviewed as being utter tosh by myself on this very site. Why would this ugly twin be any better? The film was originally released in 1973, and was directed by SF Brownrigg.

Previously, Brownrigg had made only low budget exploitation films, where he tried to envoke a reaction from his audience by throwing cheap and nasty effects at them. Generally this was due to the amazingly low budgets he had to play with. Indeed the budget for 'Basement' was a paultry $100,000. Doomed from the start, it was never likely that a man postumously dubbed as the director of the worst movie of all time(poor white trash 2.) could make this film work. Trying to quench my thirst for the disturbing, I decided to push the big red button one more time with this movie.

What happened when I pushed the button?

The copy of the movie that I got, had no extras at all. To my mind, this is never a good sign. There was obviously no interesting extras worthy of being included in the package. So, it was straight into the movie for me.

The film is centered around the Stephens sanitorium. Dr Stephens believed that the correct way to deal with the clinically insane, was not to suppress them, but rather to allow them to live out their craziness. My initial fears for the man were confirmed, when he meets a sticky end at the hands of 'the judge' after two minutes of the film. Giving a mentally unstable man, with a thirst for dishing out justice with his axe an axe is perhaps stupid, and Stephens possibly deserved to come in contact with the business end of it! Anyway, an old nurse at the institute witnessed the event, and wants to leave, having previously been threatened by the patients herself. She runs inside and is set upon by another patient, who thinks the nurse has taken her baby (a doll she treats as her own child.). The result of this is that she crushes the old nurses head inside the suitcase she was packing.

This left on staffmember left. Dr Masters tries to run the sanitorium as normal, but it is hard. She struggles along until one day a you nurse arrives, saying she had been hired the previous week by Dr Stephens. Although initially relectant, Masters allows her to stay, and together they try to run the place in Stephens vision. Several run-ins with the patients later, together with Masters increasingly agoraphobic views on the outside world lead us to question her qualifications, and her actions. What is she hiding? What is in the basement? Do we really want to find out?

Should I have pushed that big red button?

In a word, no. From the first minute, you are greeted by very poor camerawork. The picture quality is similar to that of a 1960's summer holiday video from Blackpool. Wavy shots, and very grainy picture leave this film very hard to watch. couple this with potentially the worst character acting I have ever seen and we have an absolute disaster! The film gets off to a decent start in terms of shock factor, with the hacking down of Stephens, and the really annoying old nurse being shown how to pack a suitcase properly. But after that there is little or no reason to watch. I really struggled to see why this film was banned, unless it was to save us from having to endure 92 minutes of pure tripe.

The characters are intensely annoying. Ok so I realise the vast majority of them were portraying mentally ill people, but this simply is the craziest bunch of characters you have ever seen.We get to meet a retarded man named Sam who enjoys ice lollies but is otherwise simply a child in a mans body, a nymphomaniac and schizophrenic named Allison, an emotionally dependent woman named Jennifer, an old woman named Mrs. Callingham who spouts bizarre poetry and mistakes flowers in the garden to be her own children, a joker named Danny, a shellshocked Sergeant who lost his mind after accidentally killing his men in Vietnam, and the judge, who likes to talk in courtroom fashion, and has a lust for wielding an axe.

Lots of wailing, and very little plot make for poor fare indeed. Although there is a twist at the end it is not exactly the worlds best kept secret. In fact I think I had it pretty much pegged about 20 minutes into the film. After this it took all of my metal to continue to view this directorial atrocity. Hardly surprising that this film took just 12 days to shoot. Perhaps this was helped by the fact that there was obviously no editing done. Raw footage was used, mistakes were left unaltered. My biggest mistake was perhaps watching in the first place.

Will I push the button again?

I will always continue my search for great video nasties. But if you were to ask me if I will ever watch this film again, I would have to say no. Painful viewing, with little reward. I am sure that there are films in the genre out there that are worthy of a place in my collection, but 'Basement' is definately not one of them. I only hope that the mental anguish this film caused me by watching will save you from having to do so. The film is also known as 'The forgotten', which is very apt as the world would be a better place if it was!

Definately not reccomended. G 

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