Horror Hospital

Anticipating the day of the video nasty, Balch - who had collaborated with William Burroughs on Towers Open Fire and The Cut-Ups - here twisted the conventional elements of the horror movie to a new level of grotesquerie. The plot concerns a mad Pavlovian doctor, whose body is a hulk of third-degree burnt tissue, boring holes in young persons' brains in an attempt to master their minds. The object is somehow to persuade beautiful ladies to fuck him, appearances notwithstanding; but despite turning into mindless zombies, they are still resistant to his charms. Hence much frustration vented by scything heads off with a Boadicea chariot of a Rolls-Royce, Cocteau-like biker henchmen given to beating people up, and mutant dwarves chopping skulls with hatchets or burning flesh with cigarettes. All of which takes place in a charming castle masquerading as a health farm. Cliché after cliché is ruthlessly hammed into a telling stomach-gripper: one for sophisticates of undergrowth horror of the Chas Addams variety. JDuC.