32 Days of Halloween X, Day 25: Asylum!

First things first for tonight. It’s time for a word from our sponsor. We’ll talk more about it after you watch the commercial.

That commercial was from George Romero and his commercial company Latent Image. I was reminded today while rewatching the Dawn of the Dead docu The Dead Will Walk that Romero was making commercials both before and during the shooting of Night of the Living Dead. And I don’t know about you, but that commercial was pretty damn great and on a par with most of the entertaining commercials we have today. The gain of zombies was the loss of the advertising world, to be sure.

And it got me wondering…is it possible to find an appropriate Halloweeny commercial from some other director? Didn’t take long to find one. Mr. David Lynch, ladies and gentlemen.

That brings us hopping and skipping to tonight’s feature presentation. We go back to 1972 and the Amicus film Asylum. It’s directed by Roy Ward Baker (Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires) and adapted by Robert Bloch from his own short stories (yes, the Robert Bloch of Psycho fame). As you normally get with an anthology film, there’s a formidable cast: Patrick Magee, Richard Todd, Charlotte Rampling, Herbert Lom and Mr. Peter Cushing. Lots of mayhem. Enjoy.