Summary
Well, it starts strong with a creepy dream sequence and a very strange mental institution, but then devolves into a family drama with some hacking and slashing. However, it does gain points for casting Martin Landau and Jack Palance, who were just a little bit too believable as the psychos.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
I had such high hopes for this movie. In addition to Landau and Palance (who I never want to meet in a dark alley, by the way), it also featured the always enjoyable Donald Pleasence as Dr. Bain, the doctor in charge of the insane asylum (of course). Plus I was promised maniacs visiting a punk rock nightclub. How could I resist?
And really, the dream sequence was terrific. Unfortunately, it was just about the only scene that showed the mental patients as being tormented and trapped within their own minds, in addition to being total nutjobs who kill on a whim. Plus the presence of the good Dr. Bain as a violent, menacing force in the Preacher's dream suggested that his unorthodox treatment methods were, well, somewhat less that benign. And once he started proudly rattling on about how he'd convinced the state to give him completely independent control of this group of the criminally insane (and how he kept them contained through the fail-safe marvel of electricity), I was sure that the dorky new doctor was going to discover that Dr. Bain's treatment involved him dosing them with a dangerous psychotropic drug and then attempting a mind meld or something equally nutty. And just think how fun that might have been! It would have given Dr. Bain a whole new level of responsibility for the inevitable killing spree, and it would have made the crazy gang much more sympathetic, making their killing spree more interesting.
So imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be just a "psychiatry is evil" story a la L. Ron Hubbard (but with fewer giant aliens with squeaky voices.) I'll admit that watching Dr. Bain petulantly accuse the phone operator of displacement behaviors was funny, but come on, was there a big wellspring of public sympathy for child molesters and serial killers in there the 80s? As I recall, the 80s involved the entire country voting for Ronald Reagan, who didn't strike me as overly sympathetic to murderer's internal life journeys. And then they even diluted their anti-therapy stance by including the neurotic girl as one of the good guys, I guess to demonstrate that therapy is ok as long as you're not excessively crazy. If they really wanted to make an anti-therapy movie, they should have gone all the way and had her snap in the middle of the siege and take the annoyingly precocious child hostage, and then run away Jack Palance at the end of the movie. Then they both could have gone to the punk club and beat up the bouncer together, leaving her brother/doctor at home, wondering where all his fancy book-learning went wrong.
BARBARA MAY
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