The Mansion of Madness (Juan López Moctezuma, 1973)

Gaston LeBlanc (10 to Midnight's Arthur Hansel) is a reporter in 19th century France who is writing a story about Dr. Maillard's sanitarium. He has an an in through his friend Julien Couvier (Pickpocket's Martin LaSalle), who is friends with the doctor. Their coach is intercepted by armed guards in period clothing. A female relative of Couvier's accompanying them falls ill, and Couvier asks Gaston to go on alone. Gaston meets Dr. Mallard (frequent Buñuel actor Claudio Brook), who gives his inmates free rein. Maillard introduces Gaston to his lovely daughter, Eugénie (Ellen Sherman, whose few other acting credits include an episode of Three's Company). Soon, Gaston realizes that Maillard is even more mad than his patients, while Couvier, Blanche, and their strongman coach driver are captured by the inmates.

This is only the second film I've seen by Juan López Moctezuma, the first being Alucarda, but based on these two films, he's a horror auteur, no two ways about it. A producer on Fando and Lis and an associate producer on El Topo, his fans include Guillermo del Toro. This tale of the inmates literally taking over the asylum is bizarre and disturbing, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Claudio Brook (who played a dual role in Alucarda as a rationalist doctor and a satyrlike gypsy Satanist) gives an incredible performance, at times urbane and charming and at others bellowing and cackling. Arthur Hansel convincingly portrays Gaston's horror at what is going on inside the asylum. Moctezuma fills the film with grotesques, such as the aptly-named Mr. Chicken, a dungeon inmate named Dante who hangs from chains in a pose evoking the Crucifixion and quotes his namesake, and a "priest" in red robes and a horned hood, who work on machines whose stated purposes make no sense whatsoever. Claudio even uses the famous quote associated with Aleister Crowley (but originally written by Rabelais), "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Martin LaSalle provides some amusing comic relief. Ellen Sherman does a bizarre dance routine and monologue (supposedly Javanese in origin). There are interesting camera angles, echoing voices, and a Peckinpahesque shooting. I loved this film, and I will now make a point of reading its inspiration, Edgar Allan Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether." So head on over to Amazon Prime (which has it under the alternate title Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon) and check out this sublimely deranged piece of cinema!