Elderly horror films starring Michael Gough as a dangerously insane butcher are always great fun, since the gore is so over-the-top and the story lines are so hilariously inept. Just look at "Horrors of the Black Museum" or "Satan's Slave", for example! It simply seems that casting Michael Gough inevitably results in a horror film that can't possibly be taken serious. "Horror Hospital" lifts up this theory to an even higher level of grotesquerie, as the plot is indescribably absurd, Gough's character is more demented than ever and the script is just filled with goofs, stupidities and illogicalness! Michael Gough is Doctor Christian Storm, supposedly a brilliant disciple of Pavlov once, but now a crippled lunatic who enjoys swooping off people's heads with his Rolls Royce (now there's one killing method you have to see in order to believe!). Although he's not very good at it, Storm attempts to control and master human feelings of sexuality so he performs brain-operations on youngsters and keeps their zombified leftovers locked away in his rural castle. You can't really be too harsh on this film, since writer/directed Antony Balch clearly opted for a light-headed and comical tone. Cliché after cliché is unscrupulously presented while the violence (although plenty of it) is never shocking or disturbing. Not once during the whole film I really understood what exactly Storm is trying to achieve with his operations (my best guess is that he wants to copulate with the female patients after disfiguring their brains), but I gladly witnessed how he cut open their heads and served the brains on a plate for them to see! The castle (referred to in the movie as a "health-farm") is a great horror setting and there are a couple of very ingenious gimmicks. The most fun definitely is to track down all the things in "Horror Hospital" that don't make the slightest bit of sense: the machete attached to the car can't possibly reach someone's head (unless they were all midgets like Skip Martin) and Storm's biker-henchmen just seem to keep on coming, like they're appearing out of nowhere. This movie is one of those exquisite British horror oddities released during the early 70's; too silly to be produced by Hammer but way too much fun to forget about them entirely. Watch it when you can!
Review of Horror Hospital
