Symptoms through Madhouse

SYMPTOMS – A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn’t quite what it seems – and neither is the friend who issues the invitation. The reclusive Helen invites her friend Anne, a writer, to stay the weekend with her at her family’s estate. The large manor, located near a lake in the forest, is overgrown with foliage and has mostly been untouched for an extended period of time. Helen, a translator, has recently returned to her native England after working abroad, and had lost touch with Anne. The two have dinner, start a fire in the hearth, and talk over tea before going to bed. The next morning, Helen stops by a drugstore in town, where the clerk Mr. Burke asks about her friend, Cora Porter, she tells him she is not with her. Back at the manor, Helen and Anne go for a walk through the woods. At the lake, Helen tells Anne that someone drowned themselves there. The two women take a boat out onto the water, which unnerves Helen. En route home, they encounter Brady, a handyman who lives in the stables on the property; Anne comments that he was staring at Helen, and Helen responds by saying he disgusts her. Later, Helen spies on him with binoculars from the house. Helen has continuous trouble sleeping at the house, and hears voices emanating from the attic one night. The following morning, Anne borrows Helen’s car to drive to town. One the way home, she stops by the lake and smokes a cigarette, where she is confronted by Brady, who introduces himself. He mentions Helen’s friend Cora, whose photograph Anne recalls seeing in the house. Anne returns to the house where she finds Helen distraught over her absence. She confides in Anne that she is ill, and Anne suggests they return to London, but Helen refuses, and then kisses her. That night, Anne is awoken by moaning noises. She asks Helen if someone else could be living in the house, but Helen dismisses the idea. John arrives at the house to pick up Anne, but Anne insists on staying a few days longer due to Helen’s fragile emotional state. That night, Helen’s attention is drawn to an attic door in her bedroom, and she begins to masturbate furiously; simultaneously, Anne goes to investigate a noise coming from the attic and is startled by figure who stabs her to death. Hannah, the house keeper, arrives in the morning, and find Helen asleep on the couch. Helen asks her not to return for several days, saying she needs solitude. Later at the drugstore, Hannah tells Mr. Burke about the interaction and recalls that she once saw Cora having sex with Brady in the stables and has not seen her since. While walking through the woods, Helen is confronted by Brady, who asks her about Anne’s whereabouts; when he intimates that she murdered Anne and Cora, Helen runs away in a panic. At the house, Ann’s dead body sits in a chair in Helen’s bedroom, and Helen is plagued by disembodied voices and other phenomenon. During a rainstorm, John arrives looking for Anne and enters through an unlocked door. Upstairs, Helen stabs him in the head and neck numerous times, killing him. That night Brady stops by Helen’s house to confront her about Cora, whose decomposing body he found in the lake. He tells Helen he witnessed her push Cora in, but she cooly denies it. When he threatens to blackmail her, she stabs him repeatedly in the face and the back of the head, killing him. The next morning, Hannah, Burke and his protégé Nick arrive at the house. In the living room, they find Brady’s corpse. While searching upstairs, they find John’s body in the hallway and Helen staring blankly through the window. In the yard, she watches as Brady and Cora embrace.

SEE NO EVIL – This riff on Wait Until Dark is a mixed bag but still manages to offer a few surprises. Brian Clemens’ script starts with a clover premise and offers some solid moments of suspense. Unfortunately, See No Evil begins to drift in its final third, when it introduces one too many plot complications to keep the identity of the killer a mystery. As a result, it loses track of its heroine (the viewer will lose track of how many scenes Mia Farrow spends stumbling around and shouting for help during the latter part of the film)). That said, Farrow makes a likeable heroine and is surrounded by a professional cast turning in solid performances. Better yet, director Richard Fleischer gets plenty of opportunities to show off his directorial skills during the many set pieces and he’s definitely up to the task: The scenes where Farrow faces off with the killer in her deserted house are staged effectively and make great use of sound as a tool for suspense. Ultimately, See No Evil is a second-tier thriller material but is made with enough skill to make a decent time-killer for anyone in the mood for a few thrills. After being blinded

After being blinded in a horse-riding accident, Sarah (Mia Farrow) visits her uncle’s home. Out on a date with her boyfriend Steve (Norman Eshley), she escapes the fate of her relatives (Dorothy Alison, Robin Bailey, and Diane Grayson), who are murdered at their home by a psychotic killer. Sarah returns from her date and spends the night in the house, unaware that three of her family members’ corpses are strewn about the house. She eventually discovers the bodies, as well as a bracelet containing the engraved name of the killer. The killer returns, searching for the lost bracelet and discovers Sarah, who manages to flee on horseback. Sarah encounters a family of gypsies and shows them the bracelet with the name “Jacko” inscribed. One the gypsies concludes that his brother, Jack must be responsible. In an effort to save Jack, the brother pretends to take Sarah to the police, but, instead, locks her in a secluded shed. Sarah eventually escapes from the shed and reunites with Steve. Steve and his stable boys leave Sarah at his house and begin a search for the killer. They come across the two gypsy brothers and are about to kill them, when Jack reveals that he wants a bracelet with the name “Jack” and not “Jacko” inscribed. Steve, upon learning that the real killer’s name is “Jacko” doubles back to the house where it is revealed that one of the groomsmen, Jacko (Paul Nicholas) had been left behind to tend to Sarah. Back at the house, Jacko attempts to drown Sarah in a bathtub, but Steve returns just in time to rescue her.

MADHOUSE – Many people visit… No one ever leaves. Julia (Trish Everly in her only film role0, a young teacher for deaf children living in Savannah, Georgia. Julia has horrid memories of her childhood, which was scarred by her sadistic twin sister Mary (Allison Biggers). At the urging of her uncle, Father James, Julia visits Mary, suffering from a severe skin disease, in a mental institution. The meeting does not go well, and Mary vows to make Julia “suffer as she had suffered,” As their mutual birthday approaches, several of Julia’s friends and neighbors begin to die gruesome deaths, some of which committed by a mysterious Rottweiler dog that has some sort of connection to Mary. But is Mary really the killer? Julia thinks she’s lives alone. She doesn’t! In this routine slasher film, a young woman’s twin sister shows up to ruin her birthday party, and mayhem results. Before her birthday party, Julia starts dreaming about a twin sister she has never seen or met – meanwhile, Mary, the actual twin who is the subject of her dreams, has just escaped from a mental institution and is horribly disfigured. Mary is bent on vengeance and after she escapes, a series of murders begins – but is Mary really the killer?

Julia is a young schoolteacher for deaf children living in Savannah, Georgia. She has horrid memories of her childhood, which was scarred by her sadistic twin sister Mary. At the urging of her uncle, James, a local Catholic priest, Julia visits Mary, suffering from a severe skin disease, in a mental institution. The meeting does not go well and Mary vows to make Julia “suffer as she had suffered.” As their mutual birthday approaches, several of Julia’s friends and neighbors begin to die gruesome deaths in the house she lives in, some involving a mysterious Rottweiler dog who attacks its victims, mauling them to death. One of Julia’s students, Sasha, is killed in a park by the Rottweiler one afternoon. Meanwhile, Julia becomes increasing unnerved that someone—possibly Mary—is hiding inside the large house she lives in. One evening, when being dropped off by her psychologist boyfriend Sam, she witnesses a light come on the second floor of the house but finds no one there. Helen, Julia’s friend, offers to spend the night with her. In the middle of the night, she is attacked by the Rottweiler on the staircase; the dog attacks and kills her, tearing open her throat. Julia awakes the next morning and finds Helen gone. Given there is no evidence of the attack, Julia assumes she went home early. Sam visits her and tells her he is forced to take a business trip to San Francisco over Julia’s upcoming birthday. Later the same day, Julia’s uncle, Father James is carrying things into the basement of Julia’s home. A local parishioner, Amanda Beauregard, passes by and offers to help him carry a large bag, he tells her he is throwing Julia a surprise birthday party. Once in the basement, Amanda realizes she has just helped James carry a corpse, he then chases her through the house and stabs her to death in the attic. The next day, on Julia’s birthday, James meets her after work and takes her to her house, blindfolding her for a surprise. In the basement, he removes the blindfold, revealing a table seated with corpses. When she attempts to escape, Julia is confronted by Mary, who James murders shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Sam’s taxi to the airport is stalled by a flat tire and he returns to the house, where he is attacked by the Rottweiler. The dog attempts to break through the door and Sam kills it by driving a power drill into its head. In the basement, Sam is able to free Julia, who then murders her uncle James by repeated blows with a hatchet. The film ends as Julia sits on the basement stairs next to her dead sister.

 

Martyrs

MARTYRS

In 1971, a young girl, Lucie Jurin, escapes from a disused abattoir where she has been imprisoned and physically abused for more than a year. The perpetrators and their motivations remain a mystery. Lucie is placed in an orphanage, where she is befriended by a young girl named Anna Assaoui, who quickly discovers that Lucie believes that she is constantly being terrorized by a ghoulish creature – a disfigured, emaciated woman. Even so, Anna comforts Lucie every time she has a nightmare. Fifteen years later, Lucia bursts into the home of an apparently normal family, the Belfonds – Gabrielle, her husband, and their children Antoine and Marie – and kills them all with a shotgun. Elsewhere, Anna waits for Lucie. Although Anna knows that Lucie believes the Belfonds are the people responsible for her childhood abuse, she is horrified when Lucie tells her that she has killed them. Upon arriving at the house, Anna discovers that Gabrielle is still alive and tries to help her escape, but Lucie bludgeons Gabrielle to death. Lucie is again attacked by the scarred creature, but Anna only sees Lucie hurting herself, the “creature” is nothing more than a psychological manifestation of Lucie’s guilt for leaving behind another girl who was also tortured with her as a child. Lucie, realizing that her insanity will never leave her, commits suicide.
The next day, Anna, still at the family’s house, telephones her mother, from whom she has been estranged, their conversation implies that Anna suffered abuse from her parents as a child. Suddenly, Anna hears some noises and discovers a secret underground chamber in the living room. Imprisoned within is a horribly tortured young woman named Sarah, who proves that Lucie was right about the family. Anna helps Sarah escape, but a group of strangers arrive and gun Sarah down. Captured, Anna meets their leader, an elderly lady referred to as Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle explains that she belongs to a secret philosophical society seeking to discover the secrets of the afterlife through the creation of “martyrs.” Their experiments inflict systematic acts of torture upon young women in the belief that their suffering will result in a transcendental insight into the world beyond this one. Mademoiselle also believes the world is divided into victims (people who can’t hold tortures and fall into madness), like Lucie and Sarah), and martyrs (people who “accept” tortures and transcend). Anna becomes the group’s latest subject.t After a period of being beaten and degraded, Anna hallucinates a conversation with Lucie, and is later told she has progressed further than any other test subject and has reached the “final stage.” She is flayed alive and survives the procedure, entering a state that is “euphoric” and likened to achieving transcendence. Mademoiselle arrives eagerly and Anna whispers into her ar. Members of the society gather at the house to learn the insights Anna shared with Mademoiselle. As he waits, Mademoiselle’s assistant asks her if what Anna said was clear. Mademoiselle says yes, then asks him if he could imagine what comes after death. When he says no, she tells him to “keep doubting” before producing a handgun and committing suicide. The film ends with a shot of Anna on the table, in a catatonic state.
Director Pascal Lauguier follows his 2004 thriller House of Voices with this relentlessly brutal tale of a girl who suffered unimaginable abuse as a young child, and the unspeakable horrors that unfold when she arrives at an isolated cab in the woods fifteen years later. The story begins as the young badly battered Lucie – obviously the victim of inhuman abuse – is hospitalized after somehow managing to escape her sadistic captors. Nearly catatonic after her life-altering ordeal, Lucie only manages to become functional again as a result of her friendship with Anna, a fellow abuse victim who selflessly reaches out to the badly damaged girl. Fifteen years later, Lucie guns down an entire family in cold blood. Is Lucie seeking belated vengeance against the people who tortured her as a young girl, or has her fragile psyche finally snapped, resulting in the bloody demise of an innocent family? Later, when Lucie calls on her old friend Anna, the truth about Lucie’s traumatic early life experience slowly comes into focus.

Lucie (Jessie Pham), who has been missing for over a year, is found hysterical by the side of the road. She leads police to the derelict slaughterhouse where evidence suggests she was held captive. Although there is no evidence of sexual abuse, Lucie bears the signs of repeated injury and neglect. Traumatized and uncommunicative, Lucie is unable to tell the authorities anything further about her time in captivity or the people who kept her there. Over time, Lucie make friends with Anna (Erika Scott), another girl in the youth home where she lives. Anna looks after Lucie and eventually gains her trust. Lucie appears to be haunted by something or someone – a shadowy, rasping female figure (Isabelle Chasse) who apparently mutilates Lucie. After one such episode, Lucie makes Anna promise not to tell anyone about the creature haunting Lucie. Meanwhile, with the help of the doctor (Tony Robinow), the police even questions Anna, so as to know whether Lucie has communicated something to her. Anna says that Lucie cannot usually remember anything about her captivity period.

At this point, the film moves ahead fifteen years, and shifts its attention to the Belfond family. Mom (Patricia Tulasne) is fixing a sewer line in the yard, Dad (Robert Toupin) is making breakfast, and son Antoine (Xavier Dolan) and daughter Marie (Juliette Gosselin) are wrestling over a love note Antoine received. As everyone sits down to breakfast, the doorbell rings – it’s Lucie (Mylene Jampanoi), who shoots the father to death with a shotgun. The mother follows in short order, and then Lucie hesitates, asking Antoine how old he is and if he knew what his parents have done. When she doesn’t get an answer, she kills Antoine. Marie hides upstairs, but Lucie finds her and kills her as well. Panicked, Lucie calls Anna (Morjana Alaoui) at a public phone to come and help her. Lucie claims she has “done it”. Anna is shocked at hearing what Lucie says asks if she’s sure these are the people who kidnapped her. Lucie confirms and they complete their phone call. Lucie’s creature appears and tries to attack Lucie some more. Lucie explains that she’s “killed them”, and so the creature can leave her alone now. The creature continues to attack her. Lucie escapes the creature and runs out of the house and runs straight into Anna,
Lucie frightened tells Anna not to go into the house as “she’s” still in there. Anna says he has to and heads inside. She is horrified at the sight of what Lucie has done to the Belfond family. After nearly throwing up she starts working on moving the bodies. Lucie falls asleep in the daughter’s bedroom and wakes to strange noises in the house. She sees Anna burying the bodies outside. Anna returns inside to collect another body and takes a break in the room they have moved the bodies to. She then discovers the mother is still alive. The mother yells awaking Lucie again. Lucie heads downstairs to check on Anna. Anna attempts to hide the fact that the mother is still alive and takes the daughter’s body outside. She then hears Lucie screaming from inside as the creature resumes its assault. After escaping the creature again flashbacks reveal that it is a woman was being torture in the same building as Lucie.
Anna then attempts to smuggle the living mother out of the house. Lucie hears this as the mother screams in pain and escapes from the room Anna has locked her in. As Anna is getting the mother near to the exit Lucie arrives and beats the mother to death with a hammer. This is followed by one more attempt to placate the creature, as Lucie shows the creature that the mother is dead. The creature embraces her gently and begins to cut into her arms. Anna sees Lucie cutting herself – the creature is something Lucie is hallucinating. Lucie runs from the creature crashing through the glass entry way to the Belfond house. When Lucie was able to escape, she had an opportunity to take the woman with her but did not and has been haunted by it ever since. In a fit of rage and sadness, Lucie cuts her own throat. Anna brings Lucie’s body into the house, cleans it and wraps it in cloth. In cleaning up the house, she notices a hole in the wall behind a cabinet. Anna opens the cabinet and discovers a hidden staircase leading down. Anna discovers an underground complex decorated with pictures of people in extreme suffering. Exploring further, Anna discovers another woman, naked and chained to a wall with a metal blindfold riveted to her head. She frees the woman and takes her upstairs. Anna attempts to bathe the woman and she resists and after Anna removes the blindfold, the woman runs off, finds a knife and begins to mutilate herself, attempting to cut off her arm. As Anna tries to stop the woman, the woman is killed by a shotgun blast. A group of people have entered the house and they take Anna down into the hidden complex. An older woman – referred to only as “Mademoiselle” (Catherine Begin) – explains to Anna that they are not interested in victims, but martyrs – the act of martyrdom brings about transcendence and the possibility of seeing into the afterlife. They are, in essence, creating martyrs through systematic abuse in the hopes of learning what lies after death from their accounts as they achieve transcendence. They kidnap young women because young women seem to be especially likely to achieve a transcendent state. Anna is then rendered unconscious.
Anna wakes up chained to a chair similar to the one discovered in the building where Lucie was kept. She is fed some sort of unpleasant gruel and methodically beaten. This goes on for several days until a badly battered Anna loses the will to resist. She hears Lucie’s voice in her head, telling her that it is going to be okay, that she won’t suffer much longer. Anna is then brought to an operating theater, where she is strapped into a rotating rack and flayed. A now-skinless Anna is hung by a rack under hot lights. The people attending her remark on her considerable resilience, noting that she is still alive. The woman feeding Anna notices something about her has changed, and she calls Mademoiselle to tell her that Anna is close to transcendence. Mademoiselle hurries over and arrives in time for Anna to give her an account of the world beyond life and Mademoiselle was present to hear her account and would be sharing it with the assembled people shortly.
Mademoiselle appears to be getting ready as Etienne speaks to her through the door, asking if the announcement means that Anna saw something, and Mademoiselle says that she did, and it was clear and precise. Mademoiselle asks Etienne if he could imagine life after death. Etienne says he could not. Inside, Mademoiselle is sitting on the edge of a bathtub, where she takes a gun out of her purse. She calls to Etienne and tells him to continue doubting before shooting herself in the head. The movie ends with Anna, lying in some sort of medicated bath in the underground complex, looking at something very far away, fading to black and a definition of ‘martyr” which indicates the derivation from the Greek word for “witness.”

The Loved Ones

THE LOVED ONES – In order to avoid a ghostly figure in the road, high school senior Brent Mitchell wraps his car around a tree, killing his father. Constantly confronted by his mother’s emotional collapse after the accident, Brent escapes into a marijuana fueled world of loud metal music to block the pain and guilt. Dejected and out of sorts, he has a shot at happiness with his girlfriend Holly, a grounded, caring girl with drop dead good looks, a dream date for the high school prom. But his plans are thwarted by a disturbing series of events that take place under a mirrored disco ball, involving pink satin, glitter, syringes, nails, power drills and a secret admirer. Brent has become the prom king at a macabre, sadistic event where he is the entertainment.

On a bright and sunny day, one high school senior’s happy life soon changes in a flash. Attempting to avoid a bloody figure in the road, Brent Mitchell swerves his car around a tree, killing his father. Constantly confronted by the guilt of his father’s death and his mother’s emotional collapse after the accident, Brent escapes into a marijuana-fueled world of loud metal music to block out the pain and guilt from within. Dejected and out of sorts, he has one shot at happiness with his girlfriend Holly, a grounded, caring, and loving girl with good looks that can drop people dead; a perfect dream date for his high school prom. However, his plans are thwarted by an untimely kidnapping leading up to a disturbing series of events that take place under a mirrored disco ball, involving pink satin, glitter, syringes, nails, power drills and an obsessed secret admirer assisted by her father. Brent has become the prom king at a twisted, sadistic event where he is the entertainment. Will he be able to escape, or will he be trapped forever by his deathly admirer’s hand?

Brent is driving with his father in the passenger seat, when a bloodied man appears in the middle of the road. Swerving to avoid hitting the man, Brent’s vehicle collides with a tree. Six months later, Brent is planning to attend a high school dance with girlfriend Holly, having refused an offer by Lola Stone. Holly drives the pair on account of the car crash: It is revealed that Brent’s father, died in the accident. Wracked with guilt, Brent has turned to drug abuse and self-mutilation with a razor blade he keeps on a necklace. While listening to music, Brent is attacked from behind. Bound to a chair, he wakes up at Lola’s house sitting at a table with Lola, her father and a lobotomized woman they call Bright Eyes. Lola’s father has turned his house into a dance for his daughter. Lola takes a syringe and fills it with bleach and injects it into Brent’s voice box making him unable to scream or talk. She begins torturing Brent by forcing him to suck on her finger and threatening to nail his penis to the chair when he can’t urinate. When she makes a threatening comment about Holly, Brent kicks Lola and manages to escape. Lola’s father chases Brent up a tree, where he and Lola hurl rocks at Brent, knocking him down. The two bring Brent back inside and fix his feet to the floor with knives. Lola reveals via a scrap book that she had been abducting many boys throughout her life, including the bloody man Brent saw which made him swerve and kill his father. Lola then “draws” on Brent by carving a heart with “L.S.” in the middle on his chest, which she liberally throws salt on. After being crowned Queen of her dance, Lola admits to Brent that she is looking for her prince, which isn’t Brent as he is “just another frog.” However, Lola confides in her father that he himself is her prince. Afterward, Daddy lifts the carpet to reveal a secret trapdoor with the previous abductees still inside. Lola drills a hole through Brent’s skull as they intend to lobotomize him, like their other captives. But when Lola complains that the hole is too small for her to pour boiling water into, Brent slashes her father with his pendant necklace. Brent then attacks Daddy, stabbing him repeatedly in the neck with the knives Brent pulled out of his feet. Lola jumps on Brent and tries to hit him, but Brent knocks her out. Brent then pushes Lola’s dad into the pit, where he watches in horror as the near-starved captives eat Daddy. Lola gets up and throws Brent in, throwing nearby objects at him in anger. Brent finds a flashlight and hammer that Lola had thrown down and kills abductees as they advance on him. Lola then goes and smothers Bright Eyes with a pillow, revealing that the woman is her mother. On a hunch, Holly calls a policeman in the neighborhood. When he gets to Lola’s house, he sees through a window the bloody floor and chair and breaks in. Brent in an attempt to attract the policeman’s attention makes noises by throwing objects at the doors, alerting the policeman of his presence. But when he opens the doors, Lola appears behind the policeman and Brent can’t say anything to warn him. Lola drives a meat cleaver into his face and the policeman falls down, dropping the gun. Brent attempts to shoot Lola, but she quickly moves out of the way where she finds Brent’s necklace. She then informs Brent that she is going to go to his house and kill his mother and Holly for what he did. Brent notices a large pile of bones in the pit. Using them, as well as the bodies, he manages to climb out. Lola begins walking on the road with a knife and her scrapbook when she sees a car advance. It’s shown to be Holly, so Lola hides and throws her book at the windshield, distracting Holly so she stops. She then attempts to kill Holly, but Holly evades Lola and a chase ensues. Brent is seen driving the police car fast attempting to catch up with Lola. He sees Holly and nearly hits her but swerves and hits Lola instead. Holly clambers into the police car and is shocked to see Brent. The two embraces tearfully as Lola, severely injured but still not dead, crawls to kill the pair. They hear the noise of Lola’s knife as she drags herself and Brent reverses the car, striking Lola in the head.