‘Come to the Asylum… to get killed!’ Robert Powell ignores this wise tagline as a trainee doctor at the titular establishment, asked by Patrick Magee to interview four patients in order to determine which is in fact the now-doolally former head doctor. And to conveniently provide the four mini-plots in this Amicus portmanteau horror along the way, natch, and so – Richard ‘Robin Hood’ Todd and Barbara ‘Mephisto Waltz’ Parkins are terrorised by frozen chunks of Sylvia Syms, Barry ‘Professor Bergman’ Morse runs up a suspicious suit for Peter Cushing, and Charlotte Rampling and Britt Ekland go head to head in yet another take on the old ‘evil double – or is it?’ chestnut, and finally Herbert Lom terrorises Frank Forsyth with little toy robots with miniature human heads on the top. And, er, Geoffrey Bayldon’s – cough – there, too. Possibly the best, and certainly the most consistent, of these happily frequently screened horror anthologies.
