| Mondo Macabro
offer THE MANSION OF MADNESS, the 1972 version of “System
of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether”, Poe’s tale in which
the inmates take over an asylum. It’s directed by the Mexican
Juan Lopez Moctezuma, a genuine artist who devoted much of his sadly
intermittent career to the horror film. Comparisons have been made
with Ken Russell and Fellini, but it’s far more like ALUCARDA,
the director’s other delirious work from this DVD label. It
develops as a series of increasingly elaborate tableaux of madness
in which our hero and his friends suffer the attentions of the brigand
who is running the asylum. It’s painterly and visionary and
leavened with black humour, but never out of control in the way
Russell so often is. The disc offers a Spanish subtitled track and
an English one, which is in fact the language in which the film
was shot. A short passage that was cut from the English-language
release is presented in Spanish. The film looks as striking as I
remember from the big screen. The disc also contains a documentary
on Moctezuma and a reminiscence of him and the star Claudio Brook
by Guillermo del Toro. It’s one of Mondo Macabro’s most
welcome releases, and can be had from www.mondomacabro.com.
Ramsey Campbell
, Feb 2005
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