Horror Hospital

This gory British horror satire features a hammy Michael Gough as Doctor Storm, the demented overseer of a bizarre health resort advertising “Hairy Holidays” for teenage hipsters — on whom he secretly performs diabolical mind experiments, turning them into mindless automatons directed by a remote-control device. Those lucky enough to escape the doctor’s operating table are invariably tracked down by a leather-clad bike gang or decapitated by the doctor’s car (thanks to handy fender-mounted scythes). Into this trap falls pop music star Robin Askwith, whose quest for a stress-relieving getaway lands him in Gough’s house of horrors. Oblivious, at first, to his impending fate (thanks to the diverting presence of the doctor’s pretty niece, Vanessa Shaw), Askwith eventually realizes that the fellow patients look just a bit too relaxed for comfort. Ostensibly the blackest of black comedies, some aspects of the film actually presage Lindsay Anderson’s far more sophisticated Britannia Hospital, though the satire here is far less intelligent. The biggest laughs are provided by the badly dated, ultra-mod ’60s clothing and dialogue., Humor punctuates this melodrama about a couple’s nightmarish adventures at a bogus health resort. Michael Gough. Jason: Robin Askwith. Rudy: Vanessa Shaw. Aunt: Ellen Pollock. Frederick: Skip Martin. Pollack: Dennis Price. Abraham: Kurt Christian. Carter: Kenneth Benda. Millie: Barbara Wendy. Directed by Anthony Balch., A songwriter, disillusioned with his career, decides a change of pace is needed and checks in at the sinister Dr Storm’s health clinic. It is not long before he realises that his life is in danger, so he befriends a dwarf who he thinks can help him escape.