The Scarlet Pimpernel

The lunatics have truly taken over the asylum in this notorious slice of 1970s exploitation horror. In the isolated Stephens Sanatorium for the criminally insane the patients are allowed to move freely until one of them takes an axe to Dr Stephens. When a young nurse arrives to take up her new job, she finds the strange assortment of psychotic patients among them a child-like, lobotomised hulk, a nymphomaniac, a schizophrenic judge with an axe fetish and a cackling old woman are allowed to live out their violent delusions under Dr Stephens' replacement. Soon Nurse Charlotte (former Playboy cover girl Rosie Holotik) is discovering the real madness within the asylum's walls, as the patients are hacked, chopped, slashed and stabbed by a violent killer who hides in the shadows. From its low-key beginning to its shocking, blood-spattered finale, Don't Look in the Basement boasts a string of gory moments throat slashings, eyeball piercings, tongue removals that ensured it made it onto the 1980s video nasty' list. Previously banned by the British Board of Film Classification, and guaranteed to offend with its sensationalist approach to the mentally ill, Don't Look in the Basement was the first film by cult 70s director S.F. Brownrigg. A classic of drive-in sleaze.