Maybe every year the horror film industry should have to retire one cliche. This year I would like to nominate the person-pulled-backwards-by-unseen-bad-thing, like theyve reached the bungee cords end. One plot device used a lot in scary movies that may never stop being scary is the insane asylum.
Troy Rondinone can probably rattle off all the books and movies that use it and throw in a Starsky and Hutch and Loony Tunes episode for good measure. Rondinone watched between 200 and 300 asylum movies for his book Nightmare Factories: The Asylum in the American Imagination (2019, Johns Hopkins University Press), the first pop culture history of mental hospitals, and its a doozy.
In each chapter, Rondinone takes readers through a different moment in the history of American mental health care and the public reflection of it in media. The scholarship is so thorough and Rondinones writing so rich and confident that the book is like a rip current good luck getting out of it. Just go with it.
Rondinone is a historian at Southern Connecticut State University, and mental hospitals fell on his radar quite unexpectedly.
In a fit of insomnia, I found myself watching one of these ghost hunter shows, Rondinone says. They were exploring what they said was the most haunted place in America, which was the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, in Weston, West Virginia. Rondinone wondered why asylums are so scary and if they always were.
Roots of fear
Yes, indeed they were, and from our countrys origins. Having just won a war in which we fought for our own freedom, we werent comfortable with locking people up.
Rondinone said that asking itself How do you have order in an individualistic society? was a puzzle that America, a newborn country, had yet to solve. Can you have complete freedom and safety at the same time? If you start trading in some freedoms for safety, do you open the door to tyranny?
On a primal level, Americans fear confinement. It's been drummed into our heads for 200 years liberty, freedom, says Phil Nobile, Jr., director, producer and editor of the recently relaunched Fangoria magazine via email.
Our history of enslaving other humans has also probably baked in some guilt about such independence being taken away.
The answer to the problem of the mentally ill was, well, to paraphrase Norman Bates, to put them in someplace. Mental hospitals embody the kind of out-of-sight, out-of-mind nature of how we sometimes stigmatize people suffering from mental illness, Rondinone says.
We create in our imagination a monstrous prison house where they are confined and we project our own fears dating back to the revolutionary period, of tyranny and control and racialized revolt.
Its not surprising that the first artist Rondinone reports to give us an asylum narrative is Edgar Allan Poe, according to Rondinone, is the first artist to use an asylum narrative, which he employs in his short story The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether, published in 1845. Its a black comedy in which a young man traveling in the south of France decides to visit the local mental asylum.
The narrator is a buffoon, and he doesnt realize the lunatics have taken over despite all of the very loud hints, Rondinone says. Theyve locked up the brutish attendants and tortured them and in the end they break out.
The first asylum expos came when undercover reporter Nelly Bly unmasked New Yorks Blackwells Island as a human rat-trap in 1887, revealing horrible conditions, brutal staff and physical and mental abuse, which would become staples of asylum narratives well into the 21st century. We also learn of the terrifying ease with which people, particularly unwanted wives, could be committed to asylums, which Rondinone calls prisons for inconvenient women.
Early in the 20th century, a new medium brought us an enduring asylum character. The insane physician shines in the 1920 surrealist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Nobile points out that it also gives us films first unreliable narrator when the person revealed to be our storyteller is actually an asylum inmate.
Shocking treatments
Electroconvulsive therapy is featured in all hoorifying asylum narratives, including the 1948 classic The Snake Pit, with its depiction of patients practically seizing with pain. Its enough to scare anyone out of wanting to go near a mental hospital. But if there is anything worse, it was the lobotomy and Randall Patrick McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. In the cool, orderly world of Nurse Ratched, troublemakers like McMurphy are handled with ECT, and if that doesnt work, surgery that will create compliance. Theres a reason the movie won Best Everything at the 1975 Oscars.
McMurphy, for whom it was better to die under a pillow than live under Nurse Ratched, had been sent to the asylum from prison, thinking it would be just as easy. The American fear of confinement never made the prison story the cinematic bogeyman that asylums were. This could be because prisons are fairly well-understood, but asylums are mysterious, leaving filmmakers to take license with the institutions and mental health itself, to mold it to whatever themes theyre exploring.
This habit has resulted in mental hospitals being portrayed pretty unfairly and has maybe even contributed to a stigma of mental health care that leads to so many folks self-medicating, which possibly feeds our country's addiction problem and homelessness problem, Nobile says.
Conversely, cinema has at times been a watchdog for standards of care in mental hospitals. Cuckoos Nest, Rondinone writes, ignited demands for patients rights and other reforms.
By the 1960s, the asylum was comfortable but theres something off, Rondinone says. The people in them realize theyve been duped, and their haven is a prison, a perfectly timed vibe for the Womens Liberation Movement and asylum stories including The Bell Jar and Diary of a Mad Housewife.
Trust and money are dwindling for state mental health facilities by the 1970s. The disaster of deinstitutionalization begins, as does the cinematic advent of the Escaped Maniac. The most famous and lucrative one of all is Michael Myers in the Halloween franchise, with the tagline The night HE came home.
A telling recommendation for a modern horror film is Nobiles pick of 2018s Unsane. By Stephen Soderburgh and starring the insurance industry, it was shot on an iPhone. It will in time be remembered as both the first important movie of the MeToo/Believe Women era, and a thoroughly plausible condemnation of the abuse occurring between insurance companies and the health care system, says Nobile.
Bringing us up to date, you may find yourself at a theatrical haunted house with a mental hospital vignette, crazed doctors, homicidal patients. Its a practice, Rondinone writes, that mental health advocates are trying to stop.
Like many other asylum narratives, these depictions stigmatize the mentally ill and mental health care, making people afraid to seek treatment.
Rondinone says maybe its time for the gothic asylum tale to retire a cliche or two.
Nightmare Factories will give you a mind-bogglingly long reading/watch list and Rondinone says there were hundreds of pages edited out for length.
I dont want to say I went crazy on it, he says. You can tell he did. Dont tell the nurse.
Read this article:
Fear of insane asylums runs deep in our culture. Here's why. - The Hill
- Best Horror Movies Of 2024 (So Far) - Time Out - May 20th, 2024
- The Best Horror Movies If You Loved The Strangers - CBR - May 20th, 2024
- The Smartest Horror Movie Heroes, Ranked - CBR - May 20th, 2024
- 15 Horror Movies So Controversial They Got Banned - CBR - May 20th, 2024
- Before 'Psycho,' This Is The Twisty Horror Thriller Hitchcock Wanted to Make - Collider - May 20th, 2024
- 10 Most Rewatchable Horror Movie From Each Year of the 2010s - Collider - May 20th, 2024
- Jaws and Hitchcock's Psycho inspired new horror movie The Strangers: Chapter 1, as director explains its lack of gore - Gamesradar - May 20th, 2024
- The monsters that made me: Growing up disabled, all of my heroes were villains - Polygon - May 20th, 2024
- Shocking Horror Movie The Coffee Table Is Earning Raves From Stephen King. Its Director Wants Audiences to Suffer and Hate Me - Variety - May 20th, 2024
- Netflix fans freak out over 'insanely scary' horror film that found its way into the top 10 - Daily Mail - May 20th, 2024
- 10 Best So-Bad-They're-Good Horror Movies of the '90s, Ranked - Collider - May 20th, 2024
- Making Sense of I Saw The TV Glow's Tragic and Terrifying Ending - TIME - May 20th, 2024
- New Horror Movie With 21% RT Score Nearly Triples Budget At The Box Office In Just 10 Days - Screen Rant - May 20th, 2024
- Sting director says he's "kind of remaking Alien" with the giant spider horror movie - Gamesradar - May 20th, 2024
- How Scary Is The Strangers: Chapter 1? It's R-Rating Explained - Screen Rant - May 20th, 2024
- New Upcoming Horror Movie Gives Five Nights At Freddy's 2 Its Biggest Rival After $291 Million Success - Screen Rant - May 20th, 2024
- 10 Impossible Horror Movie Kills (and the Visual Effects Behind Them) - CBR - May 20th, 2024
- 10 Most Satisfying Horror Movie Reveals - WhatCulture - May 20th, 2024
- Stephen King Reviews Horror Movie With 88% RT Score: "You Have Never Seen A Movie As Black As This" - Screen Rant - May 20th, 2024
- Wolf Man Producer Reveals If the Horror Movie Is Part of Universal's Dark Universe Franchise - CBR - May 20th, 2024
- Nicolas Cage is set to take on another horror movie, this time about Jesus? - Gamesradar - May 9th, 2024
- Horror Tips from Director Jeff Wadlow and the Set of 'Imaginary' - No Film School - May 9th, 2024
- Upcoming horror movie amps up its marketing by having crazed killers pop up all over the nation - Gamesradar - May 9th, 2024
- This Upcoming Horror Movie Is The Best Chance Of 2024 Beating Five Night's At Freddy's Box Office - Screen Rant - May 9th, 2024
- Abigail Lands on Digital Platforms 2 Weeks After Theater Release: How to Stream the Horror Movie Online - Billboard - May 9th, 2024
- Stephen King Praises 'Scary' and 'Gross' Horror Movie With Near-Perfect Reviews - CBR - May 9th, 2024
- 'Mind Body Spirit' Review: A Horror Movie That Puts a Yoga Twist on 'Hereditary' - Collider - May 9th, 2024
- Nicolas Cage Is Taking on a New Horror Movie of Biblical Proportions - Collider - May 9th, 2024
- Daylight horror: 12 movies that are still scary with the lights on - The A.V. Club - May 9th, 2024
- How To Watch Tarot: Is the Horror Movie Streaming or in Theaters? - TheWrap - May 9th, 2024
- Mind Body Spirit Review: A Found Footage Horror Film With Something To Say About The Influencer Age - Screen Rant - May 9th, 2024
- This Unexpectedly Great Horror Movie Reboot With 80% On Rotten Tomatoes Is Now Streaming & I Wish I Saw It In ... - Screen Rant - May 9th, 2024
- The horror movie so realistic its director was arrested for murder - JOE.ie - May 9th, 2024
- 'Tarot' Scares Up a Bleak Weekend at the Global Box Office - Collider - May 9th, 2024
- Insane 2024 horror movie with a twist hits 95% on Rotten Tomatoes - Dexerto - May 9th, 2024
- 10 of the Most Disturbing 2024 Horror Movies You (Probably) Haven't Heard Of - Dread Central - May 9th, 2024
- EXPOSURE: This Short Film Will Make You Want To Throw Your Security Cameras In A Dumpster - FANGORIA - May 9th, 2024
- 5 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including 'Abigail' at Home - Bloody Disgusting - May 9th, 2024
- The Best Horror Movies Streaming This Month Will Make Your Skin Crawl (May 2024) - SlashFilm - May 9th, 2024
- This Surreal Horror Movie on Max Is One of the Most Influential Films Ever - Collider - May 9th, 2024
- The 30 best classic horror movies of all time - Entertainment Weekly News - March 16th, 2024
- The 23rd Spring, Is Jeepers Creepers Coming Back To Michigan? - 102.5/104.9 The Block - March 16th, 2024
- Winnie The Pooh Horror Movie Dominates The Razzie Awards - 106.3 The Groove - March 16th, 2024
- This Underrated Blumhouse Horror Movie Is Unlike Any Other Creature Feature - Collider - March 16th, 2024
- 13 Horror Movies Where Everyone Dies by the End - MovieWeb - March 8th, 2024
- Willy Wonka Experience Villain The Unknown Gets Its Own Horror Movie - TMZ - March 8th, 2024
- The 13 Scariest Horror Movies Streaming on Peacock: Alien, Leprechaun, The Exorcist: Believer and More - Syfy - March 8th, 2024
- Every Horror Movie Releasing in March 2024 - MovieWeb - March 8th, 2024
- 10 Scariest Movies That Have Won Oscars - Collider - March 8th, 2024
- The 10 Best New Horror Movies To Watch in March 2024 - Collider - March 8th, 2024
- Horror Movie Based on Viral Willy Wonka Experience Coming Soon - Bloody Disgusting - March 8th, 2024
- Where To Watch Imaginary: Showtimes & Streaming Status - Screen Rant - March 8th, 2024
- Immaculate: Eveything You Need to Know About Sydney Sweeney's Upcoming Horror Movie That Will Give You ... - FandomWire - March 8th, 2024
- The 20 best horror movies on Peacock - Entertainment Weekly News - March 8th, 2024
- Horror Movie Based on the Willy Wonka Experience Villain, The Unknown, Now in the Works - MovieWeb - March 8th, 2024
- Melissa Barrera's Scream 7 Replacement Actually Sounds Better Than Fighting Ghostface Again - Screen Rant - March 8th, 2024
- 'Shaitaan' Movie 2024 Filming Locations: Shooting Spots Of The Horror Flick - TRAVEL + LEISURE INDIA - March 8th, 2024
- The Horror Movie Franchise With the Most Sequels Ever Is One You've Never Heard of - Collider - March 8th, 2024
- Jimmy Fallon asked people to ruin a horror movie by adding a single word to its title - Upworthy - March 8th, 2024
- The Absolute Best Horror Movies on Hulu - CNET - March 8th, 2024
- Willy Wonka Experience creepy character 'The Unknown' handed role in new horror movie - The Mirror - March 8th, 2024
- The Best Sea Monster Movies, Ranked - Screen Rant - February 28th, 2024
- The Borderlands Movie's Scary Behind The Scenes Drama That Has Us Worried - Screen Rant - February 28th, 2024
- Netflix Just Quietly Added the Best Holiday Thriller of the Decade - Inverse - February 28th, 2024
- The 20 best scary movies streaming right now - Entertainment Weekly News - February 19th, 2024
- Best Horror Movies of 2024 Ranked - New Scary Movies to Watch - Rotten Tomatoes - February 19th, 2024
- 'Only Murders in the Building' Adds Molly Shannon to Season 4 Cast - Yahoo Eurosport UK - February 19th, 2024
- Why Lindsay Lohan Refused to Kiss Charlie Sheen in "Scary Movie 5" - Best Life - February 19th, 2024
- 15 Best Scary Movies To Stream - Screen Rant - February 11th, 2024
- Eight Skin-Crawling Scary Films That Don't Have Any Jump Scares In Them - Digg - February 11th, 2024
- David Cronenberg names some of the scariest movies ever - Far Out Magazine - February 11th, 2024
- 12 Horror Movies That Will Give You the Biggest Jump Scares - Collider - February 3rd, 2024
- TAROT's Trailer Brings the Iconic Cards to Life and Things Get Weird - Nerdist - February 3rd, 2024
- Review: Baghead - Is the Movie as Scary as it Looks? - Blazing Minds - February 3rd, 2024
- Natasha Lyonne Says James Woods Hit On Her As A Teenager While Filming Scary Movie 2 - 106.3 The Groove - February 3rd, 2024
- The Witcher's Freya Allan explains the challenges of filming her first horror movie Baghead: "You have to surrender ... - Gamesradar - January 26th, 2024
- The 5 Best Uses of Popcorn in Scary Movies - Dread Central - January 26th, 2024
- 5 Horror Films That Transformed The Genre - Study Finds - January 26th, 2024
- Kristen Stewart Wants to Star in Another Horror Movie in the Future - ComingSoon.net - January 26th, 2024
- Best Home Invasion Movies of All Time, Ranked - MovieWeb - January 26th, 2024
Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero