La mansión de la locura; AKA Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Juan Lopez Moctezuma

FEATURING: Claudio Brook, Arthur Hansel, Ellen Sherman

PLOT: A journalist visits a celebrated mental health asylum in this loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe‘s 1845 short story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.”

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: A surrealist exploration of insanity from within the walls of a 19^th century asylum should be a shoo-in for us. Add to this premise Panic Group-style theatrics, trippy sequences blurring the line between delusion and reality, and low-budget constraints which up the surrealism factor, and it becomes an even stronger contender.

COMMENTS: Poe’s satiric tale “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether” begins in Gothic style: “Through this dank and gloomy wood we rode some two miles, when the Maison de Santé came in view. It was a fantastic chateau, much dilapidated, and indeed scarcely tenantable through age and neglect. Its aspect inspired me with absolute dread. . .” The Mansion of Madness begins with a horse-drawn carriage swallowed up by fog. The image then solarizes into contrasting pale blue light and blood red shadows, plunging the viewer into a psychedelic journey.

American journalist Gaston (Hansel) has finagled an assignment to report on the innovative methods of treating mental illness developed by renowned Dr Maillard. After a disturbing encounter at the mansion’s gate with armed guards dressed as rejects from Napoleon’s army, Gaston’s traveling companions desert him. His friend Couvier has an abhorrence of the mentally ill and his female cousin is near to fainting. He assures Gaston his card will serve as an introduction; their carriage turns around and the intrepid reporter proceeds on his own.

While Gaston meets the distinguished Maillard (Brook), and his charming young niece Eugénie (Sherman), Couvier’s carriage succumbs to a violent attack by the “guards” before it can leave the forest. With his coachman overpowered, Couvier proves himself comically useless in a fight; after commanding his cousin to flee, he leaves her to save herself. The trio end up being taken captive, while Maillard takes Gaston on a tour of the sanitarium while explaining his “system of soothing.”

Sensory overload best describes the experience of entering The Mansion of Madness. Artfully arranged actors and still-life accumulations of everyday objects fill every frame. We never see a single establishing shot. Gaston appears to enter the maison through its boiler room, passing through a maze of industrial piping and blazing furnaces as curious faces stare out of the machinery. The “soothing system,” as Maillard explains, allows the inmates their freedom; there are no straight jackets here.

Moctezuma studied art in college before turning to film making (which he called “painting at 24 frames per second”). He began his directing career in television. On one of his shows none other than Alejandro Jodorowsky destroyed a piano as a musical performance; outraged viewers demanded the program’s cancellation. Moctezuma would later become a producer of El Topo. Clearly inspired by the Panic Movement, a similar vibe of free-form surrealist experimentation reigns in The Mansion of Madness (one brief scene even features a Topo-style black umbrella).

A top hat and fake beard mounted before a mirror form an invisible man floating in the middle of the parlor where Gaston partakes of wine with his host. Eugénie plays a large golden harp; one of the many unique instruments which compose the eclectic score, along with cartoonish sound effects. Pale, lovely, and slightly sad, like all Poe heroines, Eugénie displays refined manners and musical talent, but do her eyes gleam with madness?

In Poe’s story, a dinner party with Dr. Maillard reveals the true nature of the institution. Moctezuma saves this scene for the end, after numerous elaborate set pieces leave Gaston alternately mystified and disgusted by Maillard’s system. Encouraged to indulge their follies, the patients create elaborate but impossible inventions. Mr. Chicken resides in the coop among the hens, dressed in feathers and eating only pellets of grain. Eugénie performs an “Indonesian” dance with a large conch shell while wearing nothing but gold jewelry (“I’ve never seen this sort of dance before,” Gaston remarks). A patient bound to a cross in a shadowy cellar incessantly recites The Divine Comedy (guess what “Dante” says to Gaston).

Every frame in The Mansion of Madness  looks like a painting. The production and costume designs evoke artistic works as varied as Italian Renaissance altarpieces, the lighting effects of Dutch Old Masters, the odalisques of Ingres, and the human-animal hybrids of Remedios Varo. Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington is credited as “artistic advisor.” Beautiful to behold, this sumptuous feast for the eyes becomes disorienting. Scenes jump from chapel to dungeon to bordello, greenhouse to human museum. When Gaston wakes in the middle of the night after experiencing a startling vision of Eugénie, he wanders through corridors of cryptic tableaux. His suspicions about the “soothing system” convince Gaston he must rescue her from the influence of Maillard. He soon encounters Couvier and his cousin still trapped on the grounds and they begin to plot their escape. Ultimately the female characters will outwit the male authorities in a delightfully surprising denouement.

Originally marketed in the United States as a B-grade horror film under the title Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon, the movie failed to find an audience. More Rene Magritte than Marquis de Sade, the re-titled Mansion of Madness has only a few gory moments and a healthy sense of absurdist humor. Viewers familiar with Moctezuma’s cult classic Alucarda (1977) will recognize the sensibility at work. While Alucarda’s convent setting allowed the director to explore the nature of faith from inside a religious community, Mansion of Madness dives headfirst into the central preoccupation of Poe’s work, drawing the fine line between sanity and madness with a surrealist’s brush.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…just plain weird – but that’s not a bad thing.”–Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (DVD)

Where to watch The Mansion of Madness