Don't Look in the Basement! (1973)

Don’t Look in the Basement (1973) is a title iconic in the lexicon of horror. Just the mere utterance of it is evocative of ghouls and other creepy-crawly things that go bump in the nightmare of our unconscious minds. This movie explores that terror without a budget, but sometimes the more frightening films are those cheaply produced, for they reek of reality, like a documentary into the dementia of its makers. The story follows a patient in a private sanitarium who kills a doctor and another “doctor” takes over. Already we’re confused, put into a state of discomfort by the lack of a logical plot line. There is an anchor, though, a solid rock that harbors us in the scary storm, and that is Betty Chandler, who plays the asylum’s resident nymphomaniac. We get to see her naked, and that fills us with (among other things) hope.