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THE MAD ROOM stars sexy Stella Stevens and Shelley Winters in a great horror thriller from the late 60's. Shelley is high camp as the rich widow who employs Stella (in an excellent performance) as her secretary. Trouble is Stella's brother and sister need a place to stay and Shelley doesn't know they've just been released from a mental institution for having killed their parents. Or did they? Or which one? Now there's more killing... Great supporting role from Beverly Garland. This film has never been on VHS and should be released on DVD. Who wants to download it? I want it in my collection!!! Come on Columbia Pictures!!!! With all the junk being released on DVD why overlook some of these lost gems?

[THE MAD ROOM - (1968) - Directed by Bernard Girard - Widescreen presentation] In this modernized remake of the far superior 1946 film, 'Ladies In Retirement', Stella Stevens portrays a young woman whose two younger siblings were convicted of murdering their parents years ago (though neither child remembers who did the actual killing) and have been kept in a mental institution since. She's currently the employed companion and secretary to Shelley Winters, an impossible-to-appease widow and overbearing mother to the young man Miss Stevens is engaged to. They are all living in a house still under construction, conditions are chaotic, tempers are easily enraged, and the kids, the eldest now turning eighteen, are getting discharged from the asylum. So Stella has little choice but to bring the children to live at her current residence, omitting their past homicidal history, of course. Their understandably fragile mental conditions will be put to new tests as they go straight from one loony bin into another, and that's when things get interesting.

The younger brother and sister still have need of certain disciplines and groundwork from the institution and one of those things is a 'mad room', a place of solitude where they can work through things when challenged, confused, or perplexed. The strains of their current environment dictate that they will have need for this place frequently, but the basement won't do - this was a place of punishment at the nuthouse. The attic is perfect, but for one thing - it's locked and strictly off limits to anyone as per Miss Winters, who keeps her deceased husband's belongings there. Stella's at odds with herself and buckling from the sheer weight of constantly having to lie, keep up the façade of normalcy, monitor the teens, be a good fiancé and companion to the irredeemable Miss Winters. So she eventually relinquishes and gives the kids a key to the attic to use as a 'mad room', provided they remain quiet when there, so Shelley doesn't ever catch on. But one day she does catch them up there, has a patented hissy fit, throws them out and, as she exits, finds a book marked from the asylum, realizing she's been had. A confrontation naturally ensues, and we go from the frying pan into the fire... To say more would be, well, maddening.

Stella Stevens is fine in her role, I always found her to be under-appreciated as an actress (her role in the following year's 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue' with Jason Robards is a perfect example) and, Shelley Winters is wonderful as the overbearing, over-indulged and overweight psycho-bitch (but we knew that already). Michael Burns and Barbara Sammeth are well-cast as the tortured teens, Beverly Garland glowers and shines in her short role, Skip Ward is instantly forgettable as the son / fiancé, Dave Grusin provides a solid soundtrack and director Bernard Girard ('Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round') tightens the tension cords nicely. Yes, it's inferior to the original, but the switch from two wacky sisters to two troubled teens is a simple twist that works well within the construct of the updated 60's time frame. It's almost an embryonic pre-cursor to the modern day slasher flick made prevalent in the 70's. For fans of flicks like 'Baby Jane', 'Sweet Charlotte', 'Woman in a Cage', 'What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice', 'Who Slew Auntie Roo?'(another insane Shelley Winters tour-de-force, and the addition of Debbie Reynolds makes it two-times-the-fun), it comes as recommended viewing. So, go ahead and enter 'The Mad Room', just remember where the exit door is.

I've finally seen this movie again after years of just having a faint memory of it, so I've now got to decide if it lived up to my memory...well it pretty much does. The story concerns Stella Stevens as Ellen, a young woman who's impending marriage is interrupted by news that her younger brother and sister are being released from an asylum where they were committed after the murder of both their parents. Now considered sane, they are handed over into Ellen's custody, despite her misgivings, and the three of them move into the home of Ellen's fiancée's mother in law, played by Shelley Winters, which in turn gives HER major misgivings. And this being a horror film, it isn't long before there's a new murder...

So what still works is the general sense of unease, mostly generated by great performances by the two younger children, played by Michael Burns and Barbara Sammeth. They portray just the right amount of inscrutability, and keep you guessing as to their actual mental stability! Stella Stevens plays Ellen with lots of wide eyed exasperation which suits the role well, and Shelley Winters does her usual job of playing an alcoholic floozy as the landlady/mother-in-law. The overall tone of the story is well handled, and the climax still works. Gore is low but a couple of bloody scenes still stand out, and the best part is still what happens when a dopey dog sniffs out a dead body - great fun. All in all it's a great compact little thriller with some very good performances...check out the ladies charity party when one of the visitors gets a little too drunk - great cameo here by Beverley Garland - which ends in unexpected tragedy that none of the main characters saw coming! I'd love to see this get an official DVD release, but it seems unlikely, and it's hardly ever shown on TV any more either...luckily we now have the "on demand" release, which I strongly recommend for people happy to take a risk or just nostalgia buffs who fancy a bit of twitchy suburban horror from 1969

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