Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.
When I tell you that I watched an anthology film, you almost certainly think immediately that it was a horror film. Horror anthologies do seem to be the most popular of the style, perhaps because horror movies often work very well without a lot of characterization or without a great deal of plot. I might argue that a film like Short Cuts is a kind of dramatic anthology, but it’s not one that is more or less pure—specific stories placed end-to-end in a linear fashion. A lot of anthologies don’t really measure up against longer films. Asylum is an exception to that.
Asylum comes with a pretty good pedigree. The stories were penned by Robert Bloch, who also wrote Psycho. The cast list includes Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Charlotte Rampling, Patrick McGee, and Britt Ekland. Admittedly, Cushing isn’t a shock since he made most of his career in this kind of film, but the others add some real heft for 1972.
