THE FIFTH FLOOR
(US - 1980)
Directed by Howard Avedis. Written by Meyer Dolinsky. Cast: Bo Hopkins, Dianne Hull, Patti D'Arbanville, Sharon Farrell, John David Carson, Julie Adams, Robert Englund, Mel Ferrer, Anthony James, Pattie Brooks, Earl Boen, Betty Kean, Alice Nunn, Cathey Paine, Udana Power, Michael Berryman, Marie Marq, M.G. Kelly, Tracey Walter. (R, 90 mins)
A late-night cable fixture in the early '80s, THE FIFTH FLOOR has largely disappeared from view in the decades since. Just out on Blu-ray from Code Red (because physical media is dead) in a transfer that;s only acceptable but oddly appropriate given its exploitative nature, the film was just scuzzy enough for the perpetually shady Film Ventures International to release on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit over the spring and summer of 1980, but it's tamer than you might think, and it even aired on CBS in 1983. Its plot has several similarities with 1979's grungier HUMAN EXPERIMENTS and 1985's exponentially more tacky HELLHOLE, all three films combining staples of the women-in-prison potboiler with a quasi-SNAKE PIT tropes with a nice young woman thrown into a mental institution. After she suffers a seizure at a disco that's eventually determined to be caused by strychnine poisoning and considered by the ER doc to be a botched suicide attempt, college girl Kelly (Dianne Hull), who just broke up with her boyfriend Ronnie (PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW's John David Carson), is deemed a risk to herself and ordered to spend 72 hours in observation in the mental ward on the fifth floor, referred to as "Psycho City" by the other patients.
Distraught and unable to convince anyone that someone poisoned her and that she wasn't attempting suicide, Kelly is incredulously dismissed by everyone charged with her care, and no one--Ronnie, attending shrink Dr. Coleman (Mel Ferrer), head Nurse Hannaford (Julie Adams), and especially leering orderly Carl (an unhinged performance by Bo Hopkins)--seems very eager to hear her out, let alone release her. She makes friends with some of the other patients, like pregnant Cathy (Patti D'Arbanville), unstable Melanie (Sharon Farrell), who lost it after her husband's affair with a younger woman, and kooky Benny (Robert Englund), the fifth floor's resident class clown, but her defiant attitude keeps inevitably extending her stay. She also has to contend with the unwanted attention of Carl, who makes her shower while he watches and insists on soaping her back, and when she runs away, he tells Nurse Hannaford and Dr. Coleman that she grew violent and had paranoid breakdown, which forces Coleman to keep her confined for another 90 days.
THE FIFTH FLOOR was allegedly based on a true story, but that claim seems pretty suspect. Director Howard Avedis (THE TEACHER SCORCHY, MORTUARY, THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE) was no stranger to trashy B-movies before or after THE FIFTH FLOOR, and the film marked one of the rare big-screen scripting efforts by veteran TV scribe Meyer Dolinsky, whose journeyman career included stops on shows like BONANZA, THE OUTER LIMITS, WAGON TRAIN, DAKTARI, STAR TREK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, HAWAII FIVE-0, and MARCUS WELBY, M.D. Though it's generally lumped in with the horror genre, THE FIFTH FLOOR is more of a suspense drama, closer in spirit to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST than anything inherently "scary." It was probably easy to sell it as a horror film ("Once the door closes here, it never opens!"), but if you remove some profanity, Hull's nudity and a surprisingly gory comeuppance for the villain, it could've easily been a made-for-TV movie. It's more uncomfortable than anything, especially with Hopkins' genuinely repellent performance, though even entertaining the notion that standards may have been lax 40 years ago compared to now, it's hard to believe any hospital would've kept this creep on the payroll. Avedis and Dolinsky also completely lose track of the whole "Who poisoned Kelly?" plot thread, addressing it in a throwaway line late in the film that should've gotten her released from the hospital weeks earlier but no one seems to be doing their job. It's possible that was the whole point (Adams' Nurse Hannaford clearly doesn't trust Carl, but Ferrer's Dr. Coleman is absolutely useless), but it's doubtful Avedis was crafting this as some kind of hard-hitting, SHOCK CORRIDOR-style statement.
Toledo, OH, 6/27/1980 |
THE FIFTH FLOOR opening in Toledo, OH on 6/27/1980 |
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