Asylum Erotica / Slaughter Hotel (1971)

I was charmed the other day by a 1915 vintage, almost Victorian looking, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes advertisement poster I spotted amongst the old-fashioned-decor adorned on the walls at a local Cracker Barrel diner. While staring at the ad, for some reason, I became curious as to the origin of Corn Flakes. Where were they invented, and how did they come about? I previously had a stereotypical notion that they may have originated in farming communities, due to the rooster, Cornelius, usually observed on the boxes. After ordering pancakes, I googled “Kellogg’s Corn Flakes history” on my phone, and the results were a little startling.

It appears the invention that brought about Corn Flakes was discovered by accident in 1894, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan by health reformist Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg as part of a bland diet to keep the patients from having increased passions, i.e. to keep them from masturbating.

One day, the Kellogg brothers left a batch of cooked wheat out to sit, when they were diverted by urgent matters at the sanitarium. Upon their return, they’d found that the wheat had gone stale, but because they were under a strict budget, they decided to salvage the wheat. After pressing the wheat through rollers, it formed, to their surprise, wheat flakes that were subsequently toasted and served to the patients; it ended up being a hit. Later Will Keith Kellogg experimented with flaking corn, which he eventually made into a successful business.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was a pioneer surgeon, who succeeded in having exceptionally low mortality rates with his surgery practice. He was the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium and pioneered numerous health reform treatments, some of which still hold up today. However, the good doctor sometimes missed the mark.

Although married, Dr. Kellogg was celibate; his marriage was never consummated, and he and his wife adopted children, which was because he abhorred sex and, most of all, masturbation (he published a number of anti-sex books, one of which he supposedly worked on during his honeymoon). When his various treatments, such as hydrotherapy, enemas, and intestine removal, would fail to cure a patient, he would attribute the lack of progress to excessive masturbation, something he believed to be a major cause of physical and mental health problems. Aside from sticking with bland foods, to try and keep his patients refraining from self-satisfaction, he developed questionable remedies to deter masturbation, such as circumcision without anesthesia for males (the pain was supposed to play an important role in the treatment) and administering pure carbolic acid to the clitoris for females.

Of course, when the pancakes arrived and pulled me from this somewhat odd Corn Flakes trivia, being a giallo junkie, the first thing I could think about was a sleazy yet somehow tasteful giallo by Fernando Di Leo: Asylum Erotica (a.k.a Slaughter Hotel and La bestia uccide a sangue freddo). The movie had some strange parallels to my Corn Flakes browsing experience.

It is obvious, Asylum Erotica was made with every intention of creating a commercial product. Sex and violence is what it promises, and sex and violence is what it delivers. There’s really nothing to the story premise, other than: a killer wearing a mask and cape stalks the halls of a castle asylum at night that’s full of attractive female patients – sex, murder, and masturbation scenes ensue. It’s almost like there was some kind of Playboy Mansion-like requisite for the patients, which is absurd, but this is practically half the fun, especially when the inmates consist of Rosalba Neri and Margaret Lee (someone you can usually find me praising in several Eurospy reviews over at Italian Film Review).

The asylum in question is a beautiful isolated mansion in the country side. It looks ancient and almost uninhabitable from the outside (the beautiful, decayed, and rotting mansion – I aspire to own one, some day). The entire story is practically limited to this secluded setting, a trope I like because it makes the rest of the world seem nonexistent and generates a bit of an escapist sense of isolation, kind of like a hotel resort.

A chain smoking, socially awkward Klaus Kinski is the director of the asylum, which apparently specializes in curing the mentally ill of their antisocial, violent, suicidal, and excessive sexual behavior. Kinski suspiciously wanders the halls with an ambiguous demeanor that provides a very obvious red herring that can be quite convincing, just because it’s Klaus Kinski. When I first saw it, I found myself saying, “We know it’s you, Klaus!,” whenever the masked killer would spring into action.

When all is said and done, the killer seems to lack much of a motive, other than being a kind of sex maniac, and just seems to be here because the movie calls for a killer, but despite its shallow premise Asylum Erotica is not without its merits. For one, the murder scenes are brutal and perverse, and the way the killer resourcefully uses the medieval weapons and torture devices on display in the castle asylum is fun; they’re like some kind of medieval killer ninja. The killer wears a cape, which I thought echoed Dracula a little, since they sometimes visit the victims in their rooms while they’re asleep, kind of like Lucy and Dracula. In hindsight, re-watching the movie while knowing who the killer is, it does end up making sense.

Also, the film is stylish (how about that weird, green opening credits sequence?), and Asylum Erotica is probably the hottest giallo I’ve ever seen; this is probably the most uninhibited I’ve seen Rosalba Neri. She plays a sexually out of control character, who’s being treated for her excessive desire to make love. In the greenhouse, she seduces and has sex with the gardener (John Ely), who slaps her when she won’t leave, but she admirably turns that tired cliché of men slapping women right back at him. This is Neri at her sexually best. Some may feel like celebrating after finding out she has a masturbation scene (where’s Dr. Kellogg when you need him?).

It’s always great seeing British actress Margaret Lee, who plays a suicidal character and who does appear nude in a few scenes, which I believe is a rare instance for Lee. She also plays a brunette here, something in contrast to her usual blond Marilyn Monroe look. She and Klaus’s character provide a bit of uncertain soap opera dramatics, and the two have strange chemistry, which is on purpose since Klaus is one big red herring.

The extended dance scene between the antisocial patient, Mara (Jane Garret –sadly her only movie credit) and Nurse Helen (Monica Strebel) is diverting but still an enjoyable highlight. There’s a very innocent and adorable connection that develops between nurse and patient here, and these two characters actually do have chemistry. There’s a very peculiar editing sequence that happens after their dancing scene, and I can’t decide if it’s artistic or sloppy. One of the girls is staring out the window, and we hear a voiceover of the professor (John Karlsen) talking about the aftermath of her death, and frenzied cries from the nurse, before she is shot through the neck by the killer with a crossbow outside. Redundantly we hear the professor’s speech again while they stand over her body. It’s a little disorienting and hard to forget.

I want to say that characters are murdered for committing capital vices, such as lust, being the most common, and gluttony, made apparent after a chauffeur wanders into the empty lounge, late at night after everyone is asleep, and starts to drink every leftover glass of alcohol sitting around before being killed, shortly after, by being pushed into a Virgin of Nuremberg device by the killer. The seven deadly sins are an apparent obsession with the giallo, considering how often the number seven is used in titles (The Red Queen Kills Seven Times), and it’s interesting to compare this to the giallo offspring, the ‘80s American slasher and its stereotype, where characters are killed for having sex and doing drugs.

As usual there’s the obligatory police procedural that is introduced in the last ten minutes of the film, which feels a little late, and the inspectors that arrive on scene are comic book versions.

Soundtrack-wise, we do have some excellent cuts from Silvano Spadaccino, particularly the elegant and pleasant lounge tune that compliments the natural beauty of the countryside and is top-quality and relaxing during a few of the outdoor shots.

 

 

Asylum Erotica is one of the more low-key gialli that hasn’t really risen to the top of anyone’s favorite giallo list. There really isn’t much of a brilliant story or shocking reveal, but its strengths lie in a number of memorable sequences, like the epic slow motion gun-down at the end, its cozy, lovely, secluded countryside setting, Klaus Kinski looking suspicious, and an overload of Euro-babes.

© At the Mansion of Madness

                

Oh, and no need to worry, Corn Flakes do not have a deleterious effect on sex drive.