Okay, I admit it: I’m not perfect. I’ve done some pretty lousy things in my life. But I have never done anything, wanted to do anything, or even thought of anything to make me deserve this movie. If Stalin were in Hell watching The Morgue, I’d think, “the poor bastard,” and shuffle sadly away.

In the first place, the setting isn’t even a morgue. It’s a mortuary and mausoleum. After closing, only two people remain on the premises: janitor Margo (Lisa Crilley, Annapolis) and night watchman George (Bill Cobbs, Night at the Museum). Margo, who naps in coffins, allows just anyone in and George vanishes for hours at a time. It’s a terrible thing that Cobbs’ career has this lousy bump in it. It may turn out to be a high point for Crilley.

So on this night of nights, Margo is interrupted by a family of three that comes in because they ran out of gas. (Mom is played by Heather Donahue, she of the enraged nostrils in The Blair Witch Project.) Then a few minutes later, a couple of banged-up jokers show up and bust through the French doors. And, oooh, the ghost of Horace, a former employee who committed suicide in the restroom by slitting his own throat — sing with me, “Bleedin’ in the boys’ room” — is wandering the halls seeking people to kill because, hell, why not?

The movie is so bad it took two directors to do the deed, Halder Gomes and Gerson Sanginitto. Remember their names. That way, if you ever forget the names of the characters in Dumb and Dumber, you can just call them Halder and Gerson. With a twist ending that’s about as twisty as the shortest distance between two points, this is the kind of flick that results when guys watch movies like this and think, “Hey, I can make a movie as good as that.” And then do. —Doug Bentin

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What is wrong with horror fans? Really? I mean, damn! A lot of you think John Carpenter lost it with In the Mouth of Madness, but the fact is — note: fact, not opinion — that this tip of the hat to H.P. Lovecraft is one of the director’s most intriguing movies.

Sam Neill is John Trent, an insurance investigator called in by a publisher (Charlton Heston) to track down missing author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow). Cane is a horror writer whose work frequently has a maddening effect on less stable readers. His new novel, only part of which has been delivered to his publisher, is reputed to be the one that will drive everyone mad. Trent believes that the whole situation is a publicity stunt, so he takes Cane’s editor (Julie Carmen) on a search for the town that is the book’s setting.

Mouth contains several set pieces that blend Lovecraftian concepts with Carpenter’s vision to create an unsettling atmosphere that grows more and more surreal, twisting reality, religion and fantasy around each other like an insane caduceus. The film is loaded with references to Lovecraft’s tales, and maybe that’s why it has never been particularly popular. It may be too old-school and literary for teen horroristas. Perhaps, too, Carpenter’s devotion to prosthetic rather than CG monsters makes it seem quaint. The director calls it the final film in his “Apocalypse Trilogy,” along with The Thing and Prince of Darkness, two other box-office underachievers.

But Mouth contains a great laugh line. After going through hell, then getting strapped into a straightjacket and slammed into a padded cell, Trent is forced to listen to elevator music designed to quiet the lunatics. As “We’ve Only Just Begun” plays over the asylum’s speakers, he slides to the floor moaning, “Oh no — not The Carpenters, too!” —Doug Bentin

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Call me easy, but I like director David R. Ellis’ movies. Yes, even Snakes on a Plane, and especially Final Destination 2. Sophisticated cineastes-about-town like me can’t live by Eric Rohmer alone, you know. We need a little Sarah Roemer to liven things up.

And with that back-scratching out of the way, I can say that the Ellis/Roemer collaboration Asylum is awful — dreck so powerful, it would take a barrel of soft soap to wash it away. Roemer plays a college freshman assigned to a new dorm. Well, not so much new as the renovated wing of an asylum for troubled teens that hasn’t been used since the youth revolted in the mid 1930s and killed the doctor who had been torturing them by shoving lobotomy needles into his eyes.

Now, the doctor’s ghost is roaming the halls and continuing to prey on young people with troubled pasts. The un-renovated wing in ruins — which, after 75 years, still has file cabinets containing patients’ histories — is attached to the dorm, so all it takes is about two minutes worth of computer hacking for the six kids who seem to be the dorm’s only inhabitants to gain access to the old section of the building.

Ellis is known for his wicked sense of humor, but it is entirely lacking in this hodgepodge of supernatural slasher clichés and clueless jump moments. You won’t believe a word of it, although “The” and “End” will be mighty welcome. —Doug Bentin

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I’ve been following the career of horror director William Malone since his Tales from the Crypt days. He’s got a good eye for the creepy visual. Check out House on Haunted Hill. Unfortunately, he’s got the story sense of a 6-year-old — check out House on Haunted Hill — and doesn’t know when to stop. His endings leave a lot to be desired. And by “a lot,” I mean everything.

In Parasomnia, Dylan Purcell stars as Danny, who is wandering around in an asylum one day, gawking at the creepy inmates as if it were Bedlam, circa 1750. He sees Laura (Cherilyn Wilson), who suffers from the title condition, which keeps her asleep most of the time. Her doctor (Timothy Bottoms), who has never heard the phrase “medical ethics,” tells Danny her story, and the young man sneaks her out so she won’t get caught in the MacGuffin.

Now the guy in the room next to hers is a serial killer named Volpe (Patrick Kilpatrick). So dangerous is this monster, he’s kept standing up in chains and masked so he can’t hypnotize the staff. Right, he’s in the room next to a sleeping girl. This place is not on the shortlist for Asylum of the Year honors.

Anyway, when Danny takes Laura home, Volpe escapes to track her down and kill everyone in the world. Jeffrey Combs is wasted in the cop role. Malone has outdone himself because not only is the ending bad, the rest of the flick is, too. Okay, there are some nice visuals when we get to Volpe’s Dr. Phibes-ish lair, but my God, this thing is stupid. —Doug Bentin

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Oh, those wacky 1960s, a time in which it seemed theater and film could go way out, man. Way, way out. Maisie Mosco’s play Happy Family — which, if there is any justice in the world, wasn’t a success onstage — became a movie in 1970 that redefined the word “obscurity.” Hammer horror buffs will recognize the name of its director, Freddie Francis, but Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly is no Hammer. More of a bent, rusty nail, actually. When Britain’s National Film Theatre sponsored a Francis retrospective season, no one could locate even a videotape copy of this one.

The four title characters live in a decaying mansion somewhere in England. Sonny and Girly, both in their late teens or early 20s, go on the prowl at the local playground and pick up homeless men, drunks and hippies (remember them?); bring them home; and force them to become “New Friends” or even members of the family. When the current New Friend tries to escape, he is killed as part of The Game. Despite their chronological ages, the siblings act and talk like pre-adolescents. Mumsy and Nanny are so stereotypically pre-war Brit, they’d make Mary Poppins puke a spoonful of sugar.

Also known as simply Girly, it sounds creepy, and could be if the movie weren’t trying so hard to be mysterious in a zany sort of way. My guess is that the play was long on black comedy in the absurdist manner so popular at the time, and Francis’ tendency, naturally enough, was to play up the horrific aspects, and the two approaches to the material do not mix well at all.

The movie has a good cast of Brit character actors, led by Michael Bryant as the newest New Friend. Vanessa Howard is a very sexy Girly, in a creepy she-wants-to-cut-my-head-off kind of way. Oddly enough, my guess is that everyone involved thought they were making an art film. No cigar. —Doug Bentin

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