The local horror picture show thread got me and my husband talking about the movies we watched on our local horror movie show, Chiller Theater, that scared the bejesus out of us as kids. One that we both remember scaring the pants off of us was a movie with the premise of the title of this thread: the crazies have taken over! Only, at first you don’t realize it. The thing is, he remembers it in color and I remember it in black and white. We tried to piece together our memories to come up with the movie’s title and to nail down the storyline but we were both little kids when we (seperately) saw it. We probably saw it a half a decade apart, to boot.
Things we do agree on: A new person visits an asylum. All things look on the up and up in the beginning but slowly and then rapidly go down hill and in the end they crazy people lock the new guy in a dungeon-like basement. And that the movie is at least 50 years old.
Searching the internet bought up a movie called Stonehearst Asylum which we both agree hits familiar plotline points, but that movie was made in 2014. It does sound like the old movie me and Hubby saw and this newer movie was based on the Edgar Allen Poe story. If’n anybody knows, hubs and I would appreciate it. We wanna stream it all comfy and not at all freaked out, not one tiny bit.
The Poe story that matches that plot is The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather. The linked Wikipedia article has a long list of adaptations. You might look through that list and see if anything matches. Possibly you and your husband are remembering different adaptations.
When I started reading the OP I thought of a movie I saw in the theater that blew my young little mind, called ‘Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane’, later renamed ‘The Ninth Configuration’ because, I guess, the first title was kind of silly. But that dates from 1980, only 44 years old, so not quite old enough.
The op is unclear as to when the movie was watched. Although Chiller Theater began in 1961, it ran until 1982 (not including later revivals) - Chiller Theatre (1961 TV series) - Wikipedia.
Having seen - and enjoyed - the film, I can also attest to its muddy colors, making it quite plausible that it could be mistaken for a b&w film in one’s memory.
This is a bit of a stretch, but many of your salient points made me think of the Tales From The Crypt (1972) fifth segment where the blind guys in a home for the blind fix the wagon of the abusive new administrator.
This is a long shot but there was a French film, King of Hearts, released in 1966. It’s about a World War I British soldier going to a small town to defuse a German bomb. What he doesn’t realize is that the inhabitants of the town that he meets are actually escapees from a local insane asylum. (The town’s actual residents had fled before he arrived.)
I think we have a winner! And he was right, it was in color. Thanks all. Curiously, this isn’t on the wiki list even though it seems like Stonehearst Asylum looks to be almost the same movie, only not schlocky '70s style.
So I’m confused. Which version of which movie is this winner? @Elmer_J.Fudd 's 1972 iteration certainly can’t be the one the OP’s hubby watched in the late 1960s. Time doesn’t work that way.
I didn’t say he saw the movie in the late 60s, only that he may have watched Chiller Theater in the late 60s. I’ll never understand why people can’t read my mind when I’m not being very clear on things!
