Juan López Moctezuma’s bizarre Edgar Allan Poe adaptation gets new life in a new 4K transfer with a correct widescreen aspect ratio. An entire corps of Mexican artists and actors designed and staged this macabre happening, the old tale of maniacs that take over the asylum. It stars Claudio Brook and sounds good in both Spanish and English language versions. This is one of those remasters that causes us to reevaluate a show that didn’t appeal on first viewing … plus, the authoritative extras include direct input from some of the filmmakers and a full documentary on the director.

The Mansion of Madness
Blu-ray
Vinegar Syndrome
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 84 min. / La mansión de la locura, Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon, The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather / Street Date March 25, 2025 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 44.98
Starring: Claudio Brook, Arthur Hansel, Ellen Sherman, Martin LaSalle.
Cinematography: Rafael Corkidi
Production Designer: Gabriel Weisz Carrington
Art Supervisor: Leonora Carrington
Choreographer: Tita Arroyo
Film Editor: Federico Landeros
Original Music: Nacho Méndez
Screenplay Written by Carlos Illescas, Juan López Moctezuma from Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
Produced by Roberto Viskin
Directed by Juan López Moctezuma

In the space between Mexico’s late-’50s  excursions into the macabre and the ’90s revival of classic terror mexicano were seen a number of serious efforts at upscale horror. The debut feature of Juan López Moctezuma made a notable impact in European festivals. The Mansion of Madness aimed for the American market with dialogue spoken in English; but it wouldn’t screen here until 1976, under the not-quite upscale title Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon.

Director & co-writer Moctezuma is most famous as the producer who teamed with the cult figure Alejandro Jodorowski on  Fando and Lis and then  El Topo. The international success of that art film / spaghetti western mashup encouraged Juan López to move forward with his own directing career.

Filmed in Mexico but set in France, La mansión de la locura is an energetic take on Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 story The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether. It arrived in a year that saw an explosion of horror worldwide. With Hammer and A.I.P. in decline, some shockers had overt artistic ambitions, even if not all received wide releases in their original form: pictures by  Peter Newbrook,  Bob Clark,  Gary Sherman,  Mario Bava,  Harry Kuemel,  Ado Kyrou,  Robert Mulligan,  Brian De Palma. Moctezuma’s picture first arrived on U.S. disc from Mondo Macabro in 2005; we’re pleased to see it reemerge in this improved Blu-ray.

It’s the first half of the 19th century. Gaston LeBlanc (Arthur Hansel) interrupts his stately coach journey to visit the sanitorium of Dr. Maillard (Claudio Brook), located in massive, ancient structures on land leased by a friend. Gaston wants to learn more about Maillard’s progressive methods in dealing with the insane. He has never met the doctor but has his friend’s calling card. He finds the grounds patrolled by hostile guards, but is pleased when the good doctor arrives, and happily conducts a tour of the institution. Instead of being caged, the patients are allowed to run loose to express themselves, in a free-form circus of unsupervised, weird activity. Gaston is intrigued by the beautiful Eugénie, who plays the harp, talks in romantic riddles and performs an exotic dance. The more Gaston sees, the more disturbing the asylum becomes — some patients are mistreated and the descriptions Maillard offers for his methods make little sense. By the time Gaston discovers what’s really going on, it’s far too late to do anything about it.

Edgar Allan Poe originated innumerable ideas for stories of crime and suspense, themes and narrative twists that are now so familiar, that ‘straight’ tellings of his original stories can seem tame. His The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether has a narrative twist that is fairly easy to guess, now that it has been cribbed a thousand times. Moctezuma’s film turns the short-story idea into a feature by filling it out with elaborate stagings of wild goings-on at the Maillard Sanitarium. People seem to be living in every nook and cranny of the vast estate, while Maillard’s armed guards patrol the borders to keep out the inquisitive. Did Poe also invent the concept of grand guignol?  This tale would transfer neatly to the Parisian stage with little adaptation necessary. The same basic plot twist motivates the original The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari — the screenwriters of that classic layered the idea with more levels of psychological and political meaning.

Moctezuma and Alejandro Jodorowsky were deep into radical theater, an activity that provided ideas and talent for Jodorowsky’s freaky first films. The Poe adaptation came together as a ‘movie happening.’ The prime ingredients are a hundred or so creative nonconformists, a truckload of bizarre costumes, and access to what looks like a long-disused factory / agricultural plant on a beautiful wooded mountain. The opening is much like a Hammer thriller, with a coach that can’t take its passenger all the way to his destination. Prepared to see some unorthodox therapeutic methods, the gentlemanly Gaston LeBlanc tries too hard to be an understanding guest.

The isolated ruin provides half of the film’s mood and almost all of its production value. The inmates live in the estate’s numerous cavernous interiors, like cave-dwelling troglodytes. The freaky scene feeds off the counterculture of the day: Mexican students and artists were much more pressed by conservative forces than the young people of Berkeley and Haight-Ashbury. As an art-horror film Locura progresses in fits and starts. Moctezuma’s direction simply has Rafael Corkidi’s camera discover one strange happening after another, without applying too much cinematic style. We instead admire the costumes and art direction, that keep most visuals on a realistic plane.

We accept that Gaston could become enamored of Eugénie, a bit of grace and delicacy in this strange zoo. Dr. Maillard slips him a potentially psychedelic potion, and he experiences a hallucination of a nude apparition beckoning to him. But the flesh and blood Eugénie is no phantom … and not really one of the asylum inmates, either.

The film’s best episodes are wide Hieronymous Bosch-like master shots of ruined galleries and factory-like areas, all overrun with Maillard’s madmen engaged in ritualized, absurd behaviors. Gaston stares at a row of smokestacks with a woman living in each. One ragged fellow appears to live in a furnace that is lit and belching flame.

Meanwhile, the preening and pompous Dr. Maillard lectures proudly on his accomplishments. His patients appear to worship him, and willingly obey his instructions. His deportment keeps shifting — he’ll be angry one moment, and then apologize like a jolly good host; he makes cruel jokes at the expense of some of his charges. Gaston doesn’t know how to react to Maillard’s explanations of his method, which sound like Lewis Carroll nonsense. An ordinary bloke like  Neil Howie would see through Maillard’s screwy setup in two minutes, but Gaston remains far, far too trusting — even after encountering a gaunt old man tied to a cross in a forgotten alcove of Maillard’s deepest dungeon.

Some tableaux have considerable visual impact. Maillard and Gaston climb strange stairs suitable for a subterranean catacomb. Group scenes arrange the inmates as in a Fellini film. A woman is kept in a glass box, and a court-like audience assembles to watch an exotic dancer. The best scenes reach for a sense of delirium, as with an extreme wide-angle following a Lady Godiva-like horsewoman moving through an assembly of Maillard’s debauched fellow comrades.

Those who have seen how some nursing homes are run, can imagine the horrors that might be hidden in an unsupervised asylum today, let alone the distant past. Ever since history’s sticky Marat-Sade affair asylums have been dramatic ground for political statements, but Moctezuma sticks to the contours and spirit of the original Poe story. Just the same, we agree that duly constituted governments can sometimes have a lot in common with an asylum run riot.

Mansion of Madness begins with a Poe-like speech by Gaston explaining how he returned to France from the New World. It unspools like a pageant, with a few clearly defined characters set against a disturbing mob. The best role goes to Claudio Brook’s power-mad conspirator. As Brook had been a frequent star for Luis Buñuel, and Moctezuma produced  El Topo, his horror film is sometimes mentioned in the company of sub-Buñuellian fare by Fernando Arrabal, another artistic cohort of Alejandro Jodorowsky. To Moctezuma’s credit Locura is nowhere near as cruel as the group’s earlier  Panic Movement stage exhibitions. Claudio Brook may not have quite the macabre presence of Vincent Price, but he generates a solid portrait of unrestrained madness given too much authority.

Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray of The Mansion of Madness continues a terrific run of quality video remasters of exotic horror. The original negative of Jose López Moctezuma’s film was scanned in 4K and beautifully remastered; it can’t have looked better than this at its premiere at Locarno in 1973. The 2005 DVD wasn’t bad, but can’t compare to the color and sharpness seen here … the cinematography now looks very attractive. The aspect ratio has been shifted to a widescreen 1:85, which improves the compositions as well. Moctezuma often leaves images wide, and the added detail gives us a better look at the actors.

Two soundtracks are encoded in English and Spanish, with English subs only. On our setup the Spanish-track music distorted a tiny bit, but not so much to be a bother. Lip movements convince us that some actors spoke English dialogue on the set. We had to bounce around the menu a bit to make the desired audio and subs play — everything is there, it just didn’t seem to be for a few seconds.

The actual title in the nicely solarized main title sequence reads, Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather.

Very welcome is a full audio commentary by Francisco Peredo, in Spanish with English subtitles. He identifies Gabriel Weisz and Leonora Carrington as surrealist artists responsible for the film’s strange settings, costumes and makeup design; some of the orgiastic compositions are said to be based on Carrington’s paintings. Peredo gives us background facts, but much of his talk describes what we are seeing on screen. He compares Ellen Sherman’s exotic dance to that of Debra Paget in  another underground chamber.

The video extras answer a lot of questions too. Ellen Sherman tells the story of her involvement in the show; she says she’s the only American in the cast. Her exotic metal dance costume was made by a jeweler, and was both painful and very cold — they filmed in an unheated monastery.

We also get an excellent talk by the production designer Gabriel Weisz Carrington, and another piece with the director’s daughter. She also provides an essay for the color illustrated ten-page insert pamphlet. Even more involving is an eccentric feature-length documentary on Jose López Moctezuma, a full life and career story starting with his interest in jazz music.

A Spanish language title sequence is an extra. A video said to be an original English language trailer, looks more like a loose collection of shots from the movie. With this excellent presentation La mansión de la locura takes a big step up in our appreciation.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Mansion of Madness
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good ++
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent Original English, Spanish dub
Supplements:
Commentary track with Mexican film historian and author Francisco Peredo
Interview Surreal Experiment with actress Ellen Sherman (16 min)
Interview Room for Play with production designer Gabriel Weisz Carrington (6 min)
Interview Art in 24 Frames Per Second with director’s daughter Alessandra Moctezuma (14 min)
Feature-length 2011 documentary Alucardos: Portrait of a Vampire by Ulises Guzmán (89 min)
Alternate Spanish language titles
Original English language trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: March 8, 2025
(7291tarr)

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