Don't Look in the Basement
A young nurse arrives at an isolated psychiatric hospital where the patients are encouraged to live out their delusions. After the head doctor is killed, the institution's fragile order collapses and the newcomer begins to suspect that the people running the asylum may not be who they claim to be.
Film details
| Original / alt title | The Forgotten; Don’t Look in the Basement |
| Year | 1973 |
| Director | S. F. Brownrigg |
| Country | USA |
| Runtime | Approx. 89 min |
| Main cast | Bill McGhee, Jessie Lee Fulton, Robert Dracup, Rosie Holotik |
UK status
Added to the DPP list during the Video Nasty panic but later dropped rather than remaining among the final successfully prosecuted 39.
Later UK releases restored the film, and the uncut version has been available with a 15 certificate.
Why it caused controversy
UK censorship / Video Nasties history
A quick status check first, followed by the film’s censorship timeline. A DPP prosecution was an obscenity case against a particular video publication — it was not automatically the same thing as a permanent nationwide “ban”.
Detailed censorship timeline & facts
FACTS & TRIVIA
- The film was S. F. Brownrigg's feature directing debut.
- It was originally released under the title The Forgotten.
- Brownrigg built the film around a low-budget Texas production model and a large ensemble of patients.
- The asylum setting gives the film a grim, claustrophobic character quite different from many slashers on the list.
- Its DPP history is a good example of why the full 72-title list must be separated from the final 39.
- The title's later 15 certificate shows how dramatically UK standards changed after the 1980s.
- The lurid UK poster remains one of the film's strongest collector images.
Distributor / VHS label
Archive cover shown is the user-supplied scan. UK distributor / VHS-label attribution varies by edition and is not asserted here without a verified sleeve imprint.
Trailer
Open a search for the original theatrical / VHS-era trailer. This keeps the archive linking to publicly available trailer sources rather than hosting copyrighted film footage.
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