Madhouse
A teacher working at a special school in Savannah finds her life threatened when the deranged sister who tormented her in childhood appears to return. The film combines gothic atmosphere, slasher tension and southern setting details.
Film details
| Original / alt title | Madhouse |
| Year | 1981 |
| Director | Ovidio G. Assonitis |
| Country | Italy / USA |
| Runtime | Approx. 93 min |
| Main cast | Trish Everly, Michael MacRae, Dennis Robertson |
UK status
A successfully prosecuted Video Nasty and one of the less talked-about but important early-1980s nasty titles.
Later home-video availability turned it into a sleeper favourite among collectors.
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
- Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, also associated with Tentacles and Beyond the Door.
- The film was shot partly in Savannah, Georgia.
- Its disfigured-sister angle gives it a more gothic feel than many slashers.
- The climax and killer reveal are among its most discussed elements.
- It belongs to the early-1980s overlap between slasher cinema and European exploitation.
- The pre-cert sleeve helped keep the title alive among collectors.
- Often rediscovered by fans looking beyond the most famous nasties.
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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