Kathleen Quinlan delivers powerfully here as the disturbed “Deborah” who has been institutionalised by her therapist “Dr. Fried” (Bibi Andersson). She’s delusional and walks a fairly fine line between a reality in which she doesn’t feel pain and a fantasy land with it’s own language that she must, at all costs, keep secret. Once ensconced, she finds herself staring at a stark world where her humanity is very much subsumed into a violent, noisy and drug-induced environment run by an eclectic combination of mostly men, who have varying degrees of sympathy for their patients/inmates. Fortunately for “Deborah”, her psychiatrist is genuinely interested in trying to help her recover, and against a backdrop that is hardly conducive, there might be hope that she can possibly emerge from the toxic alternative world that she has become dependent upon. It’s the noise that got me most here. The reverberations of the shouting and the screaming around rudimentary accommodation that has more in common with a prison than an hospital all adds to the general sense of craziness. There are a few potent efforts from the supporting cast, like Norman Alden’s “McPherson” whose more measured and considerate behaviour contrasts well with the otherwise often chaotic and even dangerous environment and from Sylvia Sydney too. Andersson is well cast bringing a certain caring aloofness to her role and the whole effect of the film is scarier than almost all of the other films produced by Roger Corman. It has dated and there is a degree of over-descriptive psycho-babble from the often heavy handed script, but Quinlan holds this together well and it’s still quite a solid indictment of 1970s psychiatric care.
