A documentary filmmaker, her cameraman, and three young women decide to explore a long-abandoned Buffalo train station. This terminal, however, has a history of horror and violence. After a fatal train crash into the platform which claimed hundreds, it stood empty for years before becoming a makeshift asylum, where the inmates were tortured and raped by the corrupt orderlies. Filled with the restless souls of those who died within its walls, The Terminal has become notorious as one of the most haunted sites in America, a title which our film making crew are trying to verify. The truth, however, may very well kill them, if they don't kill each other first.

Even though the setup is about as cliché as they come, these types of movies can still be quite enjoyable. As much as the “explore the haunted house” film is always going to be in the shadow of the original The Haunting (review here), which arguably perfected the experience, I still have a warm spot in the cockles of my heart for these flicks. Prison of the Psychotic Damned has all the important elements firmly in place:

Beautiful, decrepit building with a dark past? Check.
Relentless feeling of dread? Check.
Cast of likable characters for us to be concerned about?

Well, two outta three ain't bad.

I knew I was in a bit of trouble when, within the first fifteen minutes of viewing this flawed gem, I was already hoping for the reaper's scythe to start cutting down our motley crew. Hell, even within the first five minutes, when we're introduced to the self-mutilating Kansas (whose state-ly name opens up a virtually endless stream of bad puns), who slices her arm open with a razor as she wraps a cord around her elbow, junkie-style. “The flesh parts like a lipless mouth,” she coos, “like a baby bird waiting to be fed.” Oh yeah, she's a regular Keats with teats, this one.

After this rather pointless scene, we meet the rest of the crew: Rena the arrogant filmmaker, Aurora the empath, the oddly cute but whiny Nessie, and Jason the hornball cameraman. Get used to these clowns, as they spend the next 90 minutes cursing, fighting, and just being generally crappy to each other. Which leads to the only real problem I had with the movie, although it's a pretty big problem.

For horror to truly and genuinely work, we need to feel some sort of sympathy for at least one or two of the characters in the group. Not all mind you (after all, you've gotta be able to appreciate their gruesome demises), just enough so that when the shit hits the fan, you feel some sort of fear for the protagonists' well-being. Instead, every minute these five interact with one another, you find yourself genuinely disliking them, really honestly wishing the horrid fates that wait within the corridors upon their hapless hides.

It's all quite disappointing, as Prison is a beautifully shot and produced film. The abandoned train station/asylum is a stunning blend of art-deco and gothic architecture, crusted with years of disrepair. Its beauty still peeks through beneath its heaps of rubble and through its shattered windows, and director D.W. Kann captures this very well. It's a perfect backdrop for the horror that is to come.

When it finally does arrive, it's dosed out with edgy pacing and whip-smart editing. As Rena plans out her narration for her documentary, stills of the station in its heyday flash on the screen, Ken Burns style. Her tales of torture are acted out in surreal skits, playing back on the screen in that slightly overcranked style of the Twenties and Thirties. Most disturbing of all, he almost subliminally flashes stills of unspeakable creepiness during scenes of particular distress, giving the viewer jumpy flashbacks of Captain Howdy peeking out at us from the MacNeil household.

Prison is definitely presented quite prettily, with its digital roots allowing for flawless representations of color and light. Deep black areas were woefully artifacted however, although my screener was a DVD-R, so this might be improved in the final pressing. Audio, however, was simply terrible. Dialogue didn't even seem to be recorded correctly, with characters standing further away from the camera being completely incomprehensible, making me crank my speakers to ridiculous levels, only to practically blow my eardrums out when another one of Kann's creepy quick cuts reared its ugly head. Extras include a full audio commentary, talent files, trailers, and some DVD-ROM content. Special mention goes to the oddly compelling “musical interlude,” in which Kann splices his virtually endless collection of shots in the terminal to the brooding score of the film. It was a genuinely pleasant experience.

There's a scene about halfway through the film in which Nessie rather tightly paraphrases Russ Tamblyn's final lines of The Haunting, which immediately brought to mind a quote from Tom Servo in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000: “Don't reference a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie.” While Prison of the Psychotic Damned is far from being a terrible film, this reference to the best example of the genre simply makes its flaws stand out in relief and make it sting a little more. With better characters backing up Kann's inspired direction, this could have been a fantastic work. As it stands, however, it's just another notch in a pretty tattered belt.