Crazy as Hell
| Crazy as Hell | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Eriq La Salle |
| Produced by |
Butch Robinson Michael Huens (line producer) |
| Written by | Jeremy Leven |
| Starring |
Eriq La Salle Michael Beach Ronny Cox Tia Texada |
| Release dates | September 27, 2002 |
| Running time | 113 min. |
| Language | English |
Crazy as Hell, released in 2002 (New York and L.A. only), is a horror suspense film that is based on the 1982 novel by Jeremy Leven and follows Dr. Ty Adams (played by Michael Beach), an aggressive and overconfident psychiatrist who is producing a documentary film about a nearby state-run mental hospital. While treating a new patient (Eriq La Salle, who also directed) who claims to be Satan, Dr. Adams begins to question his own perceptions.
Synopsis
Adams after his arrival at the Sedah State Mental Hospital, has a chess game with the facility's administrator Dr. Samuel Delazo (Ronnie Cox) that who later introduced him to a documentary crew that is filming an inside-look at the hospital. Adams himself is actually traumatized by the death of his own daughter. His arrogance and insistence on being right leads him to locking the police away from a suicidal patient named Cheryl and attempting to talk her down himself, only to have Eriq La Salle's character Barnett inexplicably appear on the rooftop and reveal jarring truths about Adams, leading to the patient's suicide. The death calls a halt to the documentary, and Adams prepares to leave, satisfied that he had discovered the secret behind Barnett's real identity, having found and spoken to his mother. Adams and the administrator regretfully say goodbye, having left their chess game unfinished. Just before he leaves, Barnett's mother arrives and asks him to take a fruit basket to her son, whom Adams has had locked away in solitary in a 24-hour straitjacket as a menace to himself and other patients. The mother asks Adams if he believes in God, and he says no. When he opens the door we see Barnett inside the room in the straitjacket, but while still at the doorway Adams is distracted by an orderly (Sinbad), and when he looks into the room it is empty. He looks out into the hallway at Barnett's mom, who takes off her wig revealing a bald head. He chases her around a corner and finds that Barnett's mom is now totally Barnett in women's clothes. He chases him further and stumbles into a bedroom where he finds himself, bleeding, dying or dead, apparently having killed himself over his daughter's death. He then realizes that he is now in a library, and looks around to see the administrator Dr. Delazo sitting on a throne as the devil surrounded by the patients and staff, all horribly transformed, including the recent suicide. The devil says, "Checkmate." Adams tells the assembly that he knows this isn't real, and that he knows who he is. The administrator/devil asks him who is he? Adams says he's a good man. And the devil asks, then why are you here? As he keeps protesting that he's a good man, we fade to black.