THE FIFTH FLOOR (1978) Blu-ray
Director: Howard Avedis
Code Red Releasing

Just when you through Scorpion Releasing was done with "human experiments" comes a Blu-ray journey to THE FIFTH FLOOR.

Disco club dancer Kelly (Dianne Hull, GIRLS ON THE ROAD) is so down from her latest breakup with boyfriend Ronnie (John David Carson, THE CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE), but things are about to get worse when she has a seizure on the dance floor after having a drink meant for someone else. She is barely conscious in the hospital, and the doctors assume when the lab results show strychnine poisoning that she attempted suicide, an assertion backed by Ronnie's revelations about an earlier attempt as a teenager and her co-workers' statements to the police about her mental state that night. Since she will be suffering from the hallucinatory effects of the poisoning for a few days and unable to clear it up for the police, she is placed on the fifth floor psych ward for a seventy-two hour psychiatric hold. She wakes up in the ward unnerved and frightened by her bedmates – including prankster Benny (Robert Englund, EATEN ALIVE), UFO nut Phil (Earl Boen, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS), and Derrick (Anthony James, BLUE THUNDER) rumored to be a murderer only in the psych ward because his father is a doctor – but the staff proves more worrying from thick Dr. Coleman (Mel Ferrer, THE GREAT ALLIGATOR) who cannot see past her job as a dancer to question the diagnosis and Nurse Hanneford (Julie Adams, THE PSYCHIC KILLER) – who objects when Kelly agrees to help patient Cathy (Patti D'Arbanville, THE BOYS NEXT DOOR) keep her baby despite a court order – to orderly Carl (Bo Hopkins, A SMALL TOWN IN TEXAS) who takes advantage of the female patients since "No one's gonna believe a crazy." Kelly's refusal to admit that she attempted suicide and insistence that someone tried to kill her are met with the same skepticism by Coleman as her accusations that Carl attempted to assault her, and waiting out the extended psychiatric hold no longer become an option when the effects of the poisoning wear off and she discovers the real "nightmare is knowing you're sane."

Purportedly based on a true story and playing like a TV "Movie of the Week" with R-rated nudity and violence, it is perhaps that lack of willingness to plunge headlong into delirium that works dramatically for THE FIFTH FLOOR compared to, say, HUMAN EXPERIMENTS in which a wrongfully-convicted woman in prison is subjected to unethical experiments that chip away at her sanity. While Ferrer seems to be in paycheck mode and Adams in not given much to do, usual good guy Hopkins comes across as menacing while Hull is ably supported by Sharon Farrell (LONE WOLF McQUADE) as a schizophrenic housewife. Marlene Schmidt, wife of director Howard Avedis (MORTUARY), has a small role here as a night nurse, one of a series of increasingly smaller parts in his films following larger roles in the likes of SCORCHY, DR. MINX, THE STEPMOTHER and THE TEACHER. The cinematography of Daniel Pearl (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) is oddly grainy throughout, while the scoring of Alan Silvestri (ROMANCING THE STONE) takes a back seat to the film's disco songs, particularly "Fly Away" a single by Patti Brooks who is seen performing live on stage during the opening sequence.

Released theatrically by Film Ventures and released to VHS by Media Home Entertainment, THE FIFTH FLOOR comes to Code Red Blu-ray in a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer that is grainy in almost all but the brightest scenes – although the crispness of some insert shots suggests that this was a deliberate choice on Pearl's part (possibly utilizing faster film stock for the VA hospital location shoot) – while the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track sounds clean and at its most vivid during the disco music sequences. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided. Apart from a pair of TV spots for the film (1:04) and trailers for STREET LAW, THE DARK, MUTANT, THE POWER, and BEYOND THE DOOR, the only extra is an interview with Hopkins (8:27) in which he recalls the pleasure of working with Hull, Ferrer, Englund, his celebrity crush Adams, Farrell – with whom he had also appeared in the slasher SWEET SIXTEEN – and James, only coming into conflict with Avedis over the night shoots and where pizza was supposed to suffice as meals for the production. (Eric Cotenas)

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