Mental Hospital (1953)

★★★★ · It Might Look Like a Big Forboding Institution, but Really It's...a Big Forboding Institution · Christine Hennig · 2006-07-14

This 50s film, made by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health, tries very hard to make its state mental hospitals look friendly and not intimidating, but it doesnâÂÂt wholly succeed. It tells the story of Fred Clanton, a guy who began to believe his wife and brother-in-law were conspiring against him. He is committed to the state hospital in short order by a judge, where he is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and given insulin shock treatments. He gets better eventually, begins to participate in the hospitalâÂÂs recreational therapy programs, gets a hospital job as a groundskeeper…

★★★★ · What? You're Smoking again? You're CURED! · Spuzz · 2003-12-01

Pretty wild and dated exploration of what can happen once Uncle Charlie hits the looney ward. It starts off with a VERY curious title card which says 'Recognizable Personages appearing in this film are not patients in a mental hospital", I have absolutely no idea what that means. An unlucky man thinks that everyone is conspiring against him and he is shipped off to the mental hospital to get better. After bathing him (can't he do that himself?) giving him a shot, collecting spinal cord fluid (!!) from him, he's put through wacky psychological tests. I am not too sure what the picture test…

★★★★ · Open Up These Places Again - People's Lives Matter! · JayKay49 · 2015-10-24

Just think how many lives were saved. A lot less (if any) shoot 'em ups when these hospitals existed. Good casting. He looked rather schizo.

★★★ · Roslyn Carter. Why Did You Close These Places? · JSBejma · 2022-10-12

He was diagnosed as schizo. It's 1952. There are no really successful antipsychotic drugs yet. He's probably doped up which is why there's no angry outbursts. He's over what sounds like a mild psychotic episode. But who knows what'll happen in the future. Hopefully it's just a strongly schizoid personality disorder. Otherwise he'd unlikely be released. My experience working on a psych unit was a bit different. Going "ape shit" was a frequent happening, in which case one wouldn't want the patients to have access to cue sticks, baseball bats, garden rakes, and things like that. Good movie…

★★ · The usual PR · Steve Nordby · 2003-07-07

This 1953 film, sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, tries to make you feel OK about "modern" treatment (institutionalisation, insulin shock and electro shock) of mental illness and reduce the stigma, yet begins and ends with a full screen disclaimer: "Recognizable personages appearing in this film are not patients in a mental institution" which nullifies its believability. I guess the target audience of this film would have been the Oklahoma state legislature and relatives of the potentially committed.