The Ninth Configuration - Monty Python without as many laughs

I had no idea what I was sitting down to watch when I saw 'The Ninth Configuration' - it said 'horror' so, as I'm a fan of the genre, I thought I'd give it a go.  I guess I got some form of horror, but 'elevated horror' may be a more modern term for this vintage film.

A former marine is sent to a castle which is being used as a psychiatric home for other soldiers with mental health conditions.  There he's meant to help them.  How?  Good question.  That's sort of half of why you have to watch it.

And you'll be watching for quite some time.  It's about two hours long and it starts to feel it after a while.  Not that I'm saying everything is bad, just not very horrific - just weird.  It feels like a Monty Python film with random sketches that don't really relate to each other and then someone from a previous 'sketch' interrupts the current sketch at an inappropriate time.  Plus characters have 'conversations' with each other where they don't really answer each other.  They say their lines, then the person they're with says their lines, only the second person's dialogue doesn't actually relate to what the first had said.

There are various 'plot twists' along the way, but I figured them out pretty easily (and I'm not normally good at guessing plot twists!) so they must have been pretty obvious!

It's not a bad film, just random.  It tries to have messages in it about the nature of good/evil and right/wrong, but they kind of get lost among the deliberately nutty characters who water the script down with laughs.

Then, when there are no more real 'twists' for the film to try and sell as 'shocking' the film's ending/point is dragged out and you kind of know what's going to happen.  Then it ends on a weird freezeframe.  It's certainly memorable, but I'm not sure for all the right reasons.  Apparently, it actually won awards, so I guess maybe I just didn't get it and should keep my love of horror for men in masks killing campers.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights