Torturer 2: A Madhouse in London
A Hymn of Hate
Visually, A Madhouse in London remains my favourite – there are some genuinely iconic scenes which are featured here and this site is likely to be the only place that John Hicklenton’s ‘lost classic’ will ever, ever be seen!
We were in hallowed company when Torturer appeared in the catalogue of German publisher EEE in 2001. We were alongside German editions of Zombie World, Marshal Law, Hellboy, Satanika by Glenn Danzig, Faust, Death Dealer and Body Bags. And many other titles. The owner of EEE, Bela B, announced he was closing down in 2006, which was a great pity. Everyone on EEE really worked hard on promoting the books, but perhaps the German market for horror was not as strong as in other European countries. EEE are sorely missed.
A Madhouse in London focuses on John’s and my deep hatred of psychiatry as a quack profession.
It’s a subject I will return to – in Ragtime Soldier where ‘Forced March’ cocaine was given to ALL the soldiers in the trenches: British; French and German, with catastrophic results after the war. The Wellcome Foundation, ex Henry Wellcome – part of big pharma – acknowledge their drug (sort of) but there’s a lot of questions I would still like to ask them.
It’s barely known today, so it can be conveniently forgotten about, but I’d like to try and change that.
I think our ancestors deserve better.
It’s worth bearing in mind that, whether it’s legal or illegal, whether they’re called Henry Welcome, Pfizer, Lord Palmerston, or Joe Bloggs, where psychiatry is concerned, a drug dealer is still a drug dealer.
Whether they’re a doctor wearing a white coat, serve behind a chemist’s counter, are a Suit at a boardroom table in a multi-million dollar big pharma corporation, a British prime minister forcing opium on the Chinese, CIA agents supplying crack cocaine to funnel funds to Nicaraguan guerrilla fighters, or are hippies dealing on a council estate.
A drug dealer is still a drug dealer.
They all think the same way. Rich and poor. They are all cut from the same cloth. They all relish the power they have over the vulnerable. It makes them feel like ‘big men’. They are all ‘candy men’.
No exceptions.
Of course, where mental health is concerned, there is a case for drugs as a last resort, whether it’s antipsychotics or antidepressants. But it should not be the universal panacea it claims for itself. Alternative treatments, based on psychology, are time consuming – so it’s quicker and more beneficial for big pharma to zombify patients. R.D. Laing, judging by a recent poor film I watched, did himself and the anti-psychiatry lobby no favours by his irresponsible avante-garde treatment of his patients.
I’ve known several family members with mental health issues and the completely negative input of psychiatrists did nothing to help them. On the contrary.
Drugs seriously harmed them all.
One mental health nurse was a heroin drug dealer and user and conveniently relocated to New Zealand to escape an inquiry into his supplying his patients with a Class A drug. I’ve read Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin and psychiatrists simply don’t respond to his valid concerns. I’ve visited the excellent ‘Psychiatry: an industry of death museum’ in Los Angeles. Don’t take any notice of Scientology who put up the money, it’s actually inspired by the works of Thomas Szasz whose works I’ve read and thoroughly recommend. The psychiatrists’ ubiquitous, shorthand defence of ‘chemical imbalance’ is simplistic and rarely proven crap. Every time I’ve come across it, the reality is always, without exception, very, very different. Thus a friend told me she was diagnosed bi-polar, thanks to a ‘chemical imbalance’. She then told me about her extremely troubled childhood and it was obvious to anyone, other than an arrogant psychiatrist, looking to give her a quick fix, that the remedy lay in time-consuming psychology, not psychiatry. But psychiatrists do not want to open Pandora’s Box, where they may discover the problem is not ‘chemical imbalance’ but PTSD and complex PTSD at that. They want to use drugs to lock that box forever.
They’re drug dealers.
They’re no different to that hippy on a council estate, offering his wretched clients oblivion from mental torment.
We will eventually regard psychiatry in the 20th and 21st century the way we currently regard Bedlam asylum in the 17th century. And that’s just these frauds’ treatment of the general public. Let’s not go there on their evil and criminal work for the CIA, MK Ultra and other government organizations. I’ve featured one infamous and notorious criminal and psychiatrist, Donald Cameron, in my latest Requiem Vampire Knight, but they ALL deserve to join him in Hell.
John felt just as strongly as me on the subject, so I think you can say our story is a Hymn of Hate to this evil profession. In our story, we focused on a girl John knew with mental health issues and how badly she was served by psychiatrists. What then follows is our horror fictionalization of what I firmly believe these mad, power-hungry doctors are capable of. Even if it seems visually extreme and occult.
They’re drug dealers. Their moral compass has become so skewed by their arrogance, they’re capable of anything.
I hope, whoever she was, she escaped these drug dealers, healed herself by other means, and has gone on to live a happy and successful life.
Here are those iconic scenes:
Bloody helll, John was absolutely on fire here!!!
Thanks for posting Pat. Maybe these too could find an English language release via a crowdfunder one day...