Todd Nunes is remaking Don’t Look in the Basement with Death Ward 13
Todd Nunes, director of the award winning Christmas slasher All Through the House and former Grave Plot Podcast guest, has a new film coming out called Death Ward 13. The thing about it, though, is that it’s actually a remake of the 1973 film Don’t Look in the Basement.
The original film, also known as The Forgotten, centers on a rural mental hospital with patients ranging from a man with a child’s mind, a former judge who has lost his sensibilities, and a nymphomaniac schizophrenic. In Nunes’s version, which will also take place in 1973, the Stephens Sanitarium for the Criminally Insane prepares to shut down permanently. Days before closing, four beautiful nursing students arrive to care for the last handful of “harmless” mental patients in a suspiciously understaffed ward. Confronted by their violent charges, the nurses soon realize that they are trapped inside the asylum with a deadly crew of vicious lunatics. Each patient has their own perverse identity, their own personal demons, and their own violent agenda. Pushed to the brink of insanity, the young nurses find themselves in a gruesome fight for survival inside Ward 13 (ohhhh, he said it).
“I’m a huge fan of the original Don’t Look in the Basement and saw the movie as a 10-year-old; I was mesmerized by the insane characters and the twist ending,” Nunes said in a press release. “In this reimagined version I want to give fans a taste of the original with added practical effects and lots of bloody gore for modern audiences. Death Ward 13 will have more nurses, more maniacs, and more blood. We’re eager to shoot the film in an isolated mental hospital in the woods, to embody the iconic 70s grindhouse era.”
Practical effects? Lots of bloody gore? More nurses, more maniacs, and more blood? Count me in!
“Death Ward 13 will have a brutal climax with an updated, disturbing twist that shocks and satisfies both gore hounds and fans like me who love great storytelling,” says producer Stephen Readmond (who also produced All Through the House). “Since we’re taking liberties with Don’t Look in the Basement, we wanted to use one of the film’s alternative titles to show respect for one of my all-time favorite films of the genre.”
Death Ward 13, which is inspired not only by Don’t Look in the Basement but also Edgar Allen Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” is being written by Todd Nunes and and Tara Knight and developed for Bone Crusher Films and is set to begin filming later this year. Get more info at deathward13.com.
