10 Most Twisted Asylum Horror Movies

Without any sense of hyperbole, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the most influential movies in the history in cinema.

Viewed as one of the first genuinely great films, Robert Wiene's 1920 silent horror offering has Friedrich Fehér's Francis investigating a batch of murders that he believes are being ordered and masterminded by the titular Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss).

Caligari is depicted as the head of a travelling fair, with Francis believing the doctor is somehow having somnambulist Cesare unknowingly carry out the aforementioned killings. In the first big twist in the tale, Francis discovers that Caligari is actually the director of an insane asylum.

With the police soon on the scene and Dr. Caligari tied up in a straitjacket, the even bigger twist here is that Francis has imagined this whole thing. In reality, Francis is actually a patient at a mental asylum run by an unnamed director who is indeed the person previously referred to as Dr. Caligari - with Cesare and the other characters seen in this story all also patients of the not-Caligari.

Clearly The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is not as twisted and violent as the asylum-based pictures that followed it, but it's impossible to not talk about such films and not make reference to this absolute classic.