Chamber of Horrors (1966)

 

Director: Hy Averback

Screenplay: Stephen Kandel

Cast: Patrick O'Neal as Jason Cravette; Cesare Danova as Anthony Draco; Wilfrid Hyde-White as Harold Blount; Laura Devon as Marie Champlain; Patrice Wymore as Vivian; Suzy Parker as Barbara Dixon; José René Ruiz Martínez (credited as Tun Tun) as Senor Pepe De Reyes; Philip Bourneuf as Insp. Matthew Strudwick

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A failed TV pilot, based on the 1953 House of Wax with Vincent Price, this like many were salvaged for every other which were simply abandoned to be rediscovered online, to recoup the costs of having made them and at least having a final product, especially as like a few pilots over the decades of American television, this is a feature length one meant originally to introduce this premise. Many however were made into TV movies, whilst from Warner Brothers, Chamber of Horrors was re-appropriated into a theatrical film with a William Castle-like gimmick, where at four gruesome moments, a horror warning (with disregard for epilepsy) fires up with a red light flashing and a "horror horn" blaring. This also opens with a great set piece, likely a scene among a few dubbed too gruesome for the TV series to have been created, where the villain Jason Cravette, actor Patrick O'Neal playing up to Vincent Price mannerisms at points, forces a priest at gunpoint to marry him to a female corpse, the cat at the piano watching as he climbs the stairs with his bride in what is, for a sixties Warner Bros. feature, an act of wedding night necrophilia the film portrays within what they could get away with. Unlike the previous Waxworks films, Price's and the film it remade, Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the wax museum owners here, alongside recreating horrifying murders for their patrons, have a moral too, as a trio of amateur sleuths happy to help the police catch potential subjects of their museum, such as our villain Cravette himself.

One is an expert and craftsman of the wax models, a charming older man played by Wilfrid Hyde-White, whilst the handsome face of the trio, played by Cesare Danova, is the ladies man who will eventually woo another important character later in the second act, a female sex worker played by Laura Devon, and then there is José René Ruiz Martínez/ Tun Tun as Senor Pepe De Reyes. Tun Tun as he was known is playing a character here that, even if he has many jokes about his height, is portrayed by an actor with dwarfism who is able to whip back the perfect one liners and is absolutely charming as their reconnaissance man. They make a legitimately great trio of male characters, actually good ones with distinct personalities, who are brought on the case of Jason Cravette by his own aunt, someone of high privilege who wants him off the street and not strangling debutants when he is not hiring women to dress as brides.

For a former TV pilot, shot on film at the time, it looks good for a period chiller set in the 19th century, one where even if the film is tamer next to others from the time, is gleefully morbid with scenes like severed hands on a tray. Honestly the only thing that has badly aged is a non-Asian actor playing a Chinese merchant for a brief scene, setting up the second act where, after being arrested and escaped the death sentence at a self inflicted cost of a hand, Cravette is provided a collection of new pointy ones including a hook and various blades to start his revenge on those who tried to execute him, with the twisted plan to construct a body from parts of law enforcement who were involved. The horror warning gimmick itself can also be argued to be a pointless inclusion, as alongside the issue of epilepsy with a flashing red light, it neither goes off a few second before the horror moment, but with enough gaps to not work "properly". It is, however, at least, a cherry on top, to what becomes compelling pulp piece which works by itself, if you really want a fully pulpy genre film which gets a lot right.

Chamber of Horrors was a one-off, which could have spawned a film franchise, juggling the suspense and light tone well here. It manages, goreless, to be legitimately creepy in its premise, as quick to capitalise on the case they are on, the wax models by the leads allow this to show the icky case in detail, including of a headless and armless body wrapped in parcel tape like a public art piece. Contrasting this is the whit, Hyde-White in particular a gleefully invested English man, wishing to separate himself from his family back home, happy to run his museum and publish books on strangulation. It is a film that I would be happy to see get a lot more love for as, for an American horror film, this is a good one from a period where, with movements in the genre coming forth from outside the United States to the independent drive-ins especially, you have something like this, despite its origins as a TV pilot for a show that never came to be, you could hold as a nice gem from mainstream Hollywood.