Fear Chamber

When Karloff completed work on The Curse of the Crimson Altar for Tigon in the UK, many believed it would be his last film. He had spent some time in hospital during the shoot, and there were a few teary eyes when the shoot was finally over and he flew home. So imagine the surprise of everyone concerned when it turned out he was already contracted to appear in another four films! This group of Mexican horrors included such near-classics as The Fear Chamber, The Incredible Invasion, Isle of the Living Dead and House of Evil. These films were all shot in a matter of weeks, with Karloff's scenes shot in California, and the rest down in Mexico. He was obviously quite frail by this point. The majority of his sixties films featured him either in a wheelchair or at least sitting/ lying down for the majority of the time, and The Fear Chamber is no exception. Despite the obvious limitations however, he still puts in a great performance.

The Fear Chamber has one of the most ludicrous plots I have come across, which given the amount of "bad" films I've watched is really saying something. To summarize: a telepathic rock which feeds on the chemical produced by fear is kept alive by an ambitious scientist and his misfit band of assistants, including his insipid daughter and her heroic boyfriend, Mexico's answer to Tor Johnson, who from now on will be referred to as Lobo, a sex-maniac dwarf, a predatory lesbian with a predilection for torture, and some kind of turban-wearing hippy guru, reminiscent of a young George Harrison.

Now that sounds like a great basis for a movie, and it certainly starts off strong. Disguised as a refuge for women looking for work, the scientists force one after another into the Fear Chamber, which is what a bad acid trip in a ghost train must be like. It is full of cobwebs, snakes, skeletons and satanic rituals, and the women finally scream themselves into unconsciousness. The precious fear juice is then extracted in the lab and fed to the hungry rock. Carried back to their beds, they wake up believing it was all a bad dream. Meanwhile Lobo develops an obsession for diamonds and has some sort of telepathic link with the rock. He also sports a lobotomy scar, which leads you to suspect that the casting sessions for this film were held at the Mexican Insane Asylum.

Karloff's character sustains an injury early on in the film, conveniently (for him) leaving him bedridden until the final reel. This is unfortunate, as when he's off the screen the films dips low, and I mean really low. The assortment of unusual characters manage to entertain some of the time, but when the focus is on the burgeoning love story between Karloff's daughter and her boyfriend you feel yourself reaching for the fast forward button.

This film has been released on DVD before, but this is the version to pick up. Not only does it feature an excellent transfer and soundtrack, it also comes with a deleted scene (see a Mexican go-go dancer get savaged by a tentacled rock!) and an excellent commentary by the writer and director of the American half, Corman veteran Jack Hill.

So in a nutshell, this is a film worth purchasing as a)it stars Boris Karloff, who is worth watching in any old rubbish (which is just as well, as he never seemed particularly picky with his roles) b)It's cheap c)It's a fascinating insight into the world of low budget movie making and in case I forgot to mention it, d) It features half-naked Mexican women being tortured in the haunted house ride from hell.

I recently bought a Boris Karloff DVD collection, containing four of Karloff's infamous last movies on two DVDs: "La Muerte Viviente" aka. "Snake People", "House Of Evil" aka. "Dance Of Death", "The Incredible Invasion" aka. "Alien Terror" and "The Fear Chamber" aka. "The Torture Zone", all of them directed by Juan Ibánez and Jack Hill.

I was prepared for extremely trashy stuff, but after watching the extremely crappy, but extremely hilarious "Snake Peolple" I was sure I had found the epitome of a 'so bad it's good' kind of movie (I already wrote a review). Then I watched "The Fear Chamber", just to find out it is even a better example for how great awfulness can really be.

Horror icon Boris Karloff's very last movie, "The Fear Chamber" was released in 1972, three years after Karloff's death. Not only am I a big Boris Karloff fan, but I also have utmost respect for Director Jack Hill for his great exploitation classics (like "Coffy" with Pam Grier for example). If you are a fan of unintentional comedies, "The Fear Chamber" should be your kind of movie.

Near the earth's core, scientists discover a rock that is obviously alive! Hoping that the rock will reveal "all secrets of the universe", they bring it to a laboratory to examine it. But since the living rock feeds on human fear, they have to torture young women in a special fear chamber, in order to gain fear hormones and keep the rock alive.

"The Fear Chamber" is an extremely poorly produced flick and apart from Karloff and Isela Vega (who played Warren Oates' girlfriend in Sam Peckinpah's surreal masterpiece "Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia"), the acting is pretty bad too. The lab and the attached fear chamber look extremely ridiculous and resemble of the Ufo in Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space". The movie's crappiest (and most hilarious) aspect, however is its script, especially the dialogue. The head scientist Dr. Carl Mendel (Karloff) assumes, for example, that the living rock could reveal "all secrets of the universe" and "the secret of our very existence", although none of the scientists seems to have the slightest reason to make such an assumption.

This may be one of the crappiest Sci-Fi Horror flicks ever, but it is also one of the most hilarious unintentional comedies I have ever seen. The great Boris Karloff makes anything worth watching, this, however, also has a big value for it is probably one of the most absurd movies ever, and for its (unintentional) fun factor. If you had fun watching "Plan 9 From Outer Space", I can guarantee that you will laugh your ass of watching this. Very bad, But I loved it!

The "Torture Zone" version of this film released by Rhino has between 10-15 minutes cut from the Mexican version. No significant scenes are missing (except for the original credits which have a live-action background); most of the cuts are trims to existing scenes. However, the English-language version does feature Karloff's own voice, which is a bonus.

Five days ago, House of Evil replaced The Invisible Menace as Boris Karloff's worst film. Today, House of Evil was just replaced by Fear Chamber(viewings of The Snake People and The Invisible Invasion are pending as of now, hoping they are a little better). The only halfway decent thing about Fear Chamber is Boris Karloff, he doesn't have a lot to work with but he still delivers with conviction and dignity which is more than the material deserved. The rest of the acting is atrocious, especially from Isela Vega and Yerye Beirute, the latter bringing unintentional humour to his part. The production values are amateurish, the photography really does look as though it was shot in a matter of days, the effects are slipshod and the sets look like the film was shot in a basement. The music is at best shrill, though a marginal improvement over the music for House of Evil, at least it isn't as annoying. The biggest failings are the script and story. The script often doesn't make sense and written and delivered in such a wooden, stilted way. The story is just as incoherent, laboriously paced and more uncomfortably weird than creepy or suspenseful(and there was me thinking The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Zombies was weird). All in all, love and have a lot of respect for Karloff but Fear Chamber was just awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox

If you like old and strange movies this is your movie.Boris Karloff commands a group of scientists who finds an monster into the volcano. Experiments are made to understand this monster who converts fear in feed, but the monster is a rock!! Very good(?)!