I Can Watch “The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism”
The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism - Dir. Harald Reinl 1967
This is the first movie from the “can’t find it” section of the dare list that I actually found. I imagine it was a slightly different cut. If anyone is interested, you can find on at Netflix under the title “Castle of the Walking Dead”. Actually a far more fitting title considering there is no Dr. Sadism in the movie, and the “torture chamber” doesn’t really live up to its name.
The Plot: Roger, our hero, gets summoned to a business meeting at the strange castle of Count Regula. On the way, Roger meets up with Lilian, Babette (Lillian’s servant girl), and a peculiar priest named Fabian. The foursome take a carriage ride up to the castle, but are hijacked by hired goons. The two girls are abducted, while the men must find their own way to the castle through a forest filled with body parts and dead people hanging from trees.
Once they get to the castle, Roger and Fabian (who turns out to not be a priest at all) find that the girls are well and that Count Regula is pretty weird. Actually, they find out that he’s a reanimated corpse that’s been dead for 35 years. Regula’s evil plan requires the death of Roger for revenge (and by pendulum), and taking Lilian’s blood for scientific purposes.
Don’t want to spoil the ending, but Regula’s plan doesn’t exactly go off without a hitch.
What Makes it Watch-able: The music in this movie is fantastic. It’s the same song over and over again, but played differently depending on the mood of the scene. Like the first Rocky.
I have a real affinity for the look of this movie. The film stock (and the condition of it during the transfer) are perfect. Watching a movie that looks like this is a pleasure.
That being said, this film wasn’t great. It’s got some surrealistic elements that are kind of interesting, and Christopher Lee is always a bonus, but it never really gets off the ground. The pendulum thing is just plain stupid. A lot of the movie is carriage ride, which is fine, but not all that intriguing. When you promise someone a torture chamber or some serious sadism (which you’d expect from someone with a PHD), it’s always disappointing when it’s not delivered. If they would have called the film “The Long Carriage Ride to Dr. Soliloquy’s” or “Castle of the Grumpy Dead” I’d have been better prepared, and probably happier with the film as a whole.
Times I averted my eyes: 0
Breaks needed to complete viewing: 0
Overall rating from 1 to 10: 4
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2 Responses to “I Can Watch “The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism””
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Most people hate bad movies. Some people like to make fun of them. Not me. I LOVE BAD MOVIES! This site is all about my love of horribly bad movies, television shows, and media. My friends have always told me that I'll watch anything. (Think I'm joking? Check out the list of things I've already watched under "categories"!) Now I'm going to put that to the test. I'm on a mission to find a movie so bad, even I can't sit through the whole thing! 
March 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
That was more or less exactly how I felt about it. While the sadism was conspicuously absent, sitting through a virtually castless movie that consists of little more than a carriage ride should be profoundly masochistic. But something about the movie almost works… I wonder if we’re just grasping at straws?
March 11th, 2008 at 4:32 am
We’re not grasping at straws, my man. There is something cool about the film, though it’s hard to see through all the let down. I didn’t have the best time watching it, but there was never a point where I could honestly say that I wanted to turn it off.