(aka Chamber of Fear, The Torture Chamber,
Torture Zone)
This one is genuinely bizarre. It has to be the strangest mix of utter nonsense I’ve ever seen.
Boris Karloff was dying , but being the consummate professional he was, he kept making movies right up almost to the end. This was one of his four last films, one of four Azteca studios paid him $100,000 apiece to make. As his Emphysema wouldn’t allow him to work at the high altitudes of the Mexican studio, he shot his scenes in Los Angeles, under the direction of long time Corman associate Jack Hill, while the rest of the films were made in Mexico.
Boris thought the scripts were just awful, but agreed to do it once Jack Hill rewrote them. It is hard to imagine what that first draft must have been like, if this is the improved version!
Although, perhaps they only rewrote the scenes he was in.
We start out with a pair of explorers deep in a volcano looking for some sort of underground lifeform which Boris — who is talking to them over the phone — believes is there. They find it, but then we switch without warning an Institute for helping desperate girls. Only something is wrong, and when the latest young girl goes to bed, it swivels around and she is in a creepy cavern full of scary people, skeletons and all the usual horror movie paraphernalia, and Boris in hood and cape sacrificing girls.
Which then turns out to all be part of a scientific experiment.
Really.
There’s even a Seventies-style high tech lab just off the torture chamber.
You see, they found this living rock, and are communicating with it by computer. The only hitch is that it needs a certain hormone produced by human beings in extreme fear.
And it’s hungry…
I saw the last of the four, Alien Terror [Invasión siniestra], not long ago and I was rather surprised to see how much more active a role Boris played in this one. Yes, he spent a lot of time sitting in a chair, or lying in bed, but the role also meant that he had to walk in several scenes, program a computer in the midst of fire and explosions, and even stand throughout the human sacrifice scene. This is a lot more than he ever did in Alien Terror. He looks healthier and stronger as well. I suspect that even what little was asked of him was more than he could handle and that making these films hastened his decline. In fact, this was the only one of the four that would reach the theaters before his death.
Now Azteca films knew exactly what market a film like this was headed for, so, naturally, we have a lot of scenes of the girls from the Institute hanging around in their underwear, a stripper putting on a show, and a moment or two of cheap, drive-in grade gore. IMDB notes nudity as well, but there didn’t seem to be any in the version I saw. However, that may just mean that it was sourced from television or from a tape sold in a market that was a little fussier than we are about screen nudity.
This is actually somewhat unusual as you typically do not find this sort of sexploitation in most Mexican films and there is a slightly nasty edge to this one which was typical of a lot of Seventies horror. Let’s face it, the film would be better if these elements had been toned down, but we are talking about a film where “better” does not necessarily imply a big improvement.
But if you haven’t guessed it by now, I quite like this one because it is just so strange, so outrageous and based on such a totally goofy notion. It may all end up exactly where this sort of creature feature is supposed to end, with our heroes trying to stop the monster before it is too late, but the real fun is where it goes on the way there.
It is sad, though, that this is the best Boris Karloff looked in any of his last few films, better than in Targets or Die, Monster, Die or The Sorcerers. And yet, he actually had a mobile oxygen unit standing by while they were filming. He gives his absurd part everything he’s got, and somehow it’s just what this film needs to make it watchable. It’s still an absurd piece of trash, but better by far that a lot of similarly trashy films of the era.
Which still isn’t very good, of course. But mix it with generous amounts of popcorn and sarcasm and you should have fun.
Although you may need a lot of both.
rivets on the poster 
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