Leofwine_draca Part Hammer horror, part Grimm fairytale, part Italian Gothic, this magnificent film is an overlooked gem when it comes to the horror genre, lost amongst a slew of unnecessary re-titling and editing. This West German production has a throw-away plot involving an elixir of life; upon this flimsy plot is based a superb visual feast for the eyes with many weird and wonderful scenes and set-pieces which haven't been seen before. My advice is to just sit back and soak up all the atmosphere, while enjoying the colourful palettes and props that the producers use to make this such an eye-opening experience.Things open with an excellent, shocking sequence in which Christopher Lee - playing the evil Count Regula - is sentenced to death. Before this happens a mask (with spikes on the inside) is hammered on to his face, just like in BLACK Sunday (originality isn't one of this movie's strong points, but luckily it borrows from so many sources that it doesn't really matter). A cool red-masked executioner leads him out into the town square, where he proceeds to be drawn and quartered by four horses as the townsfolk watch. A grim and shocking scene, it is here that the art director grabs you with his colourful palette; from the authentic old German town with its old-fashioned houses to the contrasting bright red velvet mask of the executioner, there's a whole spectrum of colours to enjoy.Just as Lee's limbs begin to tear from their sockets, the film cuts forward 35 years to the present day where we are introduced to the fresh-faced and handsome Lex Barker. Barker - a former Tarzan actor well past his prime but who still looks young and great - has been invited to Regula's castle for some unknown reason. The frightened townspeople refuse to talk about WHY they're frightened, so Barker has no other option than go and find out for himself, taking a carriage through the plush green German countryside to the location. Along the way he picks up the amusing Father Fabian (Vladimir Medar pretty good in a comedic role) and two women who have been attacked and abandoned by robbers. The first is Baroness Lilian von Brabant, played by Karin Dor, the second Babette, her little-seen servant. Dor is notable for being a Bond girl and also for her stunning resemblance to Barbara Steele, her long-lost twin perhaps? Either way she makes for a fetching female in distress.As nightfall grows close, the initially lush and beautiful countryside begins to turn into a sinister, mist-enshrouded landscape haunted by the unknown. In an excellent scene, the coach driver notices that the trees surrounding the path are draped with human body parts! This makes for a very creepy image, one to stay with you, and highly imaginative. Things get worse to the point where the carriage is driving OVER bodies lying in the road, whilst corpses swing from the trees either side! Great surrealist stuff, but the driver doesn't think so as he promptly has a heart attack and dies.While the father and Barker are investigating, Anathol shows up again to kidnap the girls and take the carriage. Thus the pair must travel on foot, through a spooky old graveyard, before they find themselves in a massive dungeon full of chambers and corridors which is where the remainder of the film takes place (not sure if the castle has an upstairs because we never see it!). The dungeon is another great example of set design, with weird paintings strewn everywhere and disturbing moving statues; rarely in a horror film is such a celebration of death shown. Skulls line corridors, corpses are draped over torture devices, so it's all pretty macabre.There's a lot of incident going on in this movie and the eighty-minute running time positively flies by. My only complaint is with the twee music score which, thankfully, isn't used very much anyway. Otherwise the photography is good, the sets and locations authentic, and the film expensive-looking in scope. The special effects are also of a high standard. The cast is a great one; aside from Barker and Medar, who are both fine as the heroes, we have Christopher Lee in one of his best European horrors from the period. Sure, Lee isn't required to act or do much as the chief villain, but he's adept at playing a corpse and his makeup is fantastic. Special mention should also go to Dieter Eppler, who plays the wonderfully fiendish Anathol! My advice is to seek out a good print of THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM and watch the movie for what is it: a neglected classic of the horror genre!

Rainey Dawn This film has some of the best Gothic imagery I've seen from a 1960s horror film. Very, very atmospheric with skeletons, a dark and scary forest, the 7 dark riders representing the 7 deadly sins, old castle, medieval torture devices, a dungeon, horse and carriage, spiders, scorpions, snakes, death lingering all around and more! The story is pretty good - Count Regula has killed 12 virgins and is put to death 35 years earlier, fast-forward in time to our story the Count has been resurrected and in need of his 13th virgin victim to complete his task of becoming immortal! I find liked the long (very long) carriage ride to the castle the best because that is where we get some of the greatest spookiest scenes. I also liked Anatol, the counts right-hand or helper, he's very eerie.Unfortunately, Christopher Lee might get 20 to 25 minutes of actual screen time... too bad but the story is meant to play out that way for his character.7.5/10

ferbs54 I have written elsewhere about my longtime love for redheaded Italian actress Lucianna Paluzzi, who captivated this viewer back in 1965 by dint of her portrayal of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agent Fiona Volpe in the James Bond outing "Thunderball." Two years later, another redheaded S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agent also caught my fancy: Helga Brandt, Agent No. 11, in the Bond blowout "You Only Live Twice." Brought to indelible life by German actress Karin Dor, she remains, 45 years later, one of the sexiest of the Bond "bad girls," and her death in archvillain Blofeld's piranha pool is a 007 classic. Well, despite admiring Dor's performance in this film dozens of times over the years, I have been hard pressed to see her in anything else, other than Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 film "Topaz," in which she plays Juanita de Cordoba, the widow of a Cuban revolutionary...and a brunette, to boot. A happy day for me, then, when I found a DVD containing Dor's next film after "You Only Live Twice," 1967's "Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism."This German production opens with a scene strongly reminiscent of one to be found in Mario Bava's 1960 classic "Black Sunday," with the Count Regula (played by Mr. Tall, Dark and Gruesome himself, Christopher Lee) getting a spike-studded demon mask impaled into his face, prior to being drawn and quartered. (Barbara Steele, in the Bava film, had had a similar mask sledgehammered into her face before being burned at the stake.) Regula, it seems, had been convicted of slaying 12 virginal girls for their blood, with which he'd hoped to concoct an immortality potion, and before his sentence is carried out, he swears to take vengeance on his accusers. Flash forward 35 years, and hunky dude Roger Mont Elise (Rex Barker) and the Baroness Lilian von Brabant (our Karin, 29 years old here), strangers to one another, meet on the road en route to the Count's castle, to which they have both been mysteriously summoned...."Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism" originally appeared under the title "Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel," or "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum," and as the film's credits DO reveal, it was (very) loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 story "The Pit and the Pendulum." It is a remarkable film in many ways, but perhaps most especially for its incredible art direction and set design. The 19th century villages in the film's opening sequences look absolutely authentic, and Regula's castle is a thing of ghastly and dreary beauty. Frescoes from Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" decorate its walls, weird sculptures are placed everywhere, a corridor of skulls adds an aura of even greater menace, while vultures, scorpions and tarantulas flap and scurry about in abundance. It is all a total triumph for set decorator Gabriel Pellon. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the dreamlike, surreal carriage ride through a nighttime forest before the castle is even reached. Arms and torsos of naked mannequins sprout from the surrounding trees, while hundreds of figures hang in effigy from the limbs in the fog-shrouded moonlight. Kudos to Austrian director Harald Reinl for bringing this sequence home in such an effective manner. (Reinl, it might be added, had been married to Karin since 1954 despite being 30 years her senior, and would divorce Karin the following year. As it turns out, he should have stuck with her, as he was ultimately stabbed to death by his later wife in 1986!) The picture, true to its title, features several sequences of startling torture; nothing like what is to be found today in films such as "Saw," but rather torture that is, uh, fun to watch. In one scene, Lilian's maid, Babette, is suspended over a bed of knives; in another, Mont Elise is strapped under a razor-edged, swinging pendulum in a rat-infested dungeon; and in still another, Lilian stands on a slowly retracting ledge above the titular snake pit (and a high fall into a nest of vipers would certainly be as bad as being dunked into a piranha pool!). Great, ghoulish fun! Barker and Dor, it must be said, play their parts absolutely straight, and make for a very handsome couple, ultimately. As for Lee, well, he is absent, after that grisly opening scene, for the next hour or so, but his resurrection and gray-visaged, corpselike appearance should certainly linger in the viewer's memory. Some other items to enjoy in this truly outrageous film: the sometimes jazzy, sometimes outre, sometimes goofy/non sequitur music provided by Peter Thomas; the deliciously evil performance by Carl Lange as Regula's assistant, Anatol; and still another tasty performance, that of Vladimir Medar, as the jovial "Father" Fabian. For this viewer, however, seeing Karin Dor in one of her difficult-to-see film appearances was worth the price of admission alone. And even more good news for me: I have just learned that a 1963 Dor picture, "The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle" (also directed by Harald Reinl), has finally made it to DVD. Guess I'll be heading in that direction soon....

ctomvelu1 Excellent little German-made Gothic thriller about an evil count returning from the dead to exact vengeance on the descendants of his persecutors and executioners. The film is a cross between "Dracula" and "The Pit and the Pendulum," with a pinch of "Black Sunday" thrown in for good measure. Beautifully photographed with the most amazing set design and production values, but haphazardly dubbed and the music is atrocious, more befitting a beach party flick. Christopher Lee is the undead count. Lex Barker of Tarzan fame plays the hero and a beautiful German actress named Karin Dor is the love interest. She looks like a cross between Barbara Parkins and Barbara Steele. I don't know if there were any actual torture scenes in the original. The version I saw had none, which is to say no one is shown dying in agony. Lee is the main reason for watching this forgotten gem, although he is only in the movie briefly.