Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Making Off with the Driver Again

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)
directed by Harald Reinl
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix

Billed, somewhat more subtly, as Castle of the Walking Dead on Netflix, this shores up and concludes my commitment to Christopher Lee for the season. I want to make a joke about when on earth (or where) a flabby man in spandex pants would be accepted as an intimidating jailer, but I guess the bottom line is that I'll follow Kit almost anywhere. It starts off rough, as he's forced to wear a mask made of bronze with thin spikes on the inside. He screams, but walks out of the dungeon under his own strength not half a minute later.

Print quality was "barely VHS," but the blues and greens were sufficiently atmospheric in a dark room. This being a German production, the usual aristocratic aspirations are catered to in random moments, like when a working-class girl begs to wipe the dust from a traveling nobleman's cloak. Lee, drawn and quartered by an angry township, needs a roomful of women to die before he can fully resurrect himself, and brings in the son and daughter of his accuser and executioner to round out the thirteen sacrifices.

The daughter is now a Baroness (played by a Bond girl) whose "only source of income" is piano lessons. She can still afford a servant and a driver, and teams up with the son and a highwayman to nefariously thwart Count Regula's plot through the appearance of... a cross around her neck. All that good dark magic undone by something so simple! Oh well. Lee is too good for this nonsense anyway, which, except for a well-placed body in a field of foggy trees and the highwayman's assertion that sign language is a thief's secret code, barely beat out an unplanned showing of Scream 4 for review.

For that, read this.