La cámara del terror/Fear Chamber (1968; US release date 1971)
Country: Mexico/USA
Production Companies: Providora Filmica Azteca/Filmica Vergara SA
Producer: Lui Enrique Vergara C [Luis Enrique Vergara]
Production Manager: José Luis Cerrada
Director: Juan Ibáñez [and Jack Hill]
Co-Director: JL González de León
Screenplay: Jack Hill, E Vergara C [Luis Enrique Vergara]
Editor: Felipe Marino
Cinematographer: Raúl Domínguez [and Austin McKinney]
Music: Enrico Cabiati
Art Directors: José Méndez, Octavio Ocampo [and Roland Hill, Ray Storey]
Special Effects: Enrique Cardillo
Set Decorators: José Méndez, Octavio Ocampo
Costumes: Tostado
Makeup: Tony Ramirez
Sound: Henry Henkel, Víctor Roto
Filmed at: Estudios America, Mexico; Dored Studios, Hollywood
Length: 88 mins
Cast: Boris Karloff (Dr. Carl Mandel), Julissa (Corinne Mandel) Carlos East (Mark), Isela Vega (Helga), Yerye Beirute [sic] (Roland), Sandra Chavez (Victim), Eva Muller (Sally), Santanón (Dwarf), Pamela Rosas (Victim), Fuensanta.
Karloff still looks good in Satanic robes.
Synopsis: Dr Mandel and his team, daughter Corinne and her boyfriend Mark, discover a living rock that feeds off human fear. Luring young women to an underground lair, they enact Satanic rituals to terrify them and provide the creature with sustenance. However the nourishment is proving less effective each time and assistants Helga and the brutish Roland discover a more effective method when a girl is attacked and killed by the monster.
Review: In April of 1968, Boris Karloff flew to Hollywood to fulfill a contract with Mexican producer Luis Enrique Vergara to make four pictures back to back. The films were originally supposed to be lensed in Mexico City, but Karloff's emphysema - he was operating on half of one lung by this time - meant he couldn't handle the high altitude. This, added to Vergera's desire to give the films a more North American feel, led the producer to make a deal with up-and-coming writer-director Jack Hill to film Karloff's scenes in Hollywood and then fly to Mexico to shoot the remainder.
The hopeful but semi-literate opening title card.
We'll never know what would have happened if Hill have been allowed to complete the films as, thanks to poor production planning, the three week shoot in LA went over budget (Vergara spent most of the time at Disneyland with his family) and on his return to Mexico the beleaguered producer died of a heart attack. Hill, assuming that the projects had perished along with their creator, never made the trip south and it was years later that he discovered they had been released on video, realizing to his horror that they had been completed by another hand.
The four films in this misbegotten enterprise are, in the order that Hill shot them, Fear Chamber, Isle of the Snake People, House of Evil (aka Dance of Death), and The Incredible Invasion (note that Calum Waddell is his excellent book Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master, Film by Film, has the order as House…, Isle…, …Invasion, and Fear…, which is the order they were written). After Vergara's people failed to come up with useable scripts, Hill wrote all the screenplays except for Incredible Invasion, which was written by Spider Baby actor Karl Schanzer from an idea by Vergara.
Karloff's determination to die "in harness", bolstered by his appearance on the cover of the March 15th issue of Life magazine (Mexican promotional art for House of Evil copies the iconic shot and adds a mustache), plus his enjoyment of the idea of playing four different characters in such a short period of time, accounts for his appearance here, despite the physical pain and need for an oxygen mask caused by the illness that would claim him less than a year later. Jack Hill also was up for the challenge (he would discover later that even Vergara's Mexican colleagues thought he was mad), particularly given his career frustrations thus far, with his first feature Spider Baby still sitting on a shelf four years after production and his less than ideal relationship with Roger Corman.
Yerye Beirut gives it some serious Tor
Hill's original scripts (which Karloff had enthusiastically approved) were largely jettisoned once his work was complete and the production moved to Mexico, but Fear Chamber is the closest to his original vision (House of Evil was his favorite screenplay and he still hasn't been able to bring himself to watch the finished film). That said, while it is the best of this sorry bunch, it's basically a Z-grade 1950s monster movie, with the requisite hokey exposition (it's never explained why the rock monster might be worthwhile to humanity), wooden acting (genre vet Yerye Beirut of Face of the Screaming Werewolf, is particularly Tor Johnson-like in a role originally written for Sid Haig), and low budget special effects (Mexican-lensed rubber tentacles are more Ed Wood than Hollywood).
Hill clearly cared about the projects and drafted in his father Roland Hill to design the sets for Karloff's scenes (Roland designed the interiors for the Nautilus in Disney's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), and Art Director Ray Storey (Spider Baby) to construct them. He also hired cameraman Austin McKinney with whom he'd worked on his previous film Pit Stop and it's a testimony to Hill as a director that he felt he owed McKinney a favor, after Roger Corman failed to pay his Pit Stop crew, and to the mishap-laden project that he was forced to fire him after one week during which McKinney over-lit every scene, using 12 lights where one would have sufficed. Hill also had to battle José Luis Cerrada's less than stellar production management, which caused the wrong actors to show up, leaving Karloff sitting around for hours waiting for his scenes.
Variety is the spice of life, so the rock is fed a stripper.
Karloff himself looks better than he did the previous year in El coleccionista de cadáveres/Blind Man's Bluff/Cauldron of Blood, possibly because Hill avoided using close-ups - mainly because these were shot for large drive-in screens, but partly out of respect for the actor (in stark contrast, Mexican director Ibáñez never met a face he didn't want to get next to, preferably with a rapid zoom) - and seems to be enjoying himself in spite of the pain, the chaotic production, and the banal dialogue.
It's easy to say "Poor Boris" and bemoan the fact that the final big screen appearances of one of horror's great icons were in these wretched films (he made one more appearance on film, in the TV series "The Name of the Game"), but there's no evidence that he needed the money - he left £165,000 in uncollected salary in Mexico - and the fact remains that Karloff went out as he intended, proud but humble, a real English gentleman, working to the last.
Scenes filmed in Mexico are distinctly more perverse than those shot by Jack Hill
In one of the more eyebrow-raising announcements in recent film history, Hill has said he plans to remake these films (a Spider Baby remake is already underway), we await the results with perplexed interest. In the meantime, Fear Chamber is available on DVD from Elite Entertainment, with an excellent director's commentary, a 5.1 sound remix, and an extended scene containing nudity cut from the US release; Isle of the Snake People is available from Cheezy Flicks; and House of Evil is released by both Sinister Cinema and Rhino, the latter under its Dance of Death title; all are barebones releases. Incredible Invasion is unavailable on DVD, but can still be found on VHS from MPI and Rhino under the title Alien Terror.
Farewell to the King.
Reference
Calum Waddell, Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master, Film by Film, McFarland & Company, Inc, 2009.
Peter Underwood, Karloff, Drake Publishers, 1972.
Bill Warren, "Karloff's Last Act: Visiting the Set of Boris Karloff's Final Films… and Watching the King of Horror Act" Monster Kid Magazine #2 (date unknown).
June 17, 2022 at 11:19 PM
Trying to find out if there is a soundtrack containing the "full" music for the film. Please send any info to klsnyydeyeah@gmail.com Thank you, gracias.
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