RELEASE DATE: 1972
RATED: Unrated
REVIEWED BY: The DarkSider - 4/21/2008
The film begins with a rather odd montage of torture scenes pasted together which make absolutely no sense.. We get informed in the credits that this film is �with all macabre horror of Edgar Allen Poe�. Gee I�m sure that forewarning will come true. Um yeah. This quickly skips to scientists Mark and Corrine deep inside the crevice of a n active volcano. Through the miracle of awfully spoken back-story, we find out from Mark they are out exploring for the good of humanity and other reasons I won�t bore you with right now.
Mark phones in to their leader Dr. Mandel who is played by Boris Karloff. Unfortunately, this was the last film Karloff appeared in. Luckily for him, most of the time he is remembered more for his earlier work. I�m sure companies who market Karloff memorabilia thank the heavens for that too. Getting back to the phone call, I was a bit confused what kind of frequency they were using. The scientists wear a rather large antenna on their uniforms. However, Mandel seems to pick up on his a regular rotary phone. Hmmm�well anyhow, Mandel talks to Corrine, who happens to be his daughter, and their connection is a bit rough due to static.
Mark descends deeper into the cave while Corrine waits up. While Mark farts around, Mandel laments to his nurse Helga how he wishes he could be there amongst other excessive whining. Mark finally shouts up that he has found the source of the signal and �its alive� in a rather orgasmic manner. By the way, if �its alive� was meant as a Frankenstein joke I have to admit it was pretty cute. Not brilliant but cute. It turns out it is a rock that actually moves and is responsive to the world around it.
Cut to the Beneficent Foundation Foreign Employment For Young Women where a young lady is disrobing. Note to all girls in horror films, if you see a place like this run for your damn life. So this soon to be fodder girl is under surveillance by a few people in white lab coats. She goes to sleep and is rotated in a room with horrifying artifacts. Actually, to be real they looked more like a 5th grade haunted house than anything. The next course of events are truly stupid. She runs around like ninny and is assaulted by a guy wearing a turban who holds a lizard, a guy with tarantulas on his chest, a woman who bitch slaps the hell out of her and worst of all a scary dwarf who screams a lot. She then proceeds to witness a sacrifice to Satan on a giant grill which she quickly finds herself being a victim of as well. However she faints before it ever happens.
So, what the f*ck was all that crap about you may be asking? I mean a few scenes ago they were doing a scientific expedition into a cave and now we�ve apparently leaped into another plot line While the viewer tries to sort out the oddness, the girl gets brought in by Dr. Mandel and his buddies. They extract blood through a bunch of swirly tubes. I often wonder why places in movies like these don�t have a nice straight tube for extracting or administering fluids. Seems like it would save a good amount of time. They quickly run the blood over to the rock and �feed� it. The rock seems to say �yum� and moves around a bit. Finally, Mandel sheds a little light on what we saw 5 minutes ago. It turns out the rock only reacts to a hormone released by extreme fear. Hence this is why they extracted the blood. Still make no sense? Don�t worry it won�t much later either.
The next day in the waiting room, Helga tends to some new recruits for the chamber. In a bit of oddness, the girl from earlier leaves feeling quite well. I guess having the sh*t scared out of you has health benefits after all. This cuts to a standard skin shot for the era where the girls disrobe but not fully. Get used to this if you ever watch this idiotic flick. Cut to Mark who walks in on a slow assistant named Roland who likes the rock. Apparently Roland is enthralled with the it and the two have a romantic connection or something. Moving on, Mark reports to Mandel that the rock has intelligence. Finally, a little intelligence in this movie, eureka! Of course that means the dreaded fear chamber which everyone snubs their nose at. However, this reaction makes no sense when Mandel, Mark and Corrine josh back and forth about what they have planned for the new subjects. Bunch of d*ckheads.
Later that evening, Helga catches up with a recruit named Sarah. Sarah, who appears to be a bit man-ish, decides to wander off and finds the hidden lab door. Gee that was easy. Anyhow, she gets a little too close to the rock, which by this point developed tentacles. Dear lord, the stupidity value keeps getting larger. Mark investigates a nearby black purse which contains burglar tools. Mandel is rather perturbed about this because although torturing people is fun, death is bad. He tries to pull the plug on the heating system keeping the rock alive but the rock says �hold it right there bub�.
The rock proceeds to control the computers which make Mandel freak out. He blames the staff for his failure and then gets zapped by some wires in a fit of rage. Meanwhile the rock soaks up some heat rays after it restarts them. I should point out, and I�m surprised I haven�t yet, that the rock never seems to get a clear picture. Its always a close up blurry shot of something. It could have been someone�s ass for all I know. The next day, the staff bury Sarah�s body in a shallow grave because they care about their recruits like that. A doctor tends to the injured Mandel who is in stable condition.
Helga takes up the quack role while Mark and Corrine insist they get rid of the rock. Helga approaches Roland who falls for a bit of potential p*ssy whipping. She convinces him to help her take up Mandel�s work. The recovering Mandel, apparently not concerned he has a rock spouting tentacles in his basement, sends Corrine under Mark�s care on a vacation. While the love birds screw off somewhere, Roland, who gets the King Kong Bundy award for violence towards little people, proceeds with killing off the dwarf and attacking the turban guy. The turban guy somehow gets away but Helga assures him there are better things to worry about for the evening.
The film briefly catches up with Mark and Corrine who are frolicking in a pool somewhere. Meanwhile, Helga and Roland kidnap themselves another victim. Helga whips her for a bit and proceeds to extract blood out of her eye. Ok, so I guess phlebotomy isn�t her strong suit. She goes to the lab with Roland and the rock spouts out some new stuff via computer. Ok I must stop here. We�re over an hour into this pile of crap and for the life of me, I don�t know what the hell they�re actually researching. Apparently the rock is smart but what the hell has it given the staff yet? It all seems like an idiotic waste of time. Sigh�must move on�20 minutes left�must move on�
Back to Mandel who gets some happy news, Mark and Corrine are getting married. Aw, how sweet. Helga visits him and gives him some meds that put him to sleep. Meanwhile, Roland finally catches up to turban guy and strangles him. Oddly, this act causes turban guy to drip blood. The film switches from this to the land of convenience-ville where Mark and Corrine hear a radio announcement of turban guy�s body being discovered. They decide they�d better get back to the lab. Stupid f*cking movie.
Speaking of the lab, Helga has a moment of clarity and realizes the rock is somehow messing with their minds. Basically, in an idiot nut shell, she explains the rock is signaling more rocks so they may take over the mind�s of people on earth. Roland freaks out at this concept (perhaps not as much as I freaked out at it�s stupidity) and says the rock want�s Helga. Roland chases her around a bit in which the filmmakers, for whatever depraved reason, make look like a half assed sexual assault. To add a bit of �class� to this scene, Helga ends up having her bosom suckled by the rock.
Cut to a rather odd, then again what isn�t odd in this movie, scene in which Mandel is having a sort of dream. He wakes up and keeps repeating the word �messages�. Mark and Corrine arrive and spot Roland out front. Mark asks Roland whats going on and Roland, with a few b*tch slaps, claims that he is going to be �king of the world�. Corrine rushes inside and notes Mandel working on the computers. She however quickly finds herself being reeled in by a tentacle. Mandel, who says the only thing that made sense to me in this movie, tells her not to be afraid so it won�t feed on her fear. Corrine refrains from fear and proceeds to tell us several unnecessary times about it.
�Well, every step of it�s growth process was recorded and stored somewhere in those computers. If we could force the computers to retrace those steps, we could reverse the growth process. Force it back to it�s original form. Just a piece of rock.�
Whoa, whoa , whoa wait a minute here. I just spent one hour and a half of my life in taking this load of awfulness. Do you think maybe something could make a little sense in the end? �Just a piece of rock� Mandel says however he kept bragging about it earlier as his life�s work. Sorry my friend, apparently this isn�t your every day f*cking stone you skip across a pond. Secondly, they made it seem by the end of the film that this rock needed a computer to thrive. Um, seeing they found it in the middle of the earth moving around by itself I think its more than able to do it�s own thing. Lastly, how is a computer going to reduce the rock back to it�s original form. Once again I must ask if the computer has a line going into the rock. Also, say if I put a thin person in the rock�s place and have that person eat lard for a month. Could a computer restore that person to their original thin form after getting fat?
Stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Anyhow, the film ends with Roland stumbling around the middle of the earth looking for his diamonds and a volcano erupting.
So, what else can I say about this film that hasn�t been said already by your�s truly. I guess I should first point out that this film seems to be crass exploitation built around a completely asinine plot line. You have half naked girls getting tortured repeatedly and very little explanation into the rock�s purpose. Secondly, the Fear Chamber proves to be the film�s title but it gets used once, that�s right once, to extract fear-hormone laced blood. That and in itself is a ridiculous concept for more than one reason. Perhaps the number one being the fact they let these girls go after their blood extraction. Good way to keep up research.
Aside the Swiss cheese plot line (theres more crap but I�d rather not cover it), lets talk about the production value of this film. The film seems to jump around in places as if someone in the editing room just said, �aw f*ck it�. Several shots are unclear, confusing and really make no sense. Shots of the rock are interchanged with shots of blinking lights and other nonsense. As already mention, there is never a clear shot of the rock making me wonder how much they spent brining it to �life�.
I should dare say if the film�s concept was tweaked to actually make sense, it could have been awesome. The concept of sucking fear out of someone to power something else seems cool to me. Also, a telepathic rock seems to have something of interest plot wise as well. However, this film fails miserably to do anything with the promising ideas. They took the idea of the rock and tried desperately to correlate it to the idea of girls getting tortured to fuel it�s existence. To me that�s almost like making a sandwich using tuna fish and jelly. Together you have a sandwich that you wouldn�t hesitate chucking to the seagulls who would only end up sh*ting on it. Hence, if prepared separately with different ingredients they could have made a great sandwich.
Mr. Karloff seems to struggle to keep his head about water in this film. The role is pure fodder for the actor and unfortunately he can�t seem to draw inspiration from the script. Karloff was near the end of his life when it was filmed and a sad feeling comes over me that he had to resort to this film. Lugosi�s swan song was Plan 9, then this was Karloff�s in more ways than one.
The girls are plentiful but get bullied around sucking all the sexiness out of the film�s eye candy. Well, unless you have serious women hating issues. Keep in mind I�m not debunking the sexploitation genre which has given us some enjoyable films. However, and perhaps I�m wrong for this, I need something resembling a somewhat clear plot line. If I want skin with no plot, I�ll pop in a porno thank you.
This film was made in Mexico so might I say no es muy bueno. Es muy malo. However, Earth has many more odd surprises. Join our expedition by clicking the banner below.
