Fear Chamber (1968)

Best movie ever!

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Although there were a lot of god-awful films of the 1960s, this final film for Boris Karloff would rank as my pick for the worst horror film of the decade. Now I am sure that there still might be a worse one hiding out there somewhere, but considering how many 60s schlock horror films I have seen, by declaring it the worst, I am saying a lot about just how poorly made this mess of a film was. Heck, it was so bad that I doubt if Ed Wood, Hershell Gordon Lewis or Al Adamson could have done worse!! BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA'S DAUGHTER, THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN and RAT PFINK A BOO-BOO all are better than THE FEAR CHAMBER--it's THAT bad!! The biggest problem is that you soon notice that the film's plot, at times, is incomprehensible. Additionally, there are many scenes that simply appear rather randomly as if the film were edited with a meat cleaver! So what's it all about? I'll TRY to tell you, but it won't be easy! The film begins with two people in some sort of heat-resistant suits. How they got to where they are and what they are doing is completely unknown, though the female is apparently talking to her father (Karloff) who is apparently miles away in a comfortable office while the two are in a Hell-like place full of flames and bathed in orange. Suddenly, and rather inexplicably, the scene abruptly changes to a laboratory where sick and horrible demonic human sacrifices are made. However, after seemingly killing an innocent lady, you find out it's all a ruse to scare the woman--thus producing some unknown liquid from her body that they feed to a rock creature. The creature is one of the cheesier looking "monsters" of the age--that's for sure. It seems that it lives off the fluid and they are trying to make the rock-thing grow. However, when a lady is REALLY killed by the rock-thing, Karloff calls off the experiment.The next section seems as if perhaps Karloff was too sick to work further, as the action then switches to two of his depraved assistants. It seems that they want to continue feeding the creature because it has apparently made them promises of power and wealth. I don't know about you, but if a rock promised me ANYTHING, I'd be a bit skeptical! However, to apparently please the rock (!?), they hire more unsuspecting ladies--including a stripper who takes off her clothes for no reason whatsoever. While the lady looked really weird with her makeup, she did have a nice body and so she was apparently a cheap attempt to wake up the bored audience!! There's a little more to it than this, but frankly none of it made any sense, the sets were cheap and garish and the dubbing was bad--even Karloff's own dialog!! Throughout the film, his lips and what he says are at least a second or two out of sync--which is odd, because is IS his voice and that IS what he's saying but it just isn't at all coordinated. Plus, even if this had been competently done, how dumb is it to have what looks like a house of horrors in a modern computer lab?! The acting is rotten, the direction is indifferent and the entire film looks cheap and stupid. Sadly, though, it's just bad---not bad in a funny way that might make it fun to laugh at with friends.What makes this whole mess so appalling, however, is that it was a horrible conclusion to a great actor's career. Karloff deserved better and I have no idea why he chose to make this Mexican mess. Could he have needed the money that badly?! Karloff should have called it quits with TARGETS or "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"--both of which were exceptional efforts from his final years in film.

Pretty bad, even for a Mexican horror film. Boris Karloff plays a scientist trying to keep a mysterious life form alive by feeding it a brain chemical released by humans when they're terrified. A promising idea, but a woefully put together patchwork of a film. Jack Hill wrote the screenplay and directed Karloff's scenes and they're spliced together with scenes shot in Mexico. Hill's direction of Karloff is pretty bland stuff and the Mexican scenes hold no interest at all, certainly not the few decidedly out of place shots of women being tortured. Isela Vega (electrifying in Peckinpah's "...Alfredo Garcia") appears as "Helga" and shows absolutely zero charisma. This is one US/Mexican tapestry that's shy of quite a few threads.

Poor, old Boris Karloff. Reduced to appearing in a string of wretched Mexican horror films just before his death. I'm not sure what made him decide to do it, but this is not the way for a horror legend to go out. Fear Chamber is plain old bad. The plot makes little or no sense at all. Scenes and character seem to exist in a vacuum in that things happen that have no relation to what came before or what comes after. The cinematography and editing are shoddy. The acting is abysmal. Suffice it to say that everything I could mention is horrible. The reason I haven't rated the film any lower and the only reason to watch Fear Chamber is the curiosity value.

With its rep as one of Karloff's worst, I expected something drab and stilted (like CAULDRON OF BLOOD, '67) so was surprised to find this quite colorful, albeit in a tacky way. While it lacks subtlety (and often coherence), the film delivers sufficient sleaze to please prurient drive-in dwellers.The haphazard script provides much to mock. Spellunking scientists discover and attempt to communicate with a tentacled, "intelligent" rock. That's all of the plot you need...it's raw gibberish. Amoral researchers stop just short of human sacrifice in their experiments, and place blind faith in primitive, printout-spitting computers. Rants from Roland, the diamond-obsessed comic relief, beg for MST3K skewering, and Karloff's scientific theories are the daffiest heard since mad docs roamed the Monogram lot.Most commenters cluck about "Poor Boris." Granted, he isn't tossed one morsel of decent dialogue, but he just phones his part in. (The young leads, on the other hand, are quite likable, even though their characters are not.) Upon his passing, rummagers of Karloff's effects discovered that his check for this flick was uncashed...perhaps he expected it to bounce.