Review – Chamber of Horrors

If you liked the Vincent Price classic House of Wax, then odds are you’ll recognize this production. Indeed, if memory serves, this was originally intended to be the pilot for a “House of Wax” TV series. But if this ever did make it to test audiences, I’m sure its horribleness instantly doomed the series. The story is some drivel about a corpse-marrying nut who hacks off his own hand to escape from death row and then goes on a spree of deadly, one-handed revenge against the men responsible for his conviction. The only real stand-out element is the William-Castle-esque use of The Fear Flasher (red frames intercut with the action) and the Horror Horn (an annoying bleating sound) that show up to warn the faint-of-heart that something horrible is about to happen. And I mean really faint-of-heart, as more than once all the hoopla precedes is a blade being raised and then a pan away that spares the audience from the slightest hint of gore. Except of course in the end when the villain gets his just reward, an impalement with nary a flash or honk to warn us to shut our eyes. See if desperate