That was an excellent one.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Count Regula (Christopher Lee) is put to death after it was determined he murdered twelve virgins. Fast forward several decades and Roger Elise (Lex Barker) and Baroness Brabant (Karin Dor) are invited to the castle even though no one is living there. Once there they find an assistant who is to bring Count Regula back to life and he plans his revenge on the two guests due to their ancestors.THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM has been released under countless titles but this German horror film is a pretty good one. If you're looking at the title and expecting anything overly graphic then you'll be disappointed because there's not any gore or violence but at the same time this here is the perfect example of why you don't need that stuff for an effective movie.There is one major problem about this film that keeps it from being better and that's what must be the longest coach trip in the history of cinema. Once Barker gets to town he jumps in a coach to head to the castle but for some reason it seems to take at least thirty-minutes of screen time to get there. I'm guessing all of this was meant to build up some sort of atmosphere but it goes on way too long and most importantly it keeps Lee off the screen even longer.The film really picks up once Lee makes his return and the torture devices are put into play. The torture scenes are extremely effective and quite intense. If you're frightened by spiders or snakes then you might have a panic attack as well. Lee clearly steals the film as the madman seeking revenge but both Dor and Barker are good as well. The film manages to move very quickly through its 80-minute running time. THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM is certainly a gem that's worth watching.

Old time movie serial style thrills mix with Gothic horror and a comic book sensibility for this incredibly fun German adaptation of Poes' "The Pit and the Pendulum". Former Tarzan performer Lex Barker stars as Roger Mont Elise, who journeys to the distant castle of a character named Count Regula (Sir Christopher Lee). Regula was a multiple murderer who attempted to unlock the secret to immortality 35 years ago, and was drawn and quartered for his crimes. Could Regula still be alive? On his travels, Roger meets with the aristocratic Lilian von Brabant (German beauty Karin Dor, "You Only Live Twice") and the larger than life "priest" Fabian (Vladimir Medar).You know you're in for a jolly good time when Roger, Lilian, Fabian, Lilians' servant Babette (Christiane Rucker), and their coachman (Dieter Eppler, "Slaughter of the Vampires") pass through a forest where there are all these human bodies and body parts hanging in the trees. As directed by Harald Reinl (Dors' husband at the time), this delicious movie delights in so many of the trappings for this kind of entertainment that it's certain to be catnip to rabid genre fans. (Of course, there are still likely to be those who feel that there isn't *enough* torture in this flick.) The sets are absolutely great, as are the set decoration and the props. Babette will be tied to an ingenious torture device, and the rugged, stolid Roger will find himself threatened by a pendulum. The music isn't always effective, because there are points where it's so upbeat and goofy that viewers might burst out laughing. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Hammer product during this time, and the violence really isn't that strong. It's not like we ever SEE the really nasty stuff happen.Barker and Dor are likable as our hero and heroine. Medar delivers a very hearty performance and is often seen to be laughing. Sir Christopher is simply marvelous as the villain, but Carl Lange as the henchman Anatol is a true scene stealer here. For Lange to be able to wrest scenes away from Lee is truly an accomplishment.Recommended viewing.Eight out of 10.

"Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel" or "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum" (there are several alternate titles to this one) is a German 80-minute film from Germany and you can look out for German and English language version of this relatively short movie. Lead actor Lex Barker (who looks like Alec Baldwin occasionally) made this one already very much at the end of the Winnetou franchise that he, lead actress Karin Dor and director Harald Reinl became famous for. And you can also say "at the end of his life" as he died pretty prematurely only slightly over 5 years after this film here was made. It is a mix of horror, mystery and drama and of course a touch of romance was always there in the films from that time, especially with that final shot. The horror component is delivered by Christopher Lee here, who once again plays a vampire. The name is Regula this time although the Dracula reference is obvious. I like Lee as an actor, especially as Scaramanga, but here he was really not enough to let me enjoy this film. Then again, he is basically only in this film in the first 10 minutes and last 20 minutes, the rest is all about Barker's character. I personally wondered why they would even go to this place all of them with the danger waiting there for them. Truly reckless and strangely enough the carriage driver, the only one who acted reasonable and preferred not to go gets killed and presented as a coward while the brave ones survived. This doesn't make sense, they weren't brave in my opinion. They were foolish. Oh well.. I guess films were surely of a different crop back then. I do not recommend this film here. Thumbs down.

I have written elsewhere about my longtime love for redheaded Italian actress Lucianna Paluzzi, who captivated this viewer back in 1965 by dint of her portrayal of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agent Fiona Volpe in the James Bond outing "Thunderball." Two years later, another redheaded S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agent also caught my fancy: Helga Brandt, Agent No. 11, in the Bond blowout "You Only Live Twice." Brought to indelible life by German actress Karin Dor, she remains, 45 years later, one of the sexiest of the Bond "bad girls," and her death in archvillain Blofeld's piranha pool is a 007 classic. Well, despite admiring Dor's performance in this film dozens of times over the years, I have been hard pressed to see her in anything else, other than Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 film "Topaz," in which she plays Juanita de Cordoba, the widow of a Cuban revolutionary...and a brunette, to boot. A happy day for me, then, when I found a DVD containing Dor's next film after "You Only Live Twice," 1967's "Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism."This German production opens with a scene strongly reminiscent of one to be found in Mario Bava's 1960 classic "Black Sunday," with the Count Regula (played by Mr. Tall, Dark and Gruesome himself, Christopher Lee) getting a spike-studded demon mask impaled into his face, prior to being drawn and quartered. (Barbara Steele, in the Bava film, had had a similar mask sledgehammered into her face before being burned at the stake.) Regula, it seems, had been convicted of slaying 12 virginal girls for their blood, with which he'd hoped to concoct an immortality potion, and before his sentence is carried out, he swears to take vengeance on his accusers. Flash forward 35 years, and hunky dude Roger Mont Elise (Rex Barker) and the Baroness Lilian von Brabant (our Karin, 29 years old here), strangers to one another, meet on the road en route to the Count's castle, to which they have both been mysteriously summoned...."Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism" originally appeared under the title "Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel," or "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum," and as the film's credits DO reveal, it was (very) loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 story "The Pit and the Pendulum." It is a remarkable film in many ways, but perhaps most especially for its incredible art direction and set design. The 19th century villages in the film's opening sequences look absolutely authentic, and Regula's castle is a thing of ghastly and dreary beauty. Frescoes from Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" decorate its walls, weird sculptures are placed everywhere, a corridor of skulls adds an aura of even greater menace, while vultures, scorpions and tarantulas flap and scurry about in abundance. It is all a total triumph for set decorator Gabriel Pellon. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the dreamlike, surreal carriage ride through a nighttime forest before the castle is even reached. Arms and torsos of naked mannequins sprout from the surrounding trees, while hundreds of figures hang in effigy from the limbs in the fog-shrouded moonlight. Kudos to Austrian director Harald Reinl for bringing this sequence home in such an effective manner. (Reinl, it might be added, had been married to Karin since 1954 despite being 30 years her senior, and would divorce Karin the following year. As it turns out, he should have stuck with her, as he was ultimately stabbed to death by his later wife in 1986!) The picture, true to its title, features several sequences of startling torture; nothing like what is to be found today in films such as "Saw," but rather torture that is, uh, fun to watch. In one scene, Lilian's maid, Babette, is suspended over a bed of knives; in another, Mont Elise is strapped under a razor-edged, swinging pendulum in a rat-infested dungeon; and in still another, Lilian stands on a slowly retracting ledge above the titular snake pit (and a high fall into a nest of vipers would certainly be as bad as being dunked into a piranha pool!). Great, ghoulish fun! Barker and Dor, it must be said, play their parts absolutely straight, and make for a very handsome couple, ultimately. As for Lee, well, he is absent, after that grisly opening scene, for the next hour or so, but his resurrection and gray-visaged, corpselike appearance should certainly linger in the viewer's memory. Some other items to enjoy in this truly outrageous film: the sometimes jazzy, sometimes outre, sometimes goofy/non sequitur music provided by Peter Thomas; the deliciously evil performance by Carl Lange as Regula's assistant, Anatol; and still another tasty performance, that of Vladimir Medar, as the jovial "Father" Fabian. For this viewer, however, seeing Karin Dor in one of her difficult-to-see film appearances was worth the price of admission alone. And even more good news for me: I have just learned that a 1963 Dor picture, "The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle" (also directed by Harald Reinl), has finally made it to DVD. Guess I'll be heading in that direction soon....