CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

"Jason Cravatte, a gentleman with a taste for the sewers..."

Before getting to the film proper, I'll spend some time remarking on the synchronicity of my reviewing, in the same month, two psycho-films I'd only seen once before, both of which could have been really good in their depiction of a common trope: "the Really Rich are Really Messed Up." The other one was A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES, and it shares with CHAMBER OF HORRORS the sense that the filmmakers of both weren't as devoted as they should've been to their psycho-subjects.

CHAMBER is credited to two writers, Stephen Kandel and Ray Russell, and a director, Hy Averback. Both Kandel and Averback were mostly journeymen laborers in the TV field, while Russell is best known for his short story "Mister Sardonicus," which gave rise to the William Castle film of the same name. My guess is that Russell, credited only with contributing to "story" rather than "screenplay," came up with the essence of the perilous psycho of CHAMBER-- which, even in its early origins, seems to have had some elements in common with Castle's other productions. Had Jason Cravatte been better elaborated, he could have been as good as Slade in THE LODGER.

We first see Cravatte (Patrick O'Neal) forcing a minister at gunpoint to marry him to a dead woman. Later, after the law has caught up with Cravatte, he escapes in such a way as to lose one hand. He then becomes a psycho-killer haunting the streets of 1880s Baltimore, but he's actually more interesting in the background provided by his aunt, Mrs. Perryman (Jeanette Nolan). The rich, fifty-something dowager informs the audience that despite the upper-class station of her nephew, he liked "the taste of the sewers" and apparently kept company with all manner of prostitutes (which is substantiated later when Cravatte's seen holed up in a whorehouse). If this was all there was to him, he'd just be a dime-a-dozen roue. But he also had some desire for a "madonna" as an antidote to the whores, because he courted blonde Melinda-- the dead woman seen at the opening-- in the belief that she was virginal. He killed her when he learned she was not pure, and yet he also had some notion that he "purified" her by killing her, for he seems to have every intention of taking his pleasure with her dead body. In addition, even after the madman's been condemned but escapes, he repeats this syndrome by paying a similar-looking prostitute to "play dead."

Unfortunately, the script doesn't follow the "madonna-whore" complex with any close attention. After Cravatte escapes the law and becomes "the Butcher of Baltimore"-- complete with various killing-devices he can fit into his empty wrist-socket-- he takes up a brand- new psycho-obsession. He starts killing off the men who sentenced him to the hangman, and out of nowhere there's some folderol about his forming a "composite corpse" of the body parts of his victims. This poorly conceived notion turns Cravatte into just another gimmick-oriented psycho-killer-- though Patrick O'Neal's rousing performance as Cravatte sustains the film through all its dull spots.

Now, although Cravatte is the Prime icon of CHAMBER OF HORRORS the film, he would not have been had CHAMBER succeeded in its original purpose, as a pilot for a TV-series, originally called "House of Wax" after the 1953 horror-film. If any of the networks had greenlighted "House" as a series, then the default stars of all the episodes would have been the characters Tony Draco (Cesare Danova) and Harold Blount (Wilfrid Hyde-White). These two amateur detectives-- whose backgrounds are spotty at best-- run a wax museum with the title "House of Wax," and unlike the one in the Vincent Price movie, all of their wax statues are devoted to murder and the macabre. Indeed, the script tends to suggest that Draco and Blount's fascination with the macabre-- presented as being benign, I guess like that of the pilot-makers-- is what makes them great detectives. Presumably they would have proved this again and again on a weekly basis. But though there was no series, CHAMBER still ends with the suggestion of another "episode" involving another bizarre murder.

Many reviewers have remarked on how little gore is present in a film about a psycho who frequently stabs people with his hand-utensils. Yet even without the gore, the concept was clearly too disturbing for the TV networks to accept. I speculate that the producers-- one of whom was director Averback-- were hoping to titillate TV audiences by frequently having Draco and Blount make speeches about all the horrible deeds performed by the subjects of their wax exhibits. This idea wouldn't have worked as a TV-show in a million years. But even with all the missteps in the pilot-movie-- enhanced with Castle-like gimmicks when CHAMBER went to theatres-- the Russell-Kandel provides some fun moments, albeit with a poky pace that made me appreciate William Castle's superior narrative drive. 

Next-to-lastly, while CHAMBER's script isn't interested in the opposition between "serene beauty and titillating shocks" established in Crane Wilbur's HOUSE OF WAX script, Averback et al did offer another form of enticement. Aside from the first female victim, only one feminine character is strictly necessary to the script: that of Marie (Laura Devon), a bargirl whom Cravatte makes into his partner, mostly so that she can seduce one of his victims, a horny old trial judge, and then lure the old duffer into a trap. But the script also works in technically unnecessary roles for glamorous actresses like Patrice Wynore and Suzy Parker, as well as several briefly-seen young working-women. (At times CHAMBER almost seems to anticipate how the Italian giallos developed in the early 1970s.) This strategy was doubtless meant to suggest that ladies- man Draco would have a girl to seduce every week had CHAMBER become a series. Indeed, the theatrical movie even gives some exposure to past-their-prime beauties like Nolan and Marie Windsor-- though Nolan steals the show, making clear that her side of the family is just as lubricious as that of Cravatte's paternal line.

Two other last things: first, thanks to a spectacular fight between Cravatte and Draco at the conclusion, CHAMBER, like HOUSE OF WAX, qualifies as a combative drama. Second, right around the time Hy Averback completed the pilot-movie, he became executive producer for the slapstick teleseries F TROOP, which certainly seems to have been much more up his alley.