A Descent Into THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM

Harald Reinl quoting Mario Bava in THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM.

Last Saturday night, I decided to revisit Harald Reinl’s DIE SCHLANGENGRUBE UND DAS PENDEL (“The Snake Pit and the Pendulum,” 1968) - known here in the USA as BLOOD DEMON or by its TV title (believe it or not) THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM. As it happens, the timing was just a hair shy of sacrosanct, as the story takes place on Good Friday!

I wouldn’t call this film a masterpiece but it’s jolly good spookshow fodder, with intoxicating art direction and a wonderfully wild, nightmarish imagination. It draws from Poe, Hoffmann, Corman, Bosch, Mario Bava (in a big way), and the cinematography is recognizably the work of Ernst W. Kalinke, who also shot CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH with Michel Lemoine and soon after shot MARK OF THE DEVIL. The cast - principally Christopher Lee (as the undead Count Regula), Lex Barker, and Karin Dor - is very good, the fairy tale-cum-surrealist atmosphere is relentlessly fantastic and creepy, Peter Thomas’ score is ogreish and loony, and Karl Lange (who principally plays Lee’s creepy undead henchman, revived - like Universal's Ygor - after being hanged) plays as many as three additional roles without credit: a man peering from an upstairs window in the public square, an actor in the guise of Christ carrying a cross, and a mysterious vagrant encountered in a burned-out cottage in the woods.

Karin Dor and Karl Lange.

Speaking of credits, Reinl manages to make the main title sequence - though a brazen rip-off of Mario Bava's opening sequence in BLACK SUNDAY - somewhat unnerving when it shows a sustained tracking shot of Lee, a bronze mask nailed to his face, being led through a series of corridors. The bronze mask, always central to the composition, is disturbingly fashioned in the likeness of a smiling face, and at one point shortly before the director's credit, its eyes suddenly appear to glow from within and look unwaveringly back at the viewer. It's a real goosepimpler! 

I was prompted to watch the film because of its inclusion in Severin's delightful new HEMISPHERE HORRORS box set, which features it on a bonus disc with Harold Hoffman's THE BLACK CAT (1966). The Severin presentation is a 2K presentation of two cobbled-together 16mm TV prints bearing the TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM title on a crudely inserted white card with a drippy black font. This was the only way I'd ever seen the film before, but I later discovered this version on YouTube, bearing a Troma logo (with removable subtitles, no less), which shows a properly designed title card consistent with the surrounding footage - I'm amazed this exists, yet it is rarely seen in circulating prints! The colors and clarity here are also much better than the version on the Severin disc, which basically ranks as no better than filler. 

Karin Dor and Lex Barker in the Hall of Skulls.

I didn't remember having it, but I consulted my personal catalogue and discovered that I had the EMS German DVD (which I believe may now be out of print) stashed away in my attic, with the shrink-wrap still on it! The transfer here has its problems - some aliasing and whatnot - but it is far better than the Severin presentation or any other commercial option I know about. The color here has a SUSPIRIA-like intensity at times that is completely lost in domestic versions - think Reinl must have influenced Argento on some level. The scene where Count Regula is revived and his valet Anatole warns the prisoners to look away because they mustn’t set eyes on a moment so sacred - and then we see him slowly arise and be cloaked in a silhouette cast on an ornate wall - that’s pure Mater Suspiriorum. 

The first third of the film is taken up with a chilling coach trip through the haunted forest in which Castle Regula is nested, and the extended set-pieces boast a pictorial audacity we might also associate with Bava; Lex Barker, as the hero, looks like he was told to watch KILL, BABY... KILL! and to reprise Giacomo Rossi Stuart’s Dr. Eswai in his comportment and every move; there is a remarkable likeness between the two. But once the characters get inside the fabulously booby-trapped castle, the imagery turns colder, weirder and more grandiose than anything Bava would do. As bold as he could be, Bava tended to be focused on the actors he chose and his camera work - the way he saw things - rather than in the sets. Working here with art directors Gabriel Zellon and Ralf Zehetbauer, Reinl proves himself a potent stylist in his own right. The forest sequences are terrific, but the scene of Karin Dor's entrapment in the castle's snake pit and the Boschian design of the pendulum room are appropriately nightmarish and memorable. At one point in the film, Christopher Lee - his blue-gray face pocked with nail marks - says, “Now my vengeance is complete!” It made me wonder how many times in his career, especially during this period what with his Dracula and Fu Manchu movies, he was called upon to reprise these very words!

The German disc also includes some nifty extras, including two Super 8 condensed versions of the film (with sound), two black-and-white German television clips of visits to the set (we get to hear portions of Barker's and Lee's interviews in English), and - for the benefit of German-speakers - a 40m audio interview with Karin Dor. The disc has an English language option that doesn't extend to the extras. By the way, you will find online some mention of other actors responsible for dubbing the dialogue of Lee and Barker, but this information pertains solely to the German track. Lee dubs his own voice in English, and I believe Barker does too. Indeed, Barker's voice - not that familiar to me - was very familiar to me as coming out of the mouths of other actors. I believe, for example, that he was the baritone responsible for dubbing Paul Naschy in COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE. 

I discovered there is a fairly detailed Wikipedia page devoted to the film in German. It includes this interesting (uncredited) sidebar on the film's symbolism: "Striking are the numerous references to Christian symbolism which, however, have been reversed in a manner corresponding to the evil character of Count Regula. Thus, on Roger's journey at the entrance of Sandertal, there is a statue resembling famous paintings in which God the Father cradles Jesus, taken down from the cross, in his arms - the so-called "Mercy Seat." It shows a man with a crown who holds a man with a loincloth and severed limbs - therefore also representing Count Regula. Count Regula wants to be resurrected on Good Friday and seeks to gain eternal life through the blood of thirteen virgins. He is also terrified of the cross. The name of Regula's castle - Andomai - recalls the sound of the term "Adonai," which is Yiddish for 'Lord.'"

It also reveals that screenwriter Manfred R. Köhler's original script title was SCHLOSS SCHRENKENSTEIN, which would translate as "Schreckenstein [Horrorstein or Terrorstein] Castle," and that cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke broke an arm while filming the forest sequence, after which he was temporarily replaced by Dieter Liphardt. Furthermore, the text offers two quotes from Christopher Lee that I find worth sharing. They were both addressed to his fan club president Gloria Lillibridge, the first in mid-1967, as the film was beginning production: "I have no idea if this movie will ever be seen outside Europe, and that may even be beneficial." And then the second, sent after the filming was completed: ""It was a lot of fun to stay in Munich and I was pleasantly surprised by what I have seen so far from the film. The colors are first class, the sets excellent and the acting performance more than adequate. Maybe the movie is not as bad as I feared."

After sharing an earlier draft of the above with followers of my Facebook page, I was surprised by how many people came forward to say that this obscure-yet-many-named German offering was a film they loved. Author and blogger Charles Lieurance told me that it was actually his favorite horror film. I was surprised by this enthusiasm, but on reflection, why not? It's high praise fairly well deserved. Like SUSPIRIA, Reinl's dark fable is garish yet remarkable, and the darker passages of Peter Thomas' score are enjoyably overbearing much as the Goblin score for SUSPIRIA is.

As far as I know, there is no Blu-ray release of DIE SCHLANGENGRUBE UND DAS PENDEL yet available anywhere in the world. I am aware of the German DVD I mentioned, and another DVD from (I think) a Spanish label whose language tracks are limited to Spanish and Portuguese. All of this points to a definite need for a more definitive presentation on disc, and I commend it to the usual suspects for serious consideration.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.






(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.