Baltimore around the turn of the century. We all know that those decadent Southerners from good families have their mental problems. Problems like Jason Cravette (Patrick O'Neal, giving a workmanlike Vincent Price impression) has, who first strangles his fiancé and then forces a priest to wed him to the corpse. Afterwards, it's off to a wedding night of corpse hair-fondling, the classic stand-in for necrophilia.
Jason is a madman, but he surely isn't a mad genius, so he holes up in one of the better brothels of the town, passing his time with dressing up a blonde prostitute who resembles his dead bride in a wedding gown and fondling the poor woman's hair while she has to play dead.
The police are as ineffectual as usual in films like this, so it is a pair of amateur detectives/house of wax owners (Cesare Danova - as bland as the younger hero is supposed to be & Wilfrid Hyde-White in his usual role) who track Cravette down.
The poor man is sentenced to death, but manages to escape; well, most of him does, he has to sacrifice his right hand to survive.
After a short stint in New Orleans where he acquires the sonic screwdriver of hook hands and an "adventuress" (Laura Devon) as a decoy, he returns to Baltimore and gives up on his old necrophiliac habits, instead opting for the more traditional business of vengeance. Will he be able to kill all those responsible for his death sentence? Will his decoy fall in love with the bland hero? Where will it all end?
Chamber of Horrors was initially the pilot episode of a TV mystery show, but the powers that be at Warner Brothers decided the whole thing was a tad too deviant to be shown on TV, and added a few things (including five seconds of Tony Curtis) for a cinematic run.
The best thing they added (sorry Tony) was the HORROR HORN, a visual and acoustic cue for the gullible viewer that is supposed to warn her of the four most terrifying moments of the movie. One might as well close one's eyes as the film recommends - it's not as if it showed anything after the HORROR HORN sounds one hadn't already seen before that. William Castle would have been proud.
William Castle is also an excellent reference point for the good-natured cabinet of horrors mood the film has. It's just a shame that director Hy Averbeck was such a typical TV director of his time, never showing an ounce of creativity when workman-like playing by the book sufficed. It is a little sad to imagine what someone a little more courageous could have done with the script.
This isn't to say it is a bad movie - the script moves along at a nice pace, and while it may be cliched it has a nice sense when to use those clichés for good effect. It also shows decidedly more sympathy for an "adventuress" like Marie than most films of its time would have done. Add this to the (sadly soon dropped) necrophilia of the villain and the quite ironic occupation of the heroes and you get a little more than you initially asked for.
In the first place, House of Horrors is just good old fashioned fun, and while I might lament what could have been done with a little more daring, I can't help but like the film as the entertaining mystery it is.
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