Also known as: Blood of the Virgins, Castle of the Walking Dead, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, The Torment of the 13 Maidens, The Thirteenth Virgin, The Vampire and the Blood of the Virgins, Pendulum, The Blood Demon, The Snake Pit, The Torture Room, Torture Chamber, Vampire - The Curse of the Castle of Andomai, and more. That's a lot of fucking names!
Don't let the name and the cover fool you, this is not bondage porn. "The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism" is far from it. In fact, There really isn't any torture in the entire film. There isn't any blood in the entire film. And there's barely any violence in it at all. That's not to say that it's necessarily a bad movie, just that it's kind of uneventful. Or, more realistically, VERY FUCKING UNEVENTFUL. It's supposed to be based on "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Alan Poe, but it fails horribly at that.
The opening scene is the execution of Count Frederic Regula for the murder of 12 virgin girls. For the atrociousness of this crime a simple hanging won't be enough. It is decided he will be drawn and quartered. Now is when one might say "How could there be no blood in a scene where a man gets torn apart by horses?" The simple answer is that there isn't a scene in which a man is torn apart by horses. Just before the tearing, the scene changes. But that's not really a complaint, just an annoyance.
The movie picks up 35 years after the execution. A man and woman are summoned to a castle. The man, Roger, is promised to learn the identity of his parents. While the girl, Lilian, is looking for an inheritance. On the way to the castle, Roger picks up a shady priest who is conveniently also on his way to the castle. On the way there they run into Lilian's carriage where her and her friend, Babette (who is utterly useless), are being overrun by bandits.
By now, I'm thinking two things; "I'm fucking bored" and "How the hell is this anything like 'The Pit and the Pendulum'?" Thankfully things pick up soon with the introduction of an extremely moustached man.
Oh wait, no they don't. It's not even a real moustache. He peels it off to reveal he is someone else. You're not sure who he is, either. All that is known about him is that he doesn't have a moustache. Soon after this the stagecoach driver starts acting like a little bitch complaining about his weak heart, so the priest pulls a fucking gun on him.
After this is when the movie FINALLY gets kind of interesting. On the way to the castle, there's all kinds of creepy shit in the woods. It has wonderful atmosphere. Seeing bodies hanging off of trees and mass hangings is apparently too much for the coachman's little heart. He has a heart attack and dies.
At this point I just want to see something happen. This movie has been dragging along brutally slow for forty fucking minutes. It's almost halfway over and they're not even to the castle yet. Thankfully, after the cliche'd chest grabbing heart attack, something actually happens! The moustacheless man is back and he coach-jacks Roger and the priest, kidnapping Lilian and her useless friend in the process! So Roger and the priest follow them to the castle. FINALLY THERE'S A CASTLE.
When they get in they are greeted by the moustacheless man, who's name is Anatol. They find Lilian who thinks she lives at the castle and doesn't recognize Roger or the priest due to being drugged by a potion. But the potion is fucking useless because it wears off after like five minutes! What's the point?
Speaking of useless, Babette is also there, and she remembers everything. Only she can't tell Roger anything because the moustachless man's pimp hand is so strong. For trying to tell Roger what the hell is going on she is put into a pretty sweet killing machine. She is tied to a cross that will fall on a bed of spikes when a pail is filled with water. You don't even know how much I wanted to see this bitch die. But, of course, she is saved at the last second. Then she just runs away for no reason.
God dammit.
This movie just gets weird as shit after this. We find out that the moustacheless man is actually a bulletproof zombie who was hanged by one of Roger's ancestors, who was also the man who ordered the quartering of Regula in the beginning of the movie. Also, Regula is still alive and Lilian is a descendant of the thirteenth virgin that he needs to kill to become immortal. Big surprise! That is, unless you're watching the version that is called "The Thirteenth Virgin." They actually give away the only thing that could be considered a plot twist in the fucking title of the movie!
When it was revealed that Lilian's virgin blood is what Regula needs to become immortal, Roger rushes at him and promptly falls into a trapdoor in the floor. He approached the situation all wrong. Instead, he should have just bent Lilian over and nipped the problem in the bud. No virgin, no virgin blood, problem solved.
At this point I'm still thinking about how IT'S NOTHING AT ALL LIKE THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Seriously! Nothing. Until the pitiful pendulum scene.
After Roger falls into the trapdoor he is gassed and wakes up tied to the floor with a pendulum swinging overhead. That is where the similarity to "The Pit and the Pendulum" both begins and ends. He gets out by throwing a rock at the blade which puts it off course and makes it swing and cut the ropes around his chest. It is unknown how he gets out of his hand and foot restraints, but he somehow also gets out of them and escapes.
I've already gone on way too long, and this is probably the most extensively anyone's ever written about this film, so lets wrap this shit up. Roger finds the priest and they both rescue Lilian. Regula and Anatol both die because an hourglass runs out of time. I don't really get it either. After they die they disappear into dust and the castle crumbles. Somehow the castle crumbles perfectly around Roger and Lilian and they are standing in a field covered in rubble. Then the priest comes up driving a coach with who the fuck other than fucking Babette! She disappears for half the fucking movie and then just reappears! She is so useless! It would have been much better just to see her die in the scene she was saved. It's sad, but the only on-screen death in the whole movie was the bitch ass heart attack! And no, the zombies don't count since they were already dead.
So overall, not enough stuff happened in this movie. It had good creepy atmosphere and great set pieces, but that's all that was good about it.
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