The Room with Chains (1970)
** (out of 4)
A couple married and well off men decide to have some fun by kidnapping various French girls and chaining them up in a basement, which has been turned into a torture chamber.
THE ROOM WITH CHAINS is an early French exploitation movie that seems to have gotten a dirty reputation. I'm going to guess that it got this bad reputation because not too many had seen it and someone who had seen it decided to try and sell it off as something much worse than it actually is. The film has a reputation for being rather graphic and dirty but it certainly falls well short of that probably due in part to what couldn't be shown in France at the time this was made.
With that said, there are some interesting things in this Gérard Trembasiewicz film. There's no question that the highlight of the picture are the various scenes in the basement. Again, one really shouldn't be expecting any gore or even blood for that matter but I liked how these scenes were staged. We get a red tint during these torture chamber sequences as well as a rather funky music score. The atmosphere in these scenes were quite good and the ladies are even better.
With that being said, there's really not too much that happens in this film. The stuff in the basement doesn't happen too often, which is a shame because it's so much more entertaining than everything else, which includes the men talking way too much as well as an investigation that goes no where. The performances are decent for what they are but there's really nothing here that jumps off the screen.
