Chamber of Horrors is a delightfully clever, stylishly-shot and wittily-written mystery-thriller, shot through with touches of comedy, based on an Edgar Wallace novel from 1926 called The Door with Seven Locks (which I can't but think was at least influenced by Earl Derr Bigger's equally wonderful and oft-filmed 1913 novel Seven Keys to Baldpate). It's also a great variation on a classic theme of an heiress arriving at a mansion to find out about a legacy. In this it's reminiscent of the oft-filmed Cat and the Canary or the Jessie Matthews vehicle Candles at Nine.
Lilli Palmer is plucky yet vulnerable as June, the heroine from Québec, who spun a coin at age 15 to decide on a life of adventure versus one of domesticity – and adventure won. An actress named Gina Malo plays Glenda, her wisecracking, husband-hunting sidekick from Ontario who keeps the atmosphere lively with a rich stock of risqué remarks, such as this bit, delivered nude from a bathtub, when June shows her one of the keys to the door with seven locks that she has received in the mail: "There's nothing unusual about a guy sending you his latchkey. Did he say he wants you to come up and see his etchings? I'm an old etching viewer myself, and I know all the tricks. He'll be wearing George Raft pajamas, and the etchings will be in the bedroom."
The script for Chamber of Horrors is by a writer named John Argyle, so maybe he deserves credit for this delightful duo of June and Glenda. At any rate, it's quite reminiscent of another pairing he wrote a couple of years later in the Gothic mystery Terror House, a.k.a. The Night Has Eyes, with Joyce Howard and Tucker McGuire teamed as the beautiful heroine and her man-mad friend. Curiously, another thing Chamber of Horrors shares with Terror House is the presence of monkeys as pets: in Terror House villain Wilfrid Lawson carries around a pet capuchin named Cain (as a symbolic marker of his criminality); whereas in Chamber of Horrors evil physician Leslie Banks goes about with his pet monkey Beppo on his back, which could possibly be taken to indicate that the not-so-good doctor has been dipping into the drugs.
Banks plays a descendant of Spanish inquisitor Torquemada, collecting as a hobby authentic implements of torture which he displays in the titular chamber of horrors. Thus is Banks able to draw upon the vein of sadism he tapped so well way back when in The Most Dangerous Game. In Chamber of Horrors, he even sports as butler a hulking henchman who is a mute as a result of having lost his tongue due to "rebel atrocities," much like henchman Ivan in the earlier film.
It's interesting to remember that this movie was made in Britain in 1940 under the extreme exigencies of World War II. I was reminded of this by several scenes involving actress Lilli Palmer, who appeared to have great sorrowful pouches under her eyes, that came and went in a manner uncoordinated with the action on the screen and which makeup couldn't efface. What the cast and crew went through in order to tell stories that would provide entertainment and escapism to the war-stressed nation would make an interesting movie in its own right.
Lilli Palmer is plucky yet vulnerable as June, the heroine from Québec, who spun a coin at age 15 to decide on a life of adventure versus one of domesticity – and adventure won. An actress named Gina Malo plays Glenda, her wisecracking, husband-hunting sidekick from Ontario who keeps the atmosphere lively with a rich stock of risqué remarks, such as this bit, delivered nude from a bathtub, when June shows her one of the keys to the door with seven locks that she has received in the mail: "There's nothing unusual about a guy sending you his latchkey. Did he say he wants you to come up and see his etchings? I'm an old etching viewer myself, and I know all the tricks. He'll be wearing George Raft pajamas, and the etchings will be in the bedroom."
The script for Chamber of Horrors is by a writer named John Argyle, so maybe he deserves credit for this delightful duo of June and Glenda. At any rate, it's quite reminiscent of another pairing he wrote a couple of years later in the Gothic mystery Terror House, a.k.a. The Night Has Eyes, with Joyce Howard and Tucker McGuire teamed as the beautiful heroine and her man-mad friend. Curiously, another thing Chamber of Horrors shares with Terror House is the presence of monkeys as pets: in Terror House villain Wilfrid Lawson carries around a pet capuchin named Cain (as a symbolic marker of his criminality); whereas in Chamber of Horrors evil physician Leslie Banks goes about with his pet monkey Beppo on his back, which could possibly be taken to indicate that the not-so-good doctor has been dipping into the drugs.
Banks plays a descendant of Spanish inquisitor Torquemada, collecting as a hobby authentic implements of torture which he displays in the titular chamber of horrors. Thus is Banks able to draw upon the vein of sadism he tapped so well way back when in The Most Dangerous Game. In Chamber of Horrors, he even sports as butler a hulking henchman who is a mute as a result of having lost his tongue due to "rebel atrocities," much like henchman Ivan in the earlier film.
It's interesting to remember that this movie was made in Britain in 1940 under the extreme exigencies of World War II. I was reminded of this by several scenes involving actress Lilli Palmer, who appeared to have great sorrowful pouches under her eyes, that came and went in a manner uncoordinated with the action on the screen and which makeup couldn't efface. What the cast and crew went through in order to tell stories that would provide entertainment and escapism to the war-stressed nation would make an interesting movie in its own right.