'The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism' (1967) - Harald Reinl.

 Harald Reinl is probably better known for his flamboyant Edgar Wallace Krimi's, and the versatile director brings his not inconsiderable cinematic flair for vivid set-pieces to the blood-curdlingly brilliant 'The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism'. A spine-jangling, skeleton-skitteringly sinister 60s potboiler about the historical cruelties of legendarily sadistic sorcerer, Count Regula. His wholly despicable slaughter of 12 virgins for eldritch purposes most iniquitous, fatefully thwarted at the very last hour by fortuitous escapee, Lillian Von Brabant (Karin Dor). Before his subsequent torture and grisly public quartering in the crowded village square, the enraged Bloody Count defiantly swearing his terrible oath of vengeance, damning the descendants of those responsible for his savagely sanguinary fate!

Drawn with alacrity by four fine horses and their inexorable fate towards the infamous 'Blood Castle' it is not long before this unhappy band of travellers experience the gruesome nocturnal visions of the ill-lit, freakishly explicit cadaver-festooned forest that darkly surrounds the count's malign castle. The infamous, Count Regular's irregular abode abounds evilly with diabolical drug-laced potions, hidden trap doors, sinister subterranean torture chambers, and doomy ossuaries wherein hideous-looking carrion birds blankly feed upon lividly disgorged entrails, and a grim, garishly adorned laboratory. The sadistic, vengeful Count and his pallid, zombified butler initiate the despicable deeds that make 'The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism' such a wickedly enticing Gothic title.

The gifted filmmaker, Reinl and his no less creative cast and crew bring this eerily Gothic fear-fable to luminously putrescent life. This doomy celluloid cauldron of roiling occult unpleasantness fulminates with all the most nourishingly foul B-Horror ingredients. This sprightly Gothic shocker's striking medieval Bavarian exteriors and the ruinous-looking Castle Blood interiors. The nightmarish profundity of ominous, grot-caked statuary, cob-webbed squalor and vivid use of Bosch's unsettling terror tableau all creepily coalesce into one of the more fascinating Gothic Horrors since Roger Corman's influential Poe Cycle. Towering terror titan, Christopher Lee giving the baleful Count Regular a disturbingly credible gravitas! I give 'The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism' 12 tortured virgins out of 13! A veritable Gothic masterpiece of delightfully camp, pendulum-slashing, doom-drenched shock!