Something I Reviewed for VW... Which We'd Already Reviewed!

THE ROOM OF CHAINS
Les Amours Particulières
1970, Something Weird, 68m 52s, $10.00, DVD-R
By Tim Lucas

"The story you are about to see is true. It was taken from the composite files of the French Civil Police." So we are informed at the outset of this enjoyably sick French S&M melodrama, which plays very much like what might have happened had Jess Franco and producer Herman Cohen ever worked together. Produced by the French distribution company Inter Ecran, who had some involvement in Franco's DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER (1964), this became the first Euro import distributed in the US by Group 1, a company whose fairly explicit trailers promised "total nudity and sexual activity" and featured fake man-on-the-street interviews with supposedly disgruntled/turned-on theater patrons.

Written and directed by Gérard Trembasiewicz (who made only one more theatrical feature, 1974's BLOODY SUN with Chris Mitchum and Claudine Auger), the film stars Jacques Bernard as antiques dealer Georges Garais who, though married to business partner Florence (Evelyne Ker), enjoys a secret relationship with handsome young employee Marc. With emphatic homosexual collusion, if not actual activity, the two men dress in ceremonial robes to eavesdrop on the ritual whippings of various naked, chained, female abductees acquired by a lumbering subhuman gardener in Georges' employ. (Among the kidnapped is Nathalie Nort, last seen participating in an S&M stage act in Franco's SUCCUBUS.) When Marc questions what his mentor is making him do and calls their ritualistic night life crazy, Georges suavely reasons "Yes, Marc, it is crazy. But everybody's crazy─why should we pretend we're not? It's our awareness that makes us completely free."

This anarchistic spirit doesn't quite carry over to Trembasiewicz's directorial approach, which, in contrast to the subject matter, is almost gentlemanly, admiring the female form but depriving the film of any menace or urgency by refusing to depict any persuasive suffering. Indeed, though we hear whipping, we never actually see it, which becomes all the more disappointing when we later discover there's an authentic reason for that. When we're finally left holding all the cards in this poker game, Georges stands out as one of the most hapless and fatuous sickies in cinema history.

However, the film─even in this transfer from a beat-up 35mm print that clearly paid its drive-in dues─is very pretty to look at, thanks to DP Maurice Fellous (ROAD TO SALINA, FACELESS) with lustrous hot pink-to-purple lighting that recalls Rollin's THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES, and the gothic proto-prog score by Guy Skornik (only two cues, one -- which you can hear here -- repeated ad hallucinatorum) shows a pointed Keith Emerson influence. If you watch it, you'll have fun. Available from www.somethingweird.com, who shave off a penny for the $9.99 download.