The Film (3/5)

Also known as The Door with Seven Locks, Chamber of Horrors is a lesser, but creepy mystery thriller about a wealthy man, Lord Selford (Aubrey Mallalieu, The Wicked Lady) who died and was entombed with extremely valuable jewels. These jewels, which will be passed on to his son, are locked in a tomb which is behind a door with seven locks. There are seven keys which will open the tomb, and once opened the son will inherit a fortune in jewels. One key is with Lord Selford inside the tomb, the other six are in the custody of the family lawyer Edward Havelock (David Horne, Crimes at the Dark House). The keys are subsequently stolen and are spread out among several other people who are suddenly being murdered. Someone out there wants all the keys! The mystery begins!

In the event that Lord Selford’s son dies, there is one other potential heir to the fortune June Landsdown (Lilli Palmer, The House That Screamed) who has one of the keys. Knowing about the murders and that her life is also in danger,  she is working feverishly to solve the murder case and the mystery of the door along with seven locks along with Scotland Yard investigators , Dick Martin (Romilly Lunge, A Royal Divorce) and his partner Inspector Sneed (Richard Bird, The Warren Case).

The journey lands them at the mansion of Dr. Manetta, (Leslie Banks, The Man Who Knew Too Much). He has an underground chamber of horrors which is used for torture, and we soon learn that he has evil intentions to use those torturous devices on his guests to get the one final key which is with poor June. It is revealed that Dr. Manetta, through his murderous scheming has six of the seven keys. This leads to a thrilling climax with some twists and turns, murders, torture and the horrifying truth behind the door with seven locks.

Chamber of Horrors is based on the Edgar Wallace novel and was the second film adaptation; with the first being the far superior Dark Eyes of London starring legendary actor Bela Lugosi. That’s not to say Chamber of Horrors is a bad movie, which it isn’t, in fact it’s pretty good, maybe a little incoherent at times, but it does capture the atmosphere needed to make a picture like this work. Director Lee keeps the film moving at a methodical pace to build as much suspense as he can for this low budget picture. The cast does a credible acting job and Lilli Palmer fans should dig her in one of her earlier roles. This is a great movie to watch on a cloudy morning or an evening where you just want to curl up to creaky classic! 

Audio/Video (3.5/5)

Chamber of Horrors is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1:33:1 in 1080p and an MPEG-4 AVE encode. It’s a mixed bag which is often the case for many older films that have elements that have not been taken care of. Some of the characters’ faces are really ghostly white in some shots; there are vertical lines which appear throughout and some scenes also appear out of contrast.  Despite the shortcomings, there are some areas of the film that do look good, that have a solid greyscale, good details and texture. This is still leagues ahead of all the DVD releases out there by public domain specialty companies such as Alpha Video that take a bad print and release it on DVD. So while the Blu-ray is superior, it did not get the restoration that perhaps the UCLA Film and Television Archives might have given it, if there was interest. I would venture to say that the reasoning would be that Chamber of Horrors is a minor film and the budget to have a full restoration by Kino for this Blu-ray was limited. Still, the film is on Blu-ray which is better than not and I did enjoy the viewing experience.

Kino has gone with the usual English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 for this release, and it is more than serviceable. There are a few issues and imperfections, such as dropouts and hissing, which are due to the film source. However, when the audio is in tune, the dialog was very clear. Kino has included optional English subtitles.

Extras (3/5)

There is an audio commentary with film historian David Del Valle and filmmaker Kenneth J. Hall and we also get some trailers for some other horror classics: White Zombie, Black Sleep, The Undying Monster, and Donovan's Brain.

Overall (3/5)

Chamber of Horrors is not an epic thriller but it’s as enjoyable as some of those other murder mysteries from the 1930s. While it may not be the perfect example of demonstrating how good a movie can look and sound in high definition, I can easily say that you can retire those murky, yucky DVD releases. And this release even has extras. I definitely appreciate Kino releasing this title on Blu-ray and hope that will continue to do so with some of those other hidden gems out there.