The Fear Chamber

      Clearly pressing the definition of “borderline alcoholic”, I'm back once again for another review. This time going back to our old unfinished Midnight Horror Collection Volume 8 to bring “The Fear Chamber” to the light of day. As they used to say on Chappelle's Show: let's start the show.
      Right off the bat we're greeted with a woman crying for help as we pan around a room (no doubt the “fear chamber” the title referred to) full of surgical instruments and the grimy looking assorted other tools to make you realize this isn't an Obamacare approved facility... although maybe it is from a Republican point of view. The point is, I'm Canadian so the whole debate about socialized medicine seems silly to me. Hey look, tits! The chick is strapped down to an operating table with a sheet over top of her with a hole specifically cut in order to show off her boobs. That's not gratuitous at all... although I shouldn't really say anything given the last review on this blog was Bloody Mary 3D.
      Anyway, the “doctor” says something crazy to her as she's begging for her life and we cut to a quick shot of Action Cop busting through a door with his gun drawn ready to leap in and save the day. Seeing as there's about 80 minutes left, I don't think he's going to make it. He does not. We are treated to a bunch of scenes of the Doctor cutting into the one chick while Action Cop prowls around the building and finds a different girl tied up. He leaves her tied up because why wouldn't he? After that the Doctor is seen taking some pictures with an old Polaroid of the girl he just killed. Come on man, get with the times. Film is dead, convert to digital if you ever want to be taken seriously.
      Action Cop busts in, the Doctor gets away to the roof, Action Cop follows him, there's a struggle, and Action Cop gets stabbed with a scalpel just before the opening credits. This is followed by Action Cop waking up in the hospital because, if there's one thing we know about serial killers, it's that they always leave behind the cop that's almost caught them so he can come back... with a vengeance!
      A cute blonde nurse comes in and tells Action to not put stress on his heart which immediately leads to a flashback/dream of the Doctor abducting some other blonde girl. I was almost expecting the “stress on his heart” to come from the nurse... but then I remembered this was a different kind of movie and seems to at least be trying not to suck.
      A guy that looks like the thin version of every black captain in any cop movie you could think of comes to visit and starts asking questions about what Action Cop (real name “Nick”) saw. He then goes on to put stress on Nick's heart by saying how the Doctor is going to “set up shop and start killing again” and the standard “we need you back on the force” type stuff. Then we see the Doctor abducting someone and Nick now at home listening to the radio about the Iraq war (so I guess the Obamacare joke was out of place) and hearing that this new girl has been kidnapped. He goes to bed and wakes up to the sounds of somebody in the shower. This is confusing as he lives alone and becomes even more perplexing when he goes in to investigate and finds severed arms and legs floating in a bath (you'll note that the shower was running rather than the bath but whatever). A jump scare later, he wakes up. Another jump scare later, he really wakes up. Some pills and a creepy phone call and he's out the door and off to work as a police officer where carries a gun despite his hallucinations and heart problems. Sounds like a good start to the day.
      That good start gets better when he tells his captain that he's having visions of the girls the Doctor is abducting (even describing the latest one before looking at the file). In real life I'd hope that something like this would lead to Nick being taken off duty again pending some sort of psych test, but in this case it just leads to the captain saying “okay, you're pulling my dick, right? 'cause this makes no sense”. That line makes me laugh and I'm going to nominate it for line of the movie. Also, he doesn't take Nick off the case and instead over rules Nick's own objections in order to keep him working on it.
      Nick goes out to a bar that night (always good to mix pills, stress, and booze) and meets up with a guy I assume is his partner or at least a friend or something. Whoever he is, he can't act worth shit. So far the movie hasn't been terrible in that regard (not great, but nowhere near as bad as most others on this blog), but this guy is fucking awful. He thankfully leaves and some chick immediately comes up and takes the bar stool next to Nick. I wish it were that easy in real life. She seems cool to Nick at first, but she's in a bar with a bunch of newspaper clippings about the killings and then starts talking about how Nick can see the girls before they're killed so I think it's safe to say she's interested. Oh good, Catherine (the girl), is a psychic. This is promising in a totally going to be able to get a conviction based on it kind of way. Some mumbo-jumbo about Nick using his gift to help solve the case and I can't pay attention to what she's saying because I've just noticed how absurdly long her neck looks when the camera is on her. Seriously, it seems like it's twice the length of her head.
      The next day, Nick calls in saying he wants in on the investigation (I thought he already was?) and the captain now acts like he doesn't want him (didn't the exact opposite of this just happen yesterday?). The captain gets another semi-badass line, but it's not as good or as funny as his last one so it's not important and he decides to let Nick in on the case.
      Nick goes to see the coroner who gives him some low-rent CSI-style description of his findings, and then Nick finds something the coroner missed: bone saw marks on the remains which I guess means the Doctor (I'm going to start calling him “the Killer” from now on) is harvesting organs. That's enough work for one day, Nick goes home, falls asleep with a drink in his hand on the couch (we've all been there), and has another jump scare vision. All in a days work.
      The next day Nick is at a psychiatrist's office and he seems rather confrontational about it. Also, I guess Nick's wife was killed. He talks about this for a second, then goes on about the visions he's seeing. Oddly enough, the psychiatrist seems to think it's a bad idea to combine drinking and the pills he's on and thinks that might have something to do with why he's seeing things. Nick, respectfully (not really respectfully), disagrees with her diagnosis and walks out. He proceeds to drink, mix pills, and see things.
      After a quick confrontation with his captain, Nick and Catherine the psychic go to some warehouse/garage to snoop around. Psychic visions must have led them there since Nick doesn't know what they're looking for, but he ends up finding a dead body so I guess go psychic visions! Then there's a confrontation with Catherine about how she knew about the body and she says something about being connected to the case just like Nick and then starts talking about Nick's dead wife but I'm not really paying attention this time because I'm focusing on how this time around her neck looks perfectly normal but her face looks all plastic. I think this girl might be some sort of alien shape-shifter who always has to leave one weird facial feature not not quite right when she tries to take human form and I'm only about 80% sure that theory is the booze talking.
      The captain and Nick have a minor confrontation about Nick's methods of finding the last body and how the hell the press found out about it so quickly and all that standard cop movie stuff. You know what's not standard, though? The keyboard the captain has sitting on his desk. Not a computer keyboard, mind you, I mean a musical instrument keyboard. Just sitting there. Taking up a quarter of the desk. Not even addressed by the characters as if this is just a regular thing. This captain is the best. Also, I guess trying to match the bone saw based on the marks on the bones was a dead end but whatever, random keyboard wins the scene.
      More dreams/visions from Nick At Home (sounds like a do-it-yourself building show, doesn't it?), and this time we're treated to his dead wife naked in the shower. First just naked and hot, then naked but with a bunch of blood all over half her face from some head wound so you kinda feel dirty for staring at her tits. Catherine the psychic gets a voice-over saying something about how souls that die before their time are trapped on Earth until their business is settled or something. Then, over the phone for real this time, she tells Nick that girls in her visions have called the Killer “Teddy” so he goes to his friend from the bar scene (who is a cop but not his partner, I guess) to look up doctors named “Ted” or “Teddy” with malpractice suits against them. Some genuine police work follows as Nick goes investigating... and follows that with some genuine police brutality as he assaults one of the suspects trying to figure out if he's the guy. He's not and I guess the guy just lets being pinned against the wall and threatened by a cop slide as Nick is next seen hours later investigating (re: breaking in through the garage) the house of somebody else on his list.
      No one seems to be home so Nick wanders about and finds some creepy shit. Then the Killer reveals himself and attacks Nick. Nick has a clear shot at him, but heart trouble prevent him from taking the shot and the Killer opens an oxygen canister so that any shot would ignite the room or whatever, then taunts Nick about his wife's death (the details of which are apparently public knowledge to everyone which seems a bit odd even if it was ten years ago), and finally just walks out the door. Nick follows, but too late to catch him even though it was literally two seconds later. Also, Nick doesn't bother chasing him since the law in L.A. states that once someone leaves the room and are out of your line of sight, they've escaped and you're not allowed to follow them. This, by the way, may not be the actual law.
      The captain is getting heat from the chief about this now and he's got “twins about to go away to college and two other mouths to feed” so he'll be damned if he gets fucked because of this. Now we get a recap of how Nick is a bit of a loose cannon dating back to after his wife's death and how the captain has gone to bat for him time and again, but no more, dammit! He literally tells him he's taking him off the case and asks for his badge and gun since he's been ordered to suspend Nick. I'm not sure if this is awesome or terrible storytelling, but the clichés are flying and the stakes have never been higher!
      Nick At Home in the shower hears a noise in the kitchen and comes out to find all the cupboard doors open and the water running. Also, Catherine the psychic is there to “surprise him”. Wait, why does she have a key to his place? Your guess is as good as mine at this point. Turns out the door was open but, you know, still... seems like a bad idea to just walk into the house of a cop who's mixing pills and booze and was unstable before he started having “visions” and was suspended from the force.
      She tells him he can't quit on the case or the voices in his head will never leave him alone. This time it's her eyes that seem a bit off for some reason.
      The coroner is now bringing Nick briefcase full of evidence off the record because why not? This leads to the revelation that the Killer has at least 20 victims and has been doing this for years. He then fucks off and we get a vision of the Killer and some random extra-ditzy blonde having drinks on a bed and her getting wrapped up abduction-style. Nick wakes up from this, turns off the TV, has a drink, and unplugs the TV 'cause (wouldn't you know it?) the damn thing turned back on. The booze and hallucinations continue as he hears noises and figures the best way to answer that is to go around waving Dirty Harry's gun at the outside world as he checks out every window. This does not help him when he gets to the kitchen and the Killer cold-cocks him while wearing clown make-up and medical scrubs. He's like the psycho Patch Adams... I assume since I never actually saw Patch Adams. Oh, and I guess it's not “clown make-up” so much as it is kabuki make-up. My apologies, I didn't see it clearly the first time.
      After Nick gets knocked out, we skip ahead to another surgical room with Nick tied up in a chair and a random girl strapped to a gurney (this time with her tits covered because she's going to be on screen for more than ten seconds unlike that first girl) about to be sliced up by Doctor Kabuki Killer.
      Side Note: you see this a lot in movies or TV shows like this where the bad guy just magically transports the knocked out hero to their evil lair but have you ever tried to carry a body anywhere? Even if it were just from Nick's kitchen out to a van on the street that'd be a long ass heavy carry for one guy. Not to mention the neighbors seeing you dragging the body out with you. Plus getting him inside the lair and all tied up and positioned and everything... I don't know, the point I'm getting at is there's a serious flaw in all these movies in that it'd take a hell of a lot of time to get all of this set up and you'd be exposing yourself to a hell of a lot of potential witnesses while you were doing it. Back to the movie, though.
      Doctor Kabuki Killer does a bit of crazy monologueing and then goes to work taking the teeth out of the blonde who, for some reason, goes completely quiet after he takes the first tooth out. Some more crazy and then he goes back to slicing open the girl while justifying it in that he's harvesting organs and giving them to away to a bunch of people so he's taking a few lives to save a bunch more. Eat that logic Spock and/or Kirk depending on whether you watched the 1982 or 2013 version of Star Trek 2 (seriously, the newest one: basically just Star Trek 2 and Star Trek 3 combined with the Kirk and Spock roles reversed).
      Now Cop Who Can't Act and The Captain are getting concerned about Nick not answering. It's brushed aside along the way of the other cop “having a lead” on a guy that supposedly knew the Killer back in med school. Obviously that was just the Killer trying to bring him into the trap as well and he tells Nick as much before duct taping Nick's mouth shut and going off to dispose of the body of the girl. I guess he only wanted two teeth and a bit of liver rather than, you know, using all the available organs to save as many people as possible. This guy is not very good at following his own philosophy.
      Cop Who Can't Act finds Nick and tries to untie him but Killer stabs him with a meat hook. His death scene is tragic for all the wrong reasons.
      Now Nick is on the table about to be cut up. All of a sudden, though, crazy shit starts happening. Lights flicker, things in jars start to bubble, noises are heard, wind happens, all sorts of supernatural shit is going down. Nick frees himself and shoots Killer with the gun from his last Nick At Home scene that just happened to be lying around. He then calls up The Captain and calls in back-up saying he's got Killer. Everything seems to be wrapped up nicely (as long as you excuse the “random supernatural shit happens and the good guy wins!” ending), but there's still 12 minutes left and that seems a bit long for credits so I'm betting twist ending.
      Oh hey, twist ending. I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that Nick had a heart transplant after his first encounter with Killer. That's why everyone was telling him not to put stress on his heart and all that. Not sure if I said it or just implied it, but either way that was the case. And it turns out Killer had meticulously kept records for the organs he harvested, even going up to who they went to after he sold them. Guess whose heart Nick ended up with? If you guessed Catherine the psychic you would be right and you would be as ready to call bullshit on this whole twist ending as I am. Fuck this noise.
      On the total, though, this wasn't too bad of a movie until the ending. It's good quality film-wise and, aside from the one guy, well enough acted, plus the story isn't terrible (again, aside from the ending), and The Captain is a pretty awesome character. I'm actually willing to give this one a pass considering some of the crap I've reviewed on here (Zombie Christ is coming, I swear to God). This probably punts The Legend Of Sorrow Creek down to second for best movie on this 8-pack collection but only just barely after that ending.
      Seriously, fuck that noise.