Room of Chains

      What happens when you cross an art film with a heavy dose of bondage and kink? Yup, you get The Room of Chains, an obscure, happily unhealthy French import that popped up on 42nd Street grindhouses and drive-ins throughout the seventies.
      George, a mild mannered, affluent antique dealer, has a few little secrets he’s keeping from his wife. Number one, he has a gay lover. Number two, he and his boyfriend have a fetish for torturing kidnapped women. At George’s house in the country, the two don religious robes and oversee the abduction of local village girls who are spirited off to the dungeon-like basement of the house, shackled in chains, stripped, and whipped. No murder. They just “beat them a little.”
      One lucky lady is spared the lash and, instead, tied naked to an altar where the boys let a lucky boa constrictor wiggle atop her, then slither between her legs...
      Helping them procure the women is a mysterious character (and “excellent master of ceremonies”) known only as “the gardener,” a creepy guy in rubber gloves, rubber boots, a fright wig, and a rubbery face contorted into a permanent sneer. “He’s the beast that lurks in us!”
      And why, exactly, are they doing this? ’Cause they’re crazy! “Everyone’s crazy! Why should we pretend we’re not?” says George quite matter-of-factly.
      George, however, starts to get a little crazier. Attending Sunday morning church with his wife, George sees the previous night’s victim playing the organ and immediately begins to hallucinate the lovely girl playing in the nude. And when he starts daydreaming of his wife chained up in the cellar, he smacks his car into a motorcycle ridden by bubbly Brigitte, her white go-go boots, and her finance. No problem. He just takes the unconscious Brigitte down to the basement.
      But when her sneaky fiance follows, it all leads to a big surprise when the guy with the rubber face is revealed to be... well... exactly who you thought it would be.
      Of course, the only reason The Room of Chains really exists is simply to show off a number of naked women strung up like elegant hardware. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but, then again, it doesn’t have to. According to the opening credits, “The story you are about to see is true. It was taken from the composite files of the French civil police.” You betcha.
     From a 35mm chain-link print. -- Frank Henenlotter