Shock Chamber (1985,
Canada, aka Greedy Terror, dir:
Steve DiMarco; cast:
Doug Stone, Jaqueline Samuda as Jackie Samuda, Russell
Ferrier, George T. Cunningham, Karen Cannata, Andy Andoch,
Frank McAnulty, Bill Zagot, Bill Boyle, Sue Miner, Victor P.
Farkas, Eileen Williams)
I taped
Shock
Chamber off of the USA Network cable TV channel -- was it in
the 1980s?
This is a Canadian TV movie. Pretty low production values.
Obviously shot on videotape.
Back in the 1980s, videotape had a distinctive "TV look." Today
it's harder to tell whether a project was shot on film or video,
but
Shock
Chamber has that cheapish video "quality."
I taped
Shock
Chamber because it sounded like a horror anthology,
but it wasn't. More of a crime & suspense anthology.
Here are the
three tales:
1. "Symbol of Victory" -- A Chunky Femme Fatale (Jackie
Samuda) and her Tough Guy lover plot to swindle a
Naive Rich Boy.
Here's how. The Tough Guy sells fake love potions
to the Naive Rich Boy, and the Chunky Femme Fatale pretends to
fall in love with him.
But the potion only "lasts" a week, so the
Naive Rich Boy keeps having to buy another $1,000 vial of this
fake stuff. Naturally, there's a surprise twist ending.
2. "Country Hospitality" -- A criminal with $300,000 in kidnap loot stops at a tourist
trap, run by four criminals (including an Aging Femme Fatale diner
waitress). The four criminals kill the first criminal, steal his
loot, then proceed to betray each other. But in the end, there's
another surprise twist ending.
3. "The Injection" -- Two brothers, a loser doctor and a loser ex-con, plot to
defraud an insurance company. The doctor will drug his ex-con
brother so that he appears dead. He will then certify his brother
as dead, and bury him. Then he will unbury him, and they'll collect
on the life
insurance. But there's a surprise twist ending.
Aside from the low production values, the actors range from
mediocre to not so good.
Despite it all, I kinda liked this oddball crime/suspense
anthology. It's not very good, and no horror content. Yet it's
interesting to see these old, obscure oddities, largely because
they are obscure and odd.
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