EDITOR’S NOTE: The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 24, 1974 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on Saturday, January 24, 1976.

I can’t believe that this movie aired on regular television.

This has some great AKA titles, such as The Blood Demon, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, Castle of the Walking Dead and Crimson Demon in Rhode Island, as the word blood was banned from ads. Hemisphere Pictures released it on a double bill with The Mad Doctor of Blood Island, which was called The Mad Doctor of Crimson Island in bloodless areas.

Drected by Harald Reinl (The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, The Return of Doctor Mabuse), it’s based on The Pit and the Pendulum, kind of. It’s also about Count Regula (Christopher Lee), who is charged with the murder of twelve women and then drawn and quartered. And beheaded. And he gets better.

Baroness Lilian von Brabant (Karin Dor, Assignment Terror) and her lawyer Roger Mont Elise (former Tarzan Lex Barker) have been invited to the Blood Castle. She plans on getting her inheritance and he wants to learn who his parents were. They also meet a profane monk named Fabian (Vladimir Medar) and hear the story of Count Regula, who demanded revenge on his enemies before he died.

The Baroness and her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks) are abducted by hooded men while riding through the woods filled with human body parts hanging from trees, a horrific scene that is made even more frightening by its low budget high concept lunacy.

Once everyone is trapped in the castle, the Count’s servant Anatol (Carl Lange, Creature With the Blue Hand) brings Regula back with his face destroyed. Behind a mask, he claims that he will take his last victim, the Baroness, and become alive. Everything goes nuts, as the Baroness not only is placed into a snake-filled hole painted with “The Last Judgement” from “The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, she’s also menaced by scorpions, spiders, bugs and vultures. It gets amazing because every time you think that they can’t top the last animal, another jumps on her. Roger escapes from the pendulum, saves Babette from an iron maiden water trap and uses the iron cross of the Baroness to destroy the bad guys.

This movie is absolutely incredible. Like, I get excited just thinking about it.

You can watch this on Tubi.