The Black Room

1983 "There is a room for rent in the Hollywood Hills, and the tenants are paying in blood!"
4.9| 1h28m| R| en
Details

An unfaithful businessman rents a spare room from two siblings to use for his sexual conquests, unaware that they're serial killers who murder every woman he brings there.

Director

Producted By

Lancer Productions Limited

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Trailers & Clips

Also starring Clara Perryman

Reviews

Bereamic Awesome Movie
Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Monkeywess This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind
Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
TVM-Liveforever A man rents a room a brother & sister so he can have extramarital affairs away from his own house, however his landlords are draining the blood from everyone who enters the room.An extremely dark and original take on the vampire genre. Set in the modern day (1981 when it was made) unlike many vampire movies of the time, the setting does give it much more credibility than its Gothic counterparts. The draining sequences are very dramatic, no fangs here but a massive machine which pumps out the blood into some very gory scenes. The performances are a lot better than you might think, the 4 leads are surprisingly good as is most of the supporting cast. The second half of the movie is great, tension mounts very well, the pace improves and the last 10-15mins are superb and quite scary at times. The film does have a couple of issues though, in the first half pacing is quite sluggish, as the set up sequences to key scenes take an age and at times fail at keeping the viewers attention, editing is also quite strange at the beginning (although that could just have been the copy I watched 1983 UK VHS).Overall a very good surprising watch, if you enjoy weird fairly gory horror there should be plenty for you to enjoy here. Interestingly this quite rare horror was put onto the DPP's section 3 list here in the UK (meaning the police could seize it from the shelves), a real shame as this well made little horror didn't deserve the negative attention it got.
slayrrr666 "The Black Room" is an incredibly bad and dull film without much going for it.**SPOILERS**Finding a new apartment, Larry, (Jimmy Stathis) decides to buy it and turn it into a bachelor pad, hiding it from Robin, (Clara Perryman) his wife. When landlords Jason, (Stephen Knight) and Bridget, (Cassandra Gava) question him on the purchase, he uses it as a place to sleep with a multitude of women hitchhikers he picks up. When she hears about the place, she doesn't think much of the stories and think it's just a bunch of stories. Soon afterward, a series of strange disappearances plague the women who have visited the place, but they ignore it and decide to focus on their marriage and continue on with bringing people over to visit. Finally realizing that the landlords are murdering the women who visit as a means to acquire blood for transfusions to fix his blood-disease, they try to stop them before it's too late.The Good News: There's hardly anything worthwhile about this one. The fact that the film's lone action scene in the middle of the film comes from a rather nice chase scene is to be commended, as there's a couple good things about it. The fact that it's a rather energetic scene with the different characters going out after it through the woods, and it makes for an effective atmosphere. The sleaze factor here is also rather nice, with the way it manages to create an icky feeling with the relationship it creates with them, as well as the general fact of what they're doing offering up some rather nice sleaze. The last bit in here that works is the film's nicely done climax, which is where the main action occurs. From the chase through the house to the different stalk-and-slash tactics used, it offers up some interest. Further helping it is the film's only real gore scenes, which aren't much to talk about but at least it offers up something. These here are all that work for the film.The Bad News: This is a terribly dull and completely worthless horror entry. The fact that there's hardly any horror at all in the film is the biggest and most damaging prospect, effectively making it so dull and lifeless that the film does almost nothing at all during it's running time. The fact that it rests so much on it's relationships rather than it's horror is where it falls foul, making them the central point when they aren't that good or exciting to begin with. The sibling angle is so lamely done it's still up in the air at the end of the film, as it seems to incorporate aspects of both a brother-sister bond as well as an incestuous air between them in certain scenes. The other angle with the marriage-on-the-rocks story is not that much better, full of never-ending scenes that are purely not that scary at all. That's the film's biggest problem, nothing in here is considered scary, and here, what happens between them is exactly that, not that great at providing anything to counter the boredom these non-horror sequences create. None of them are there for the best of what makes the film entertaining or interesting, and just make the film incredibly dull to sit through. The amount of time spent on those angles are nothing worthwhile at all, providing no scenes of value and just continuing a storyline that isn't all to concerned with horror aspects at all. That also means that we don't get anything remotely close to the horror genre until the end, with only a mildly interesting chase scene to provide the goods until then. The scares are missing, the gore is non-existent until the end, and the kills are relegated to simply being just the scenes of the victim being drained of blood. It leaves such a bad aftertaste that there's almost no need for it. Even the fact that it's a sleazy-feeling film is neutered by the fact that it's only in one scene, and despite all the different scenes in here that provided opportunity to do so, it doesn't offer anything up, making the film even more of a cheat and providing even more flaws to hate against it.The Final Verdict: An unbearably slow and dull film that barely has anything worthwhile, or even remotely horror-based about it. It should really be avoided at all costs unless this sort of sleazy thriller is appealing, but for any other sort of style this one should be ignored and forgotten.Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence, Nudity, several sex scenes and drug use
ThrownMuse Larry, a dashing family man, decides he needs some escapism in his life and rents a room to fulfill his darkest fantasies. The room he finds is within a Hollywood Hills mansion and is decorated seductively in black with lots of candles and drink. His doting wife goes along with the fantasy, but what she doesn't know (if you can believe it) is that the lurid tales of prozzies and pickups he's ravished in the room are actually true. And what Larry doesn't know is that the kooky siblings from whom he rents the "black room" are after blood and not his rent! This is a quirky and unique low-budget film that delivers in some areas. It manages to go from creepy to sizzling hot to awkwardly funny from scene to scene. The acting is excellent for a low budget-80s film, especially by the four relatively unknown leads. Jimmy Stathis (Larry) manages to pull off loving father and husband in some scenes and complete sleazeball in others. He's a character that is difficult to root for (and even watch at times), but thankfully he isn't the only protagonist in the film. His wife (played by the fantastic Clara Perryman) smiles and laughs along with Larry's kinky fantasies that don't involve her, which is an aspect of the story that comes across as silly considering she knows that he really does have this "black room." But once the story gets going and she becomes more involved with the plot, it's easy to get past this. The demented landlord sibs steal every scene they're in. Stephen Knight is believably lecherous and Cassandra Gava is both sexy and insane as his caretaker and BDSM-loving sister. The atmosphere, especially in the titular room, is eerie and alluring. The score is inventive and one of the movie's high points. So while some of the plot premises are a bit brow-raising, and the horror in the film didn't seem to fully lift off, this is an original and steamy genre movie in which I found enough things to enjoy. Look for Christopher McDonald and Linnea Quigley in small roles.
Nate-9 The Black Room turned out to be an engrossing semi-masterpiece. I was expecting mundane from this forgotten horror, but what I saw was more kinky, twisted and sick than I'd imagined. Something about the acting, the script , the directing or everything was different than other films. It also has the most graffically depicted blood transfusions I've ever seen. They were painstakingly slow over these shots. I had to turn away....gallons of blood... It's a shame Clara Perryman didn't do much after this film. She was excellent and made the troubled relationship with her and Jim Stathis {also great} possibly more interesting than the horror elements. Linnea Quigley plays a small role as the babysitter. She says maybe 5 words.

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