The Room of Chains (1970)

Original Title: Les amours particulières

The movie begins with a warning: “The story you are about to see was taken from the composite files of the French civil police”

Georges (Jacques Bernard) and Florence (Evelyne Ker) are husband and wife in a loveless, distant marriage.

Georges tells his wife that he has a business trip to attend, leaving her alone in the house, smoking and watching the television in bed.

 Georges is actually meeting with his gay lover, Marc (Olivier Neel). 

Down at the local police station, a woman (Danielle Boucher) shows up at the desk claiming to have been raped. She says she was knocked out, awoke in a dungeon, and was assaulted and beaten by a monstrous brute. She woke up later and found she had been released.

 When the police officers sound skeptical, she lifts her shirt up and shows them the lash marks.

 I love the look on the face of one of the officers when she shows her boobs. 

We meet Georges' weird gardener. This odd looking dude with a Beatles wig is used for a lot more than gardening.  Georges and Marc hire him to abduct women.

The gardener finds a girl (Elisabeth Mansart) in a miniskirt riding her bike in the middle of nowhere.

 The gardener chases her down, knocks her out, then drags her to his car.

The girl awakens in a red lit room chaned to the wall.  George and Marc watch her through a peep hole.

Yep.  That's literally what they do. Georges and Marc just lay outside the peep hole and talk... about the most ridiculous psychobabble you can imagine.  "The beast that lurks within us..." blah, blah, blah.

 Then the gardener takes the unconscious girl and leaves her back where he found her.

 Georges and Florence attend a church service the next day.

 Georges notices that the organist is the girl he had chained up the night before.

He then fantasizes about her naked playing the organ... lit with that same red and pink light of his fetish room.

After the church service, Florence points out the girl, saying she'd heard she was raped.  Florence wonders whether it's their gardener, who she finds very strange and suspicious.  Georges quickly poo-poos such nonsense.

With two girls now coming to the police about rapes, the department can no longer ignore it.  They invite the first victim back to be interviewed by L'inspecteur (André Lambert).

 Ha!  And she takes her top off again! 

Now we meet Brigitte (Nathalie Nort). She wants to go out with her boyfriend for the weekend, but her parents refuse.  So, she storms out and goes anyway.

Georges is out driving deserted roads at nigh.  He seems to be slipping into a fantasy state...

He pictures Florence chained up in his red room.

Suddenly, Georges hits Brigitte and her boyfriend riding a motorcycle.  It's unclear if this was an accident (as he was in the middle of fantasizing about his wife in the red room) or whether he did it intentionally. 

Georges picks up the girl and brings her back to his place.  Little does he realize, Brigitte's boyfriend, François (Claude Roman) awakens and follows him.

 Next we see the gardener carrying a nude Brigitte to the red room.

 I really wish the red room wasn't so red; it's hard to get a clear look at what's going on.

 Of course, do we really want to see the creepy gardener molesting young women?

François is eventually able to lead the police to Georges' lair.  The Gendarme are in hot pursuit of the gardner.

 When the pursuit is by boat, the gardener drowns.  The police pull him from the river... and the water has made his makeup wear off, revealing... (spoiler alert).... revealing that the gardener is actually Georges!

It ends with Florence looking on in despair.  THE END

Far from being a run-of-the-mill true crime tale, this film constantly kept things interesting with bizarre curve balls and artistic perspectives.  You can definitely tell it's French - nothing is matter-of-fact or simply told.  It's all done with flair - whether it's odd camera angles or just framing the scene with an artful conception.

That being said, the artistic often crosses the line into just being weird: the nude organist, the ridiculous gardener, and, worst of all, the fact that Marc and George liked to just lay and watch through the peephole whilst spouting psychobabble... WTF?

I appreciated the attention to nudity.  We have a victim gratuitously exposing her breasts for the police TWICE.  We also get to see the gorgeous Evelyne Ker nude in Georges' fantasy.  Unfortunately, the nudity within the red room is just that - red, and frustratingly hard to see clearly.

By far, the film's worst offense is being straight-up boring for the last quarter of the film.  When François works with the police and they begin to track down the rapist-at-large, the film is beyond boring for at least twenty straight minutes.  Like so many Giallos, it devotes too much time to yawn inducing police procedural matters.

I usually don't spend much time talking about soundtracks as I don't find that aspect of a film as important as most reviewers.  However, I have to say this is the glue that holds this whole insane picture together.  The mod Hammond organ sounds of Guy Skorni are just groovy as hell (and sometimes oddly haunting). All-in-all, there was definitely a lot wrong with this film, but I am still very glad to have had the experience of watching it - I am sure it would have been much better on the big screen in a 1970 French theater.

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆