When he realizes that the intelligent, telepathic rock formation he’s discovered feeds on a chemical that humans produce when scared, Dr. Carl Mandel (Boris Karloff) creates the chamber of fear to farm a steady stream of sustenance for the mysterious stone. Featuring the iconic Karloff in one of his final big screen performances, this campy 1968 thriller is co-directed by Jack Hill, a protégé of B movie pioneer Roger Corman.
Jack Hill grew up around movies – his father was a designer for Disney Studios and Warner Brothers. He went to the University of California to study film, where he was a classmate of Francis Ford Coppola – they worked together on student productions and later both apprenticed with Roger Corman, working on The Terror (1963). While Coppola went on to Oscardom, Jack continued with B-flicks. He didn’t make a lot of films, and while all were low budget they all (except The Jezebels (1975)) made money, and his early ‘blaxploitaton’ films Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974) were hits. Soon after The Jezebels (1975) he stopped making movies so he and his wife Elke could pursue meditation and he could write novels. Today his films are hailed as cult classics, thanks primarily to Quentin Tarantino, who saw Hill’s work as it made its way to video. With retrospectives and a re-release of The Jezebels (1975), his career seems to be reviving. —IMDb… read more