Fangoria Article
March 7: Dante Tomaselli opens a TORTURE CHAMBER
With his ambitious supernatural drama THE OCEAN having been put on hold for the moment, independent fright filmmaker Dante Tomaselli isn't staying idle: He's jumping straight into a new fright feature called TORTURE CHAMBER. I've shot some of THE OCEAN,a lot of the water sequences,and I'm pleased with what I have so far,Tomaselli tells Fango,but since Feverpitch Pictures wasn't able to raise all the money, I have to take a break until all the financing falls into place. I know the rest of the film will get made, but in the meantime, I have to direct, I have to continue to work. So Jack Swain, the executive producer of [his first two features] DESECRATION and HORROR, will finance TORTURE CHAMBER with a budget around the same range as those early films. It's an old-school frightfest devoted to really scaring the audience.
Like THE OCEAN, this new project, scheduled to roll in June, will be scripted by Tomaselli with Fango's Michael Gingold. TORTURE CHAMBER is a nightmarish shocker in the vein of HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH, the director says. In terms of outright fear, I want to push the envelope right off the table. The film is set in a small New England town where the residents are disappearing. Abducted and drugged, the victims wake up to find themselves in an underground prison. a medieval torture chamber. It is here, in this remote abandoned castle, within these walls, that they learn who their kidnappers really are: children. Escaped from a youth detention center, these boys and girls are sadistically violent, capable of cruelty beyond comprehension. In DESECRATION, HORROR and SATAN'S PLAYGROUND, the stalking evil was the adult, the parent. It's the polar opposite here. With TORTURE CHAMBER, I can draw upon the Gothic imagery of crumbling-castle horror movies while really going for the jugular with the scares. This will be my first hardcore horror film. Stay tuned for further updates.