Alright. Devil’s Chair. Let’s see. First off, “Devil’s Chair” is a really dumb name for a horror movie, no matter how good or bad it is. Secondly, the synopsis of the movie is crap.

So with that behind us, let’s take a look at it.

Devil’s Chair starts off pretty well. It opens with Nick and his gal poking around in an abandoned insane asylum. They participate in some hanky panky and, as all horror movies must reiterate, they’re punished. Or, more specifically, the girl is punished.

Girl sits in a weird looking chair (this is the Devil’s Chair, by the way) and it locks her in and lots of blood and screaming and presto she’s dead and suddenly it’s four years later.

Nick is in an institution and has been convinced that he, not the sinister torture chair, killed his gal. But a professor, played by a poor man’s Christopher Lee, makes a deal to get Nick out so that he can study him or something like that.

Our hero meets the professor, who he calls “Gandalf,” and within a day Nick, Galdalf and three students are at the very same spot where Nick supposedly killed his gal. Why? Well, that’s not really explained, but I guess it’s because the professor thought it would be fun to take him back there as some sort of rehab or something.

Oh, Nick is narrating the whole thing. And whenever Nick has something to say, he stops the movie so that we don’t miss it. He is usually insulting someone or calling them a “cunt” or complaining about stuff.

At the asylum Gandalf reveals to Nick that the chair can separate the soul from the body. Seriously.

The five of them stay the night in this abandoned asylum (because that’s what professors do, I guess) and will work on Nick the next day. A hotel must have been out of the question. Sometime in the middle of the night, Rachael (one of the students) wakes up Nick and they go to look at the chair. She sits on it and *suckgrindblood* she’s sinisterly tortured and mysteriously disappears.

So if the chair can separate the soul from the body, why does it take the body? It seems to be less a device that separates the soul and body and more of a teleportation chair. But since “Teleportation Chair” is an even stupider name for a horror movie than “Devil’s Chair,” I’ll let it slip.

Nick runs to get Gandalf and it then the movie cuts to Rachael in another dimension within the asylum and she’s being chased by a big demon thing that sort of looks like Pumpkinhead with a backpack full of octopus. Oh and it has a cow’s skull for a head.

This breaks my number one rule in horror. If you cannot do the really bad demonic horrible nasty thing justice, then please, for the love of all that is evil, do not under any circumstances show it. Well they showed it. Bad movie, no cookie!

About an hour into the movie, there’s an obvious twist that I could see coming a mile away that Nick, as the narrator tells you “you didn’t see that comin’, eh?” Good one, Nick.

But the next twist is the one that caught me off guard. Somehow or another, all of the people in the movie “cross over” and it begins to get really silly, what with the big cow skull octopus demon and all. In fact, Nick, again as the narrator, says “and here is where it all begins to get silly.”

Then he starts yelling at as and calling us horror geeks. He uses “geek” a couple of times and sort just insults the audience for liking horror movies. Alright. I don’t think I’ve ever had a movie actually insult my intelligence before. He ends his little monologue with “ever feel like you’re being cheated?” Which is a freaking Johnny Rotten quote.

I think that’s where I forgave the movie for showing the octopus demon a little.

If the movie would have ended there, I would have thought, “good, thank you movie for pulling a fast one on us and calling us on our shit.” We like horror movies and what would be better than a horror movie telling us we’re a bunch of losers for liking it? There’s a fun bit of irony for you.

No, instead it twists again and everything we thought we knew, we didn’t know, except for the stuff we first thought we knew, but then with some other stuff too.

A few more screams and chops and silliness and it’s over.

The first thing I thought was “this is like if Pink Floyd The Wall was a horror movie.” And that’s sort of true. Except that I liked The Wall. I think this movie would be great if I were 16. And maybe that’s who it’s made for. It’s definitely not your typical horror flick and that’s a big plus in its favor.

The Devil’s Chair is a very silly movie. But I think it knows that. Hell, it tells us that right in the middle of it. There is nothing and nobody with any redeeming qualities in this movie. I’m just glad it wasn’t stuffed full of crappy metal music. It had one song that was more industrial than metal and another song that sounded like The Smiths on acid. Oh and some Jack Johnson (TM) like song at the end.

So should you see it? Yeah, probably. Would I recommend to you? No, not really.