Matty’s left fried by a dreadful — dreadful! — horror comedy.

Ah, that late ‘80s run of horror flicks set in or around the slammer, buoyed by their fetishistic lingering on ol’ sparky. The majesty of the cycle’s peak, the awesome Prison (1987). The joy of the form’s wannabe franchise starters, Horace Pinker and Max Jenke, in the weirdly similar Shocker (1989) and House III (1989), respectively. The sheer silly fun of Destroyer (1988) and Death House (1988)…

And then this steaming turd, THE CHAIR. 

Cheap, ugly, and — worst of all — life-sappingly boring.

But hey, it has an amazing poster. 

Like Prison, the plot finds the kooky denizens of a reopened lock-up haunted by an angry ghost. In Renny Harlin’s classic hair-raiser, it was the spirit of a wronged lag. In The Chair, it’s the vengeful spectre of a warden killed during a riot. 

Credit where it’s due: The Chair’s cast are certainly game. Save for Trini Alvarado — who does wonders with terrible material as the story’s straight woman — they pitch their performances so broadly that their gusto alone gives what’s otherwise an alarmingly tedious experience a modicum of forward momentum. Alas, their tongue-in-cheek swagger is completely nuked by a depressing double dose of horrendous writing and painfully beige direction. 

A supposed ‘horror comedy’ designed as a spoof of prison movies, the ‘humour’ of Carolyn Swartz’s shoddy script sits awkwardly with her non-existent feel for terror as is. When filtered through the passionless style of her helmer hubby, Waldemar Korzeniowsky, it’s even bloody worse. At the risk of making a gauche generalisation, I’d say The Chair reflects the Polish emigre’s day job in the industrial film/corporate video arena. It’s mechanical, aloof, and aesthetically unappealing. Establishing shot, mid shot, close-up. Point, shoot, point, shoot. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Again, though, it has an amazing poster. 

Incidentally, The Chair actually predates most of its brethren. Built from a screenplay called ‘Death Sentence’ that producer Anthony Jones purchased a few years earlier, The Chair began shooting in October 1986 but was shut down come December, after going over schedule. Production resumed almost a year later at the disused Essex County Jail in Newark, New Jersey, by which time star James Coco had passed away. Luckily, his footage was already in the can. Initially intended for theatrical release by distributors Angelika Films (the short-lived production wing of New York’s acclaimed indie film hub, the Angelika Film Center), The Chair ultimately went straight-to-tape on either side of the Atlantic — well, save for a few weekend midnight showings at the aforementioned centre in January 1990. It landed in the U.K. first, in October ‘89 via Medusa, and it hit the U.S. in May ‘91 via Imperial Entertainment. Naturally, each company used that amazing poster. 

It really is an amazing poster.

USA ● 1988 ● Horror, Comedy ● 89mins

James Coco, Trini Alvarado ● Dir. Waldemar Korzeniowsky ● Wri. Carolyn Swartz, story by Graham Yost, Montieth M. Illingworth