Although I was an avid thriller movie fan in high school when this came out, it somehow escaped me. Upon hearing of it for the first time recently, I watched it and was pleasantly surprised by its overall good quality, handsome/well dressed leading men and moody score.
This is primarily a psychological thriller with an intelligent script and a deliberate pace. The writer, director and cast accurately depict the bored, horny husband looking for kicks and the tearful wife who becomes a hard, bitter feminist as a result. Thrown into the mix are a pair of siblings whose hilltop mansion is something of a spider's web for the unlucky.
Although other reviewers found the film to be sleazy and raunchy, this reviewer considers the smut scenes to be quite tame. Curiously, most of the coupling is done woman-on-top, save one very brief interlude between a college punk and the bitter, weepy wife. Had this been released primarily in Europe, it probably would have done well; American audiences, on the contrary, tend to be much less sophisticated and patient. Americans love farce and other forms of low-brow comedy, usually favoring the ridiculous. "The Black Room" however, is at its core a serious character study with a few dabs of horror thrown in towards the end.
Worth a look for adults interested in "grown up horror".
