The Devil's Chair

Did You Know?

• Dennis Harvey called the film dumb sensationalism in a Variety review.
• David Nusair of ReelFilm.com wrote that it was a sporadically interesting but mostly interminable little horror flick.
• Daniel Hadley of AddictedtoHorrorMovies.com found the film criminally underrated.

Plot

The story is framed by Nick West, who lights a cigarette in the dark and addresses an unseen audience, presenting himself as a victim and telling events from his own perspective. He recounts taking Sammy to the abandoned Blackwater Asylum to take acid and have sex. There they find an unusual chair, which Nick suggests using during sex, but the device traps and kills Sammy. Nick is arrested, deemed insane, and committed to the Hildon Mental Institute, despite his claim that supernatural forces caused Sammy's death. Four years later, Cambridge professor Dr. Willard proposes an experimental treatment: releasing Nick into his custody to return to the crime scene and confront the truth. Nick's psychiatrist, Dr. Clairebourne, initially objects, citing Nick's persistent delusions, but eventually agrees. Willard, his assistant Melissa, and students Rachel Fowles and Brett Wilson accompany Nick back to the asylum. Nick grows uneasy, but Rachel assures him he can leave the next morning. The group finds the chair, and Willard mentions the asylum warden used controversial treatment methods. That night, Willard privately admits his book is about the chair, not Nick, and that he believes Nick's hallucinations were real. He shows Nick the warden's journal, which reveals the chair was used to test a theory about the human soul. Nick becomes disturbed, saying he had come to believe he killed Sammy, but now doubts that.