L'ossessa (1974)

... aka: Devil Obsession, The

... aka: Eerie Midnight Horror Show, The

... aka: Enter the Devil

... aka: Exorcisation

... aka: La poseida (The Possessed)

... aka: L'ossessa - Das Omen des Bösen (The Obsessed - The Omen of Evil)

... aka: Obsessed, The

... aka: Sexorcist, The

... aka: Tormented, The

... aka: Verteufelt (Demonized)

Directed by:

Mario Gariazzo

College student / art restorer Danila (Stella Carnacina) visits a de-consecrated old church and helps orchestrate the removal of one of the statues: a creepy, dirty crucified man (not Jesus!) carved out of an olive tree. The statue, which is bizarrely detailed and almost lifelike, is then taken to her university where colleagues plan to study it and clean it up. Outside of her art obsession, Danila may come from money but her home life still isn't the greatest. Her architect father Mario (Chris Avram) is an oblivious pushover too busy with work to pay anything much mind while her philandering mother Luisa (Lucretia Love) is carrying on a BDSM relationship with her sleazy sadistic lover (Gabriele Tinti). While her family is throwing a party, Danila catches mum in one such tryst, writhing on bed in ecstasy as he whips her bloody with thorny rose stems ("Harder darling, please!"). Disturbed by the sight, she runs off to the art department to work on a painting. While her back is turned, the statue starts bleeding and comes to life in the form of Ivan Rassimov's Satan, who promptly rips her dress off, throws her on the floor and then has sex with her while a cross burns behind them. Next thing Danila knows, she's clothed and sitting back at her painting.

Though she can't figure out whether or not she was actually ravaged by the wood (carving), one thing's for sure: Something evil is after her. An unseen force pursues her up the stairs, possesses her and starts making her do a frenzied masturbation routine in front of a door. It gets her so hot and bothered, she even makes a pass at her own father ("There's no such thing as incest! It's only the invention of priests!") and has to be slapped out of it. She's given a mild sedative by a doctor, who recommends the family take a vacation in the country... but even that backfires. After they get a flat tire, Danila wanders off to an old church where she has visions of a white-painted priestess, who gives her some potion made from crushed black communion wafers, and Satan, who pulls himself back off the cross long enough to gorily crucify her. She wakes back up in bed shrieking. Another nightmare? Sort of.

The doctor is called back in and examines Danila. She now has the signs of stigmata on her wrists and feet. Even with all of this freakishness going on, the parents continue to argue about other things like their shitty marriage. Dad calls mom a slut, says she's failed as a mother and chastises her for indulging in "masochistic tomfoolery." She, on the other hand, tries to make amends by dumping her lover, but he's not going to go away quietly. Once the stigmata mysteriously heals in a day, a team of doctors are called in to reexamine the girl. They can find nothing, which prompts a psychiatrist (Umberto Raho) to diagnose her with a bad case of "diabolical possession." Seems about right, especially seeing how Danila loses her shit any time there's a cross or holy person in her vicinity. Just wait until they drag her off to a nunnery!

After a consultation with Reverend Antonio (Piero Gerlini), Danila is dragged off to "The Convent of Our Lady of Sorrow" to be with the nuns, while specially-trained exorcist Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli), who's been living a quiet, hermetic life up in the mountains for years, is hunted down to perform the exorcism. By the time the priest arrives, Danila has black under eye circles, pale skin, scabby lips and a foamy mouth. She screams constantly, has seizures, beats her head against a headboard and is able to communicate directly to Satan, who coaches her on what to do. Their first tactic is to seduce Xeno, so he turns her back to looking normal and she pleads with him to "Penetrate me!" while licking his hand. Xeno returns to his room and flagellates himself with a cat o' nine tails to prepare for round two, which includes lots of prayer, lots of screaming and lots of puking up something green.

The opening credits claim this is "based on a true story" but the only true story going on here is that The Exorcist became a worldwide phenomenon the previous year and this film wanted to capitalize on it. Even as far as these subpar wannabes go, this one's strictly average. It starts out well enough with the creepy statue idea and features a few good scenes here and there, but it's also oddly restrained in other ways. Sure there's nudity and violence, just not as much as in some of the sleazier films in this category. The biggest disappointment is that Danila never gets to spout ridiculous vulgarities in a deep male voice, which are usually comic highlights of these rip-offs. Rassimov, with a little help from some red contacts and caterpillar eyebrows, makes for an excellent Devil, though.

Though most of the supporting cast is fairly well-known, at least to Euro-trash fans, I was completely unfamiliar with the lead actress. Looking into her career a bit further, I see she was in about a dozen other movies (usually comedies), featured in a nude pictorial in the May 1975 issue of Italian Playboy (she's also on the cover) and then did layouts in other men's magazines like Gente and Skorpio. She was also a singer and released a number of 45s. The modeling, the acting and the music all seemed to abruptly end around 1985.

Someone must have made a fortune off of this because it seems to have been distributed everywhere. I found tons of posters for this one under a multitude of different titles from all over the world...

Here in the U.S. it was released to theaters several times under the titles The Tormented and The Eerie Horror Picture Show (with misleading advertising materials utilizing Rocky Horror-style lips!). VHS releases soon followed from Planet Video in 1982 and Continental Video in 1985, again using the Eerie title, which was also used for most of the later DVD and Blu-ray releases from companies like Code Red. It's also been issued on DVD under the title Enter the Devil, not to be confused with the *other* Enter the Devil released in 1972. UK release titles were The Devil Obsession and The Sexorcist.

★★

Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali (1977)

... aka: Bloody Track
... aka: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals
... aka: Emanuelle's Amazon Adventure
... aka: Trap Them and Kill Them

Directed by:
Joe D'Amato

Going undercover as a patient, New York Evening Post reporter Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) uses a camera hidden inside a doll to document proof of some unprofessional behavior going down in a mental asylum. One of the patients (Cindy Leadbetter), who was found crazed at the edge of a jungle, rips a nurse's breast off and eats it. As it turns out, the nurse is "well known for her homosexual inclinations" and has been sexually molesting patients. While going through pictures, Emanuelle notices a strange tattoo on the boob-eater's belly. The symbol is indicative of an ancient Amazonian cannibal tribe who were long thought to be extinct. Emanuelle's boss thinks this has the makings of a great story, so he sends Emanuelle to meet with famous anthropologist Mark Lester (Gabriele Tinti), who's now working as the curator of the American Natural History Museum. Mark invites Emanuelle out to lunch, then takes her back to his apartment to show her some black-and-white footage of African cannibals busy at work castrating, decapitating and consuming human flesh. Being the "free woman" she is, Emanuelle doesn't let visions of a native gnawing down on a penis deter her from immediately hopping into the sack with Mark.

Don't ask how (*wink*), but Emanuelle is able to quickly convince Mark to lead the expedition into the Amazonian jungle. The two fly down South, meet up with plantation owner Wilkes (Geoffrey Copleston) and then learn that Wilkes' blonde teenage daughter Isabelle (Mónica Zanchi) and her nun friend Sister Angela (Annamaria Clementi), will be headed into the jungle the following day to drop off supplies at a mission run by Father Morales. All four decide to go ahead and make the trip together. Along with guides Felipe and Manolo, the group load up their supplies, hop on a boat and travel down the river for a 5 to 6 day journey to the mission. On one stop, Emanuelle and Isabelle (who'd already spied on her guests having sex the night before) take their opportunity to scrub each other down in a lake while a chimpanzee goes through their things, smokes one of their cigarettes and tries on their sunglasses.

When evening starts to fall, they dock their boat and come ashore. Emanuelle is attacked by a boa constrictor and is saved by Donald McKenzie (Donald O'Brien), a big game hunter whose camp isn't far from there. He offers to let them stay at his camp but warns that the mission they were heading to has already been attacked by savages who killed everyone there. After meeting Donald's neglected wife Maggie ("Susan Scott" / Nieves Navarro), who's having an affair with their black guide Salvadore (Percy Hogan) because her husband is impotent, Mark decides it would be best if they head back. After all, he doesn't want to put Isabelle and Sister Angela in any danger. Before anyone can go anywhere, one of the Indians is found dead and gutted. Their boat also turns up missing, so there's no way back to civilization other than walking through the jungle, where they encounter snakes, leeches, quicksand and other dangers along the way.

Naturally, the cannibal tribe eventually catches up to them and even set up booby traps throughout the jungle. The other Indian guide is impaled by one. While wandering off into the brush, the nun is abducted. The cannibals strip her naked, cut off her nipple and eat it and then slice open her stomach and eat her guts. Because they're actually in the jungle trying to find a crashed airplane rumored to have been carrying diamonds, Donald and Maggie wander off from the group and end up running across the tribe, who spear him in the shoulder and drag her back to their village. The rest of the gang then must find the village and try to save Maggie before it's too late. They split up into two groups. The group of Donald, Isabelle and Salvadore doesn't do so hot as Salvadore is speared to death and the other two join Maggie at cannibal central. Donald gets pulled in two during a game of tug-o-war with a wire and his wife gets her organs passed around camp after getting slice from her vagina up to her torso. Probably because she's a blonde, Isabelle is drugged and gang raped by the entire tribe, who want to sacrifice her to their water goddess. In a last ditch effort to save her, Emanuelle strips nude, paints the water goddess symbol on her stomach and goes in the village to retrieve her "sacrifice."

Combining an Emanuelle soft-core flick with a jungle / cannibal horror-adventure was actually a great idea since these were both very popular in Europe at the time. This probably did pretty well in theaters, as it delivers precisely what one would expect of this particular combo. There's loads of nudity and sex (mostly confined to the first half) and plenty of bloody violence (mostly confined to the second half). The dubbing and dialogue are both terrible, mismatched stock footage is often used for the jungle and gators and there's an extremely annoying song ("Make Love on the Wing") that plays over and over again, but that's not gonna bother the target audience for this thing in the least.

It was originally released in the U.S. under the title Trap Them and Kill Them since the Emanuelle brand name wasn't much of a sell here in the States. It also used to play late night television as Emanuelle's Amazon Adventure. Both versions were missing some of the more graphic sex and violence. The Blue Underground DVD is uncut.

D'Amato, who also co-wrote and photographed, has a cameo as a psychiatrist in one of the first scenes. The end credits claim it was filmed in Brazil, but it was actually filmed entirely in New York City and Italy.

★★