La maschera del demonio (1989)

... aka: Black Sabbath

... aka: Demons 5

... aka: Demons V: The Devil's Veil

... aka: Mascara del Satano, La

... aka: Mask of Satan

... aka: Masque de Satan, Le

Directed by:

Lamberto Bava

Confused about the "Demons" series of films? Well you ain't the only one. This French / German / Italian / Portuguese / Spanish co-production from the director of Demons (1985), Demons 2 (1986) and The Ogre: Demons 3 (1987) was based on the same Nikolai Gogol story ("Vij") that was the basis for BLACK SUNDAY (1960), a film that's now considered a Gothic horror classic and was made by Lamberto's very talented father, Mario. Both Sunday and Demons 5 share the same original filming title and also have the spiked mask and resurrected witch story aspects in common, but this still isn't really a remake of the earlier film. The sequel title comes from Japan, where it was re-titled to follow Lamberto Bava's first two movies, Demons 3 (better known as The Church) and Demons 4 (better known as either The Sect or The Devil's Daughter). It was never English-dubbed or officially released in America. In fact, the only known version with English subs was released by bootleggers Video Search of Miami, who put out a very dark, very washed-out looking print of the film derived from a broadcast on Spanish TV.

Eight young people; four guys and four girls, manage to all fall into a deep ice cavern while skiing down a mountain. One of the girls - Sabina (Deborah Caprioglio, Klaus Kinski's buxom and much younger ex-wife) - injurs her leg, while another of the guys finds a frozen corpse with a steel mask over the face. A few of the boys decides to chip away at the ice until they can remove the mask. The Earth shakes, a guy is impaled with a giant icicle, Sabina's leg miraculously heals itself and they locate the backside of a church. They go inside, exit out the front door and find themselves in a deserted, snow-covered town populated only by a superstitious albino priest (Stanko Molnar) and his pet wolf. The priest informs them that they made a grave mistake removing the mask because it will awaken evil witch Anibas (Eva Grimaldi), whose fate is shown to us through flashback. Immediately six of the "teens" are possessed, start behaving strangely and attempt to kill Sabina and David (Giovanni Guidelli), apparently the only two virgins in the group. Even stranger, the names of the six possessed - Alexandra (Mary Sellers), Nora (Alessandra Bonarotta), Irma (Laura Devoti), Bebo (Michele Soavi), Andrea (Stefano Molinari) and Sergio (Ron Williams) - spell out "Anibas." There's another clumsy clue mirrored in the witch's name that I probably don't even need to reveal.

The premise itself is great. The discoveries at the beginning of the film with the cavern and that snowy ghost town are fascinating, and the art direction and sets that bring these locations to life is top notch. Unfortunately, once the possession portion sets in after about half an hour, the film becomes bland. Fans of the first Demons films will notice a considerable lack of action and gore. There are no hideous-looking, rotten demon-people running amuck that claw and infect the others. Instead, the possessions happen instantaneously and those possessed are not given any kind of makeup application to make them look intimidating. It seems like they saved up their fx budget for the witch when she finally materializes.

It's also difficult to really get swept up in the atmosphere since the characters are pretty much all obnoxious, annoying and stupid. I don't know about you, but under the circumstances (one girl injured, one guy dead and trapped underground in a freezing-cold ice crevice) I wouldn't be laughing and cracking jokes. A few girls lose their tops and there's a demon sex scene, but that's about it. Simon Boswell provided the disappointing and forgettable score.

★★

La fille de Dracula (1972)

... aka: Daughter of Dracula

... aka: Dracula's Daughter
... aka: Eine Jungfrau in den Krallen von Vampiren
... aka: Filha de Dracula, A

Directed by:

Jesus Franco

A narrator tells us about how Castle Karlstein is rumored to have been the former home of Count Dracula. Then a woman takes off her top, walks around sipping wine and gets into a bath, where a female vampire attacks her. Afterward, Luisa (Britt Nichols) shows up just in time to have one last conversation with her elderly mother before she passes away. The dying woman tells her daughter that’s she the last descendant of the Karlstein family, then gives her a key to a tower in the family castle, tells her to prepare to see horrible things and then lets her know some of her descendants were vampires. Luisa goes to the tower and finds two coffins inside. The lid blows off one of them and a still-living Count Dracula (Howard Vernon) is inside, shows his fangs and puts the bite to his distant relative. Next thing Luisa knows, she’s attacking strippers and seducing her lonely cousin Karine (Anne Libert) after they reminisce about gouging out a bird’s eye with a needle (!) as children. The ladies go at it during a long lesbian scene while Karine’s father Count Max Karlstein (Daniel White, who also helped compose the score) tickles the ivories and the camera zooms in on parts of the piano, thighs, hands and *a-hem* other parts of the ladies.

Inspector Ptuschko (Alberto Dalbés) shows up to investigate the rising body count of naked women in the area. The Karlstein family secretary, Cyril Jefferson (played by the director) uses silly phrases like “blood-drinking, darkness-despising birds” and is an expert on things of the supernatural, but nobody believes him when he tells them what's going on. Ana Kramer (Yelena Samarina), who runs the local bar and pay-by-the-hour hotel, is married but secretly having an affair with Max. Charlie (Fernando Bilbao), a nosy reporter, is snooping around and doing his own private investigating. Sorry if you’re wanting more vampire action because the film spends more time with the above people than it does with the vampires.

As the vampire count, Vernon unfortunately doesn't get to do anything interesting. Hell, he doesn't even get to leave his coffin since he gets special deliveries made to his tomb from Luisa, who drops a topless barmaid into his coffin for him to feast on. The ending features a stake driven through a forehead instead of a heart. Said ending is also a pathetic, suspense-free non-event (kind of like the rest of this film) where characters just casually stroll into the tomb and kill them and that’s it. I couldn't even see one of Franco’s most staunch supporters defending this dull trash, but I’m sure some of them do. You’d be hard pressed to find a less interesting vampire movie out there. Neither the story line nor the characters generate any interest whatsoever, and the scant horror scenes fail to deliver in atmosphere, chills or bloody good fun. Though it’s fairly well-photographed and utilizes a few nice locations (especially the excellent castle setting, with a long garden full of statues and Autumnal colors leading up to it), there’s not much actual visual style present, unless you count zooming in to crotches or random shots of a beach as being high style.

By conventional standards, the nudity quotient is high, with two fairly long lesbian scenes and two nude victims. However, by Franco early 70s standards it’s actually quite low. I just watched Franco’s THE DEMONS right before this one and, while it’s also not very good, it at least offered loads of nudity, some blood and attempted a period setting and story line. If you absolutely have to watch one of these, chose that one instead. Nichols, who has a very contemporary, almost "supermodel" look about her, is very nice to look at, but it's a shame she happened to stumble upon Franco during this stage of his career.

The title screen on the version I watched (from Bertucci Film Entertainment) was Eine Jungfrau in den Krallen von Vampiren ("A Virgin in the Claws of Vampires"). It has some of the worst English subtitles I’ve seen, which are small, flat and extremely difficult to read. Lina Romay makes her first appearance of many in a Franco film. She’s in the second scene for about 15 seconds and has no dialogue.

★

Les démons (1973)

... aka: Demonios, Os
... aka: Demons, The
... aka: Die Nonnen von Clichy
... aka: Las poseidas del demonio
... aka: Les démons du sexe

... aka: Nuns of Clichy, The

... aka: Os Demonios
... aka: Sex Demons, The
... aka: She-Demons

Directed by:
Jesus Franco

A suspected witch is stuck with a pin, has boiling water poured on her chest, screams, laughs, yells something in French that I didn't understand and is then burned alive at the stake. Before dying, she curses all those responsible; including inquisitor Lord Justice Jeffreys (“John Foster”/ Cihangir Gaffari), powerful noblewoman Lady de Winter (Karin Field) and soldier Thomas Renfield (Alberto Dalbés), and promises they’ll all face a death far worse than hers at the hand of her two daughters. Meanwhile, at a local convent, repressed Mother Rosalinda (Doris Thomas) rules with an iron fist and lashes a young woman’s hands for simply daydreaming. Two orphaned sisters; the pure, humble and innocent blonde Margaret (gorgeous Britt Nichols) and the pleasant but wayward brunette Kathleen (Anne Libert), who dreams of “running naked through the wheat fields with the wind caressing me all over,” are staying there and have their pension paid by a mysterious man. Hey, this is an upscale nunnery! At confession Rosalinda shows concern for both Kathleen’s frequent masturbation sessions and herself, for enjoying watching them; “…seeing her body trembling in spasms of voluptuous pleasure affected me deeply!” Who the hell writes this stuff? Priceless. It isn't long before Rosalinda is stripping off her clothes and rubbing her body while wacka-wacka guitar and bongo drums play and she begins to suspect that Kathleen is possessed by a demon. You know, because she's interested in sex.

Lady De Winter and Thomas, who are secretly lovers and desperate to save their own asses after being cursed, shows up at the convent looking for the daughters of the executed witch. Rosalinda points them in the direction of Kathleen and Margaret, who are promptly bent over a table and felt up to see if their virginity is intact. Kathleen fails the test and is dragged off for a “witchcraft investigation,” which involves being tortured until she’s forced to confess. She’s stretched on a rack, has her leg clamped, has pins stuck in her breasts and fails the water test, so she’s branded a witch and sentenced to die. Lady De Winter’s astrologist husband, Malcolm (Howard Vernon) feels pity on Kathleen and believes she’s innocent, so he pays off some guards to help her escape. Back at the convent, Margaret is paid a visit by the ghost of her mother, who tells her she must avenge her death. Suddenly, a ghostly man in red tights appears, bends her over and rapes her so she’ll be “the bride of Satan.” She seduces Rosalinda, who reacts to that by jumping to her death from a balcony, then flees the convent and ends up finding another witch, who teaches her about her powers.

Meanwhile, Kathleen gets bounced around from painter Brian De Quincy (“Victor Feldman / Andrés Monales), who lets her shack up with him for a few weeks, Thomas, who is ordered to bring her back to the torture chamber or else lose his head, and Jeffreys, who has his way with her once she’s re-captured. Kathleen, as well as Thomas (now a traitor for trying to help her escape) are sentenced to both die a slow and painful deaths after Lady De Winter’s feast. Margaret, who shows up with a new identity, has other plans in store for all of everyone.

It’s not all terrible, but it’s a meandering tale; often slow and dull, despite gratuitous full female nudity that Franco sometimes uses his trademark zooms to focus in on. Some of the Portuguese / Spanish shooting locations are nice and the acting isn't bad, but there’s also no real sense of time or place because of the variance of the costumes and architecture. Toward the end, they throw in a sloppy sword fight (notice how it changes from day to night back to day again during the same scene), and a mildly amusing twist at the end.

The cast also includes Luis Barboo as Jeffreys’ right hand man Truro. It’s based on the novel “Las monjas de Clichy” by David Khunne (a Franco alias) and features a score by Daniel J. White and Franco and decent cinematography by Raúl Artigot. On-screen title of the version I watched (the DVD is from Salvation Films) was Las poseidas del demonio ("The Demon Possessed"), which is said to be uncut. It was first released with much nudity removed for the Premiere Entertainment and Unicorn video releases; shortened from 103 minutes down to just 79.

★★