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.

★★

Dracula vs. Demon (1982)

Directed by:

Brian Davies

Tom Maylott

This 20 minute amateur short was a collaboration between Classic Vision Productions (which would soon change its name to VideasFilms) and Vintage 8 Productions. While the former was Davies' company, which went on to produce a number of other shorts, the former appears to have been co-director Maylott's company, which does not appear to have produced anything else. While trying to look further into Vintage 8 led to an immediate dead end, looking into Maylott himself opened up a wealth of interesting information... though not in the ways I'd imagined! Maylott has always maintained he worked at Hammer Films as a make-up artist on such movies as Dracula: Prince of Darkness and The Reptile. In an article published by Kent Online, he claims he worked "for more than 20 years" for Hammer. Problem is, he never received any credit for his work (he doesn't even have an IMDb page) nor is there a single stitch of evidence to back up his claims. You'd figure if you worked at Hammer for several decades with huge stars like Christopher Lee you'd at least take a few photos of your experiences or at the very least would end up in someone else's photos. Nope. All Maylott has presented is a photo of him, looking like any other starstruck fan in a Hammer t-shirt, shaking Lee's hand.

Since at least 1987 (!!), Maylott has been attempting to produce and star in his own feature-length vampire film. In 2014, he created a venture called the Hammer Film Preservation Society and was hoping to make something called Dracula Walks the Night. The title was changed the following year to The Mark of Dracula. A ridiculously bad and cheap videotaped teaser trailer was made and uploaded to Youtube, I'm assuming to try to get investors... but still nothing. By then he was billing himself as "The World's Shittiest Dracula" (?!) Apparently there have been several instances where a film would actually begin shooting only to be aborted at an early stage, leaving behind a huge, disgruntled army of people who felt they've wasted their time, talent and / or money dealing with him. On various message boards, actors bitch about him wasting their time posting constant casting calls that lead to nothing, writers bitch about him hiring them to do scripts and then flaking out and people have come forward claiming to have invested their own money and accusing Maylott of ripping them off. I don't know what is or isn't true here, but considering Maylott's been at this for over 30 years and nothing's come of it thus far, I'm smelling con artist. Maylott is now well into his 70s and, amazingly, is still at it today!

Simon (Maylott) and his girlfriend are walking in a park when they find a ring with strange engravings hanging from a tree branch. Simon slips it on only to realize it won't come off. As soon as he gets home, he passes out and transforms into a "demon" in a cheap rubber werewolf mask and cape. He attacks two women walking through the woods and kills one of them. He then tracks down the other and kills her too. Meanwhile, a long-haired blonde witch (only seen from behind and clearly played by a man!) mixes up some concoction that causes a box to smoke and resurrects a vampire (who's also played by Maylott).

Thinking the murders he's committed are nightmares but still concerned he's woken up with actual blood on him, Simon goes to see psychiatrist / writer / occultist Dr. Hurst (Davies). The doctor examines the ring and notices it has hieroglyphics on it. Upon consulting a book, he discovers the ring is 2000 years old and, according to legend, belongs to a demon called Malloquin who was "banished to another dimension" by Satan himself. And that other "dimension" is apparently modern day Earth. In order to return to Hades, Malloquin must kill 99 women and he's using Simon as the means to do this. The vampire and demon cross paths and then the vampire and Dr. Hurst, who apparently moonlights as a vampire hunter ("Eat your heart out, Peter Cushing"), cross paths and not everyone will make it out alive.

Davies had compared this to Ed Wood but that's being far too generous as Wood movies are typically at least entertaining. As for Maylott, credited here as star, co-director and co-writer, I'd assume any future collaborators, whether it be a starving actor desperate for employment or someone with a little extra money looking to invest in a movie, would turn around and run in the other direction after viewing this. The only pluses are a couple of unintentional laughs in the form of flubbed lines and scenes where the star seems to have a difficult time opening a door or when he's running, his cape accidentally flops over his head and whoever is holding the camera starts laughing.

NO STARS!