I really wanted to like this more than I do. It's atmospheric, eerie, and somewhat erotic. It's also got a plot so thin it's almost invisible, and is so very slow. I know that latter is probably deliberate (see what I did there?), and yes, the stately pace of proceedings doubtless contributes to the creepy, morbid atmosphere. Maybe it's just that I watched this right after a much more exciting film (The Big Bird Cage, if you want to know), but I surprisingly failed to really connect with this one.
The satanism is pretty cool though. It's exciting when the lady of the house gets all hot and bothered reading all those blasphemies from her satanic book. This film kind of subscribes to the old idea of satanists being a bunch of bored decadents. But these guys aren't harmless, I guess; they indulge in cannibalism and all sorts of morbidities. Yet, I can't escape the fact that this film kind of has a mundane feeling. The stakes are small and maybe that's part of the point, but at times, despite all the darkness, the whole thing feels like a childish game, and nothing more.
I do like the dichotomy this film nicely slots into. It's got one of those stern professorial types at the beginning telling us of the dangers of black magic and satanism, which are of course alive and thriving in our cozy urban worlds today. Classic exploitation technique, and it still works. Then, when we get on to the nudity and bloodshed, we get that classic primal-level confusion about what the film is really trying to tell us. Are we supposed to indulge and enjoy ourselves, or feel bad? Of course, it's both, and that's the beauty of it! Mostly though, just enjoy ourselves, I think, and transgress, because we can. Remember that this film was released in 1978, and that Franco (the fascist Franco, not the film director who smartly got all his films financed in other countries) and his government had imposed strict censorship on the country's art. Such transgressive iconography would have been utterly forbidden a mere few years earlier. And I'm sure this is exactly the freedom the film-makers were revelling in. So, even though I confess that I didn't entirely "get it", and that as a horror film I thought this was kind of a failure, I still commend the effort and think it's worth seeing for anyone into devilish cinema.
Oh, and despite what i said above -- they get props for the ending, which was, after all, rather fitting in its cyclical nature.
The satanism is pretty cool though. It's exciting when the lady of the house gets all hot and bothered reading all those blasphemies from her satanic book. This film kind of subscribes to the old idea of satanists being a bunch of bored decadents. But these guys aren't harmless, I guess; they indulge in cannibalism and all sorts of morbidities. Yet, I can't escape the fact that this film kind of has a mundane feeling. The stakes are small and maybe that's part of the point, but at times, despite all the darkness, the whole thing feels like a childish game, and nothing more.
I do like the dichotomy this film nicely slots into. It's got one of those stern professorial types at the beginning telling us of the dangers of black magic and satanism, which are of course alive and thriving in our cozy urban worlds today. Classic exploitation technique, and it still works. Then, when we get on to the nudity and bloodshed, we get that classic primal-level confusion about what the film is really trying to tell us. Are we supposed to indulge and enjoy ourselves, or feel bad? Of course, it's both, and that's the beauty of it! Mostly though, just enjoy ourselves, I think, and transgress, because we can. Remember that this film was released in 1978, and that Franco (the fascist Franco, not the film director who smartly got all his films financed in other countries) and his government had imposed strict censorship on the country's art. Such transgressive iconography would have been utterly forbidden a mere few years earlier. And I'm sure this is exactly the freedom the film-makers were revelling in. So, even though I confess that I didn't entirely "get it", and that as a horror film I thought this was kind of a failure, I still commend the effort and think it's worth seeing for anyone into devilish cinema.
Oh, and despite what i said above -- they get props for the ending, which was, after all, rather fitting in its cyclical nature.