User Reviews

I did something while watching Feast for the Devil that I rarely, if ever, do – I caught myself nodding off a couple of times. Why? It's dull. It's uneventful. It's pointless. It's not very good. Instead of Feast for the Devil, a better title might be Feast for the Insomniac.

Usually these Euro-Gothic films work for me. I'm a fan. But there's so little to get excited about in Feast for the Devil that it never clicked with me. The story involves a Dr. Tills Nescu who has a bad habit of kidnapping and sacrificing young women. While that may sound like a good set-up for a movie, in all actuality, Dr. Nescu and a variety of unknown people spend most of the movie at parties on his boat. Not very Satanic, huh? The movie builds to the final scenes of Dr. Nescu performing his rituals to honor Satan. But as it turns out, Dr. Nescu is hardly the big bad servant of the Devil we've been led to believe throughout the movie. Instead, he's more of a servant of his dead mother. What a letdown!

"Feast of Satan" unfolds with a young woman, María Salas (Verónica Luján of "Fury of the Wolfman"), scrambling desperately through some spooky woods in a white gown. A mysterious figure wearing a medallion pursues her. Composer Carlo Savino's eerie organ music heightens the hysteria the girl evidently feels during her flight. Eventually, stumbling onto a highway, she collapses in front of a truck. The two guys in the truck attend her, while a pair of evil eyes scrutinizes the scene from the forest. The motorists contact the police. According to her sister Hilda (Krista Nell of "The Becket Affair"), Maria had been "overjoyed" at the prospect of her 30-day vacation. Hilda confers with Maria's doctor, Dr. Carlos Ferrer (Ennio Girolami of "Fury of Achilles"), Dr. Michelis (Rafael Corés of "Oath of Zorro") and Dr. Donati (Tomás Blanco of "The Secret Seven") at the railway station where Maria will arrive on express train. Inspector González (Julio Peña of "Red Sun") accompanies Maria on the express, but she suffers a relapse at the station. They rush her to a hospital. Dr. Ferrer examines her. "Nothing serious physically, only some minor abrasions. It looks to me as though she's possibly been mentally deranged by fear." Indeed, when Maria reacted with fear earlier, she imagined a medallion and a pair of eyes that nobody else saw. Dr. Michelis adds, "It is evident that this patient shows acute symptoms of excitement that are purely mental in origin." Michelis says he has seen Maria's condition in others who have "been through insufferable horrors." The physicians conclude Maria suffers from Hammer Syndrome. According to Michelis, Hammer syndrome is "the same sickness suffered by Marie Antoinette when she was sentenced to the guillotine. She must have envisioned herself dying at the guillotine so realistically, presumably it had somehow created in her being a sort of death and life, and all her hair turned white the same day, completely." Maria awakens on the exam table, screaming, "the medallion," "the music" and the name "Sheba." Director José María Elorrieta concludes this scene with an extreme close-up on those haunting pair of eyes that watched from the woods. After they leave the exam room, Dr. Donati explains to Hilda that "Sheba" is "the female reincarnation of the devil." Later, that night, an intruder releases a patient so he can open the gates of the hospital while the intruder lugs Maria off the premises! When the patient tries to follow, a barking guard dog kills the patient.

The opening ten minutes establish the conflict as well as the premise. Hilda masquerades under a different surname and retraces Maria's vacation at Santa Teresa. No sooner has she settled into her hotel room than she receives a complimentary bouquet of flowers from Dr. Tills Nescu (Espartaco Santoni of "Exorcism's Daughter"), the same doctor with whom Maria had become infatuated! Afterward, Hilda arranges a conference with Inspector González, and the Spanish policeman confides in her that scores of girls descend onto the small scenic coastal resort village of Santa Teresa where Maria had gone. He warns Hilda about Nescu. Nevertheless, Hilda is adamant about learning if the enigmatic playboy doctor had anything to do with her sister's breakdown. As it turns out, Nescu didn't send the flowers. Instead, his girl Friday Andrea (Teresa Gimpera of "Count Dracula") sent the flowers. Predictably, the debonair, smooth-talking Nescu takes a shine to Hilda and winds up alienating Andrea.

Although it is clear the eyes in the dark forest belonged to Dr. Nescu, he displays his power when a guest at his table in a nightclub challenges him to prove he isn't a charlatan. Narrowing his eyes and focusing his psychic powers, the sinister Nescu gradually deprives a warbling nightclub singer of his voice. Any doubts about Nescu's ominous mind-bending power are academic. Not only does Espartaco Santoni make the doctor a charming rogue, but also his supreme confidence in his powers to manipulate the others makes him into a consummate villain. Eventually, Nescu takes Hilda to his spooky castle. Andrea struggles to convince Hilda to leave. Earlier, another woman Paula (Carla Conti) had fallen under Nescu's spell and found herself an object of a ritual sacrifice. "The Feast of Satan" amounts to little more than an anemic chiller. Frontal nudity is momentary, and violence occurs off screen, so "The Feast of Satan" forces you to use your imagination. One scene depicts flagellation, but no blood is splattered or flesh bared. Ultimately, poor Hilda makes an alarming discovery in Dr. Nescu's dungeon (no castle should be without a dungeon) that explains the hypnotist's bizarre behavior.