User Reviews

I've been trying to work my way through the non-horror films of Polselli and they're fine, but I was missing something, Missing women standing wide-eyed and screaming, tree branches being used for the most nefarious of reasons and strange rituals happening for no reason at all. Thankfully -- after much searching through some of the most nefarious of websites -- I have found Casa dell'amore... la polizia intervene AKA House of Love... The Police Intervene.

My excitement was palpable just from the IMDB summary: "Three young hobby archeologists witness a Satanic ritual in a secluded villa. Instead of helping poor female victims they decide to secretly document the events."

Hobby archaeologists! Satanic ritual! Secluded villa! This movie is my new plans for the day.

Directed by Polselli and written by long-time associate and often production manager Bruno Vani, this has Polselli using the name Ralph Brown and also having access to footage from the unfinished movie A Virgin for Satan by Alessandro Santini. That film was co-written by Vani and the ritual scenes in this film come from that film.

According to an article in Nocturno, this was called I torbidi misteri della sensualità (Obscure Mysteries of Sensuality) and was a reworking of another Polselli script for a movie called Tilt that was based on the Manson Family. In that script, a cult named The Children of Satan conducts an occult marriage ceremony with a nude bride covered with the blood of doves. What could have been...

Helm (Tony Matera, who is also in Torino centrale del vizio), Brigitte (Mirella Rossi, Oscenità, Confessioni segrete di un convento di clausura) and Charlotte (Iolanda Mascitti, Revelations of a Psychiatrist on the World of Sexual Perversion, Nude for Satan -- how did Polselli not get in on that movie, what with Rita Calderoni as the star? -- and the continuity person for Oscenità and script supervisor for Mania, which is incredible because who knew those movies had those roles?) are our three young hobby archaeologists who are looking for bones in the Italian countryside. Brigitte watches as two men overpower and kidnap a woman, which means that they now become twenty-something teen detectives.

Their search brings them to an old house on the edge of town where the elderly Claudia, her niece Elisabeth (Matilde Antonelli, No One Will Notice You're Naked, Django's girlfriend in the Brad Harris-starring, Roberto Mauri-directed Death Is Sweet from the Soldier of God) and Phillip live. Are you surprised to learn that these are the followers of Astoroph who sacrifice virgins in Black Masses? Well, the real shock is that instead of going to the police, our protagonists decide to do the investigation themselves and sell it to the press for big money. As for the cult, they plan on making Kathy Cunningham (Katia Cardinali, who is whipped to death in Delirio caldo by Rita Calderoni before she's drowned in a bathtub and thrown from a window) their next sacrifice, as she has been willingly offered by her boyfriend Lawrence.

With around eleven minutes left in the movie, things start getting nutty, with robed figures chanting, a nude Elisabeth is leading the ritual and ah, man, the cops intervene, just like they promised in the title. There's also a scene where two people fight with a chain and ladder as a weapon -- what is, ECW? -- before throwing hens at one another, followed by rocks being launched at a cultist who is then flattened by a bulldozer. There are also love scenes in the cut I've found that go to black, which I assume are where the hardcore inserts would find a home, and a skiing scene out of absolutely nowhere. I watched this as it should be watched: a seventh-generation VHS transferred to a porn site filled with pop-ups while sick or high with COVID-19 at 6 in the morning in the hours where it is late and not early.

This also has the thing that every Polselli movie needs: reaction shots of people bugging their eyes out. That's what else these other movies have been missing. He must have given the direction, "Stand up and stare at the camera like someone is naked in public and no one knows what to do!"

Seriously, this movie has an extended scene of hens being thrown at people before someone's head gets cut off with a bucket while our two leads run. Helm is straight up mounting this dude and it's way intense, so upsetting that the girls just take off. Then they all chain themselves together while he and Brigitte laugh like lunatics while Charlotte looks afraid? What an ending?

What does it all mean? Who cares!

I also have to say, Pier Giorgio Farina turns in one strange soundtrack that is totally perfect for this movie. There are just electronic noises that drop in and out before going into synth runs and it's like a super sparse affair that goes into church organs and I'm all about it.

It introduced me to his DISCOCROSS album, where he's backed by Goblin.