Black Candles

Jose Ramon Larraz's "Black Candles" is a rare Spanish horror/sleaze film about a young woman named Carol who finds out that various family members are involved with a satanic cult.The film is loaded with sleazy sex and satanism,so I wasn't disappointed.Still it's not as memorable as Larraz's erotic masterpiece "Vampyres".The lighting is poor and the acting is amateurish.The sex scene between a black goat and a woman has to be seen to be believed.There is also an incredibly nasty moment which has a man killed by having a sword shoved into him between his legs.To sum up,if you are into European exploitation cinema give this one a look.However if you like your horror without sleaze avoid this one like the plague.7 out of 10.

Extremely thin 'plot' of satanic rituals or some such mumbo-jumbo provides the hokey excuse to thread copious amounts of sex scenes together. Straight vanilla sex, masturbation, lesbianism, S&M, bestiality, incest, and a few other sexual proliferation's all get their time in the spotlight here. The problem is the storyline is so dull that the rampant sexuality gets pretty tedious after awhile. Who knew that a film with an intimate goat/ girl encounter could be so damn boring? Well now I do.

Eye Candy: Venessa Hidalgo shows all; Helga Line provides T&A (both on display quite frequently); women viewers get the occasional penis.

My Grade: D+

Region 1 DVD Extras: Trailers for "Pick Up", "Legend of Eight Samurai", "Don't Answer the Phone", "Prime Evil", & "Sister Street Fighter" (also the same DVD holds a second feature movie "Evil Eye")

Known in the UK as Black Candles, the original Spanish title Los Ritos Sexuales del Diablo sums it up a lot better. The characters in this 1981 film from Jose Ramon Larraz spend most of the time naked and jumping on one another. Saucy German actress Helga Line, pushing 50 when the film was made, leads the way with an erotic, knicker-shedding performance as a middle-class woman at the centre of a Satanic cult. Drawing heavily on Rosemary's Baby and set in England, this is a daft piece of soft core in which the devil's work is done largely by the genitalia.

Black Candles (1980)

* (out of 4)

Spanish horror film has a sister and her boyfriend going to a rural castle in Spain to search for her brother. What she doesn't know is that her brother got involved in a sex crazed Satanic cult and they've got their eyes on her now. This film is best known for all its softcore sex scenes, which eat up at least half of the 82-minute running time and this isn't a good thing. The film tries desperately hard to be an erotic horror picture but it fails on both levels and by the ten minute mark I started watching the clock waiting for this thing to be over. The sex scenes are trying to be erotic but they often times create some unintentional laughs and this includes a scene where a woman is raped by a goat. Nothing graphic is shown but this is just one example of this film being watered down compared to other movies that were out there in this era including several by Joe D'Amato, which didn't stop at softcore scenes. The horror elements, clearly inspired by Rosemary's Baby, are also very lame and don't contain enough suspense, gore or violence to keep things moving. The pacing of the film is the biggest problem because you'd expect eighty-minutes to fly by in an exploitation film but that's not the case as each scene just drags on and on. This includes the before mentioned sex scenes but the dialogue sequences are even worse. The performances are all bland, which is just the death nail to this thing. Director Beaunstein made films in this horror/sex manor before so all the blame must fall on his shoulders.

Not a pretty film, this rather vigorous satanic sex film is filmed on location in England with a cast of largely unknown Spanish and English 'actors'. Actually the fact that this is such a mixed cast and of such mixed age does add a little something to what is otherwise not a lot. The leading coven lady was coming up 50 when she made this and that doesn't stop her stripping for sex at regular intervals. Similarly the men, they don't care if they might be fat and hairy. So plot wise this is a non starter but as a representation of a small countryside satanic group ready and willing to excite their goat into some mixed action, this is probably more realistic than many. Basically this looks like lusty amateurs giving it their sleazy all.