La maîtresse du diable

You gotta love the 1960s and 1970s European horror flicks. Most of them, anyway. "L'amante del demonio" (alternately called "The Devil's Lover" and "Lucifera Demon Lover" in English) is too slow-moving, and much of it looks like scenes that they added to fill space. There's no shortage of sex, but the movie has so much wasted potential. I prefer it when these movies have lots of blood and guts, and this story of a young woman who goes to sleep in the 20th century and wakes up in an earlier century (where she sees all manner of evil things) just doesn't have enough of that. I recommend sticking with a Jess Franco movie or a Michele Soavi movie if you're looking for some classic Euro-horror.

I love 1970s movies and Rosalba Neri so I'm going to be as fortuitous as anyone could possibly be. But this movie is just awful . There's no point to anything it's not scary, very little violence, anemic plot, there's no sex, Cinematografia lacking, there's just nothingness. I could devise a better movie than this and I don't know the first thing about making movies . The biggest surprise is how anyone could give this a higher grade than me at which point I think I saw a 7 out of 10 from someone. I could not wait for this movie to end. The good news is it's probably very hard to find . Complete flop.

I saw this on a recent, as of 2024, blu ray release and was shocked when I went to IMDB to discover that I guess I'd seen it. Now how could I forget the film, well after watching it I can see how. It's not memorable. I had given it a 6 but I've revised that more to a 4.

The problems are the script and directing, both by the same man who seems to have little talent at either. The performances are just ok, no one seems very committed to a role, other than Neri. There are a few really beautiful shots of her, how could there not be?, but she's had better parts and looked better in much better films.

There is very little style and the shots at times barely cut together. The music score is pretty good but it stops and starts at odd moments sometimes in mid scene, it all feels like no one with much experience was at the helm of the movie.

For something that's supposed to be shocking, the violence and nudity are few and far between, not a problem if the drama is compelling, but it's not.

There is one laughable scene with a red hooded guy popping, like in Bewitched, in and out in various places. The editing is sluggish so you can tell one actor is freezing in place while the other moves and they start shooting again. It's really half heartedly done.

There is a sword fight and well, uh, that's about it, I guess there sort of is another sword fight eventually.

It's all rather flatly done and pretty dull, for a film called The Devil's Lover the whole devil angle is also dull and almost silly the way it's done. A film that doesn't know how to be erotic horrific or compelling, decent production values raise it above worse films, but it looks like what it is, a producer directing and not knowing how.

In the Severin 2024 release there is an interview with actor Robert Woods who claims he was brought in to try to save the movie, to edit the film, be in it in a small role added later and to direct some of it. Even with all that he says it's not better than just ok and I'd agree.

The 2024 release looks and sounds very good, features a dull commentary track with lot of silence between not too interesting things to say.

Rosalba Neri and her two girlfriends visit a remote European castle that is supposedly owned by Satan himself.That night she comes across a portrait of a woman who looks much like her.While sleeping she has is transported back to the 16th century where she has nightmares of her past which include:cave dwelling rapists,sadistic vampires,inquisition and a mysterious red-hooded,cloaked,disappearing swordsman."L'Amante del Demonio" is watchable Italian Gothic nonsense.There is a bit of sleaze and nudity plus incredibly sensual Rosalba Neri,the Queen of Italian Gothic horror.The film mixes Satanic horror,vampirism,sex and torture,so fans of Italian exploitation should definitely check it out.However the action is suitably dull and the climax is terrible.A generous 7 out of 10.

The heyday of the Italian Gothic Horror genre was the early-to-mid-1960s; even so, the style lingered on well into the next decade but the results were often far beneath what could be accomplished at its best. Naturally, this is one such example: actually, we start off here with a contemporary setting and the heroine ("Euro-Cult" favorite Rosalba Neri) dreams herself back at least two centuries – under the influence of an old mansion where, legend has it, the devil used to reside! An element these later efforts certainly took advantage of was the relaxation in censorship, except that then we tended to get copious nudity at the expense of plot (and even atmosphere): at one point, for instance, a couple of nubile girls are gang-raped and forced to copulate between themselves inside a cave, a sequence that has no bearing whatsoever on the central plot! For what it is worth, the narrative involves two girls (one is Neri and the other is played by a companion of hers in the modern 'bookends') who both love the same man; when he chooses Neri, the rival (herself pursued by another, played by Robert Woods) turns to a witch who puts a curse on the former. This results in Neri being seduced by a stranger (Edmund Purdom), losing her lover to him and getting burned at the stake for the latter's death…all on her wedding night and, surprise surprise, the interloper is eventually revealed to be Old Nick himself! While the lethargic pacing is decidedly characteristic of such fare, the inept handling is not and, in this case, makes the film a snooze-fest as opposed to the mood-piece its creators probably intended! When I first came across this one, I was intrigued by its description as "the greatest Rosalba Neri movie ever"; however, having checked it out for myself now, I regret to report that things could not be further removed from the truth!