La endemoniada

An acceptable Exorcist rip-off , though it contains some cheesy special effects and mediocre direction . La Endemoniada or Demon witch child or The possessed (1975) contains chills , thrills , disgusting Satanism and bizarre shots of possession . An old witch (Tota alba) seeks revenge through the daughter (Marián Salgado) of the commissioner who had her thrown in prison . Soon the little girl's head is spinning around, and an old priest (Julian Mateos) is called in to perform an exorcism. As the priest attempts to free from possesion with sinister visions resulting in fateful consecuences . As the young girl is really possessed by a malevolant spirit until a surprising and astonishing final . Good and evil battle for possession of the innocent! .If you were TERRIFIED by "The Exorcist"...HORRIFIED by "Beyond the Door"...Now see the GREATEST SHOCKER of them all!!!

This is pretty entertaining witchery stuff about young girl turns possessed by a woman from a witches cult , while seeks vendetta . This is the Spanish answer to American horror hit , The Exorcist by William Friedkin . Atmospheric horror movie contains terrifying scenes when appears witchery , necromancy and possssion scenes and taking place brutal killings , terror, and confusion around her family and the townfolks . Although there are some lousily made scenes , including primitive special effects . It's a slight fun with passable make-up , naive FX , acceptable set decoration and functional art direction . The fable is sometimes silly and laughable , though a few effects and intriguing set pieces are professionally made . Some illogical parts in the argument are more than compensated for the excitement provided by the possession images , though sometimes are a little bit cheesy . While not a hit during its original run, the film became successful when reissued nearly 45 years later . Main and support cast are decent . Julian Mateos plays the priest trying to unravel the mystery suffering from the effects. While the starring child was acceptabily incarnated by Marián Salgado , she was hired by Amando de Ossorio due to she dubbed Linda Blair in the Spanish version of El Exorcist . And other secondary actors giving brief but acceptable performances such as Fernando Sancho as Police Inspector , Angel del Pozo as the father ,Roberto Camardiel as Managing Editor, Fernando Hilbeck as doctor who prescribes strong treatment , Lone Fleming , and , of course , Tota Alba as the creepy witch . In the film appears known Spanishtrash actresses as Kali Hansa as Gypsy Witch , María Kosty as Esther , Julia Saly nicknamed La Pocha , Montserrat Prous as a Nurse and Lone Fleming as Anne Crawford . All of them starred several exploitation films during the 60s and 70s . The Exorcist by William Friedkin spawned countless imitations , and clones all around the world , as in Spain was made four at the same time : this ¨Endemoniada¨ 1974 by Amando de Ossorio with Julián Mateos , ¨The Spiritist¨ 1975 with Vicente Parra, Maria Salerno and ¨Exorcismo¨ by Juan Bosch with Grace Mills , Paul Naschy or Jacinto Molina and ¨El Juego Del Diablo¨ 1975 with Imma de Santis by Jorge Darnell .

The motion picture was professional though regularly directed by Amando De Ossorio . Amando began in films as a writer and assistant director and continued his career by making short films and industrial documentaries . He was one of the main directors of the Spanish horror boom in the 70s, specially for his quartet of films about the living dead Templars which started with his first great success and immensely popular ¨Tombs of the Blind dead¨ which to be continued by a trilogy : ¨Return of evil dead¨ , ¨Ship of Zombies or Blind dead 2¨ and ¨Blind dead 3 or The night of the sea gulls¨ . Amando owns his own studio and created and/or designed many of the simple special effects sequences you see in any of his many imaginative undertakings . Amando who passed away in 2001 was a good craftsman who realized a lot of amusing as well as entertaining films . He displayed a varied career and specialized on all kind of genres as Western in "Rebels in Canada" and "Grave of the Gunfighter" , Monster movie as ¨Serpent of sea¨ and , of course, Terror as ¨Malenka¨ , The possessed¨ and ¨night of witches¨ . Ossorio also studied painting and photography , moreover, he also made his living as a painter of creepy images of the Knights Templar in his later years.

Demon Witch Child (1975)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Amando de Ossorio, director behind the four Blind Dead films, wrote and directed this rip of The Exorcist but he adds a few neat twists to make the film stand on its own. A young baby goes missing and the police suspect a local Satan worshipper so they bring her in for questioning. During the interrogation the witch praises Satan and then kills herself but soon her evil spirit returns and takes over the body of a young girl. There are countless items in this film that borrow heavily from The Exorcist but do Ossorio also adds some new stuff like the twist of the possession coming due to a witch. There's also a couple eerie scenes involving the witches and the ending is quite good. However, like all these Italian rips, there's a lot being ripped off from the troubled priest to the dirty talking little girl. The dubbing to this film is pretty bad so the dirty talk from the child comes off with more laughs than anything else. This is no great masterpiece but it's certainly one of the better rips I've seen.

A person breaks into a church, and steals a chalice while leaving behind a mess and a Satanic calling card. That would be bad enough, but just wait until a little girl gets possessed and becomes the Demon Witch Child! Written and directed by Amando de Ossorio. He has made a number of low budget horror films, particularly in the "blind dead" series.

Interesting score, vaguely reminiscent of Claudio Simonetti's work.

The girl, Susan, is very weird, like a small child trapped in a preteen's body. Some of this may be due to the off dubbing, though. Her extreme innocence does seem logical in comparison to her transformation, making it seem more extreme. Very nice makeup effects, too. (Was this you, Pablo Perez?) (Interestingly, the actress playing Susan was the Spanish dub for Linda Blair in "The Exorcist").

There are some "Exorcist" similarities, but it is not a blatant ripoff, even if this film was clearly inspired by it. When the priest gets called either "queer or impotent", that is pretty amusing.

There is some completely erroneous nonsense about inheriting languages through genes, which may remain dormant for generations. I cannot imagine that any credible scientist would ever say such silly things.

Absolutely deserves a decent DVD release. Whoever owns the rights, if any, and the original negative needs to get this one released to us in a clean copy. Someone call Dark Sky! They are the people for the job.

This film apparently was a Spanish attempt to cash in on the success of The Exorcist, which came out the year before. To sum up the cliche'd plot, a cult of Satanic gypsies kidnaps a little baby boy, and the police arrest an old gypsie witch that they suspect has the child. The witch jumps out of a window to her death, but manages to possess the police chief's teenage daughter. The girl starts getting a foul mouth on her, and later transforms into a teenager version of the old witch and sacrifices the missing baby to Satan and then proceeds to kill a few more people for good measure. After the little witch tries to kidnap her baby cousin to sacrifice, finally a priest tries to exorcise her leading to the rather pointless ending.

Overall, the movie was very slow and had little originality to offer. The violence wasn't particularly gory or graphic and there aren't many special effects to speak of. The only good thing I can say for this movie is that they did a good job of making the transformed version of the young girl look a lot like the old witch.

An old hag kidnaps a baby as an offering to Satan from her gypsy witch coven. The authorities, under pressure from their commissioner, bring her into custody, and during an interrogation she leaps from a window to her death. The commissioner is hence cursed by her gypsy "family", and soon his pretty daughter becomes host to the old hag's evil spirit. As one might expect, she starts talking like a trucker, slapping her mother, and taking to an overall Regan Macneil-ish nastiness(which, in this case, includes a castration wherein we find her skipping about gleefully with a bloody, floppy dong in her paw). Before long, she undergoes a physical transformation into something resembling a child with Rapid Aging Syndrome.

DEMON WITH CHILD/THE POSSESSED is generally noted as a kenspeckle Spanish Xerox of THE EXORCIST, though it does have a few small marks of intrinsic distinction. Despite the poor dubbing and intermediate production values, a macabre atmosphere is retiringly maintained which saves the film from buckling over completely...but barely.

In toto, this is a nominal treadmill chiller, but I can't say I found it a regrettable watch, or even that I wouldn't possibly watch it again.

4.5/10