Deviation

Julian and Rebbecca,a mysterious couple who live in the virtually empty autumnal woods and practice taxidermy.They capture Olivia and subject her to the mysteries of pleasure and sex.Her lover Paul is murdered by Rebecca,who is a predatory female serial killer."Deviation" is a quiet and unsettling little film punctuated with the scenes of violence and sexual perversion.The psychedelic drug orgy sequence is fantastic as is the sex scene between Rebecca and old doctor,which leads to savage murder.The autumnal mood of "Vampyres","Symptoms" and "Whirlpool" is present here in spades.Larraz is also capable of building atmosphere in a very subtle way.A must-see for fans of European exploitation.8 deviations out of 10.

Super, spirited and sexy tale from the master of sex and witchcraft in the English countryside, even if he is Spanish. See also, Black Candles, Symptoms and Vampyres if you like this as much as me. Larraz was very good at catching that brief period in England when it seemed that little rich kids could do just about anything they wanted. And what a lot wanted to do was sex and drugs and play with the paranormal. In this instance we start out with a tale of taxidermy but somehow that gets forgotten and we have a more usual tale of pretty suburban girl lured into posh kids den of iniquity. Lisbet Lundquist is stunning as the vampire like lady with a penchant for the perverse, and worse and her accomplice, Julian is played most effectively by Karl Lanchbury. Its all very believable, the orgy and drug scenes are exceptionally well done and as for the seduction of the elderly chemist by aforementioned vampire like lady, well do see for yourself, if you can find a copy.

If you're a fan of director Jose Larraz, you probably won't find this obscure early effort as good as "Vampyres" or "The Coming of Sin" (both of which, unlike this one, have been released on legitimate DVD), but it's better than his recently unearthed (and somewhat disappointing) first effort "Whirlpool",and it's definitely better than most of his later work.

A middle-aged man and his young mistress crash their car and end up in the eerie country estate of a creepy young man (the same actor from "Whirlpool"), his sultry sister, and a bed-ridden aunt who seems to be alternately psychic and psychotic. Not surprisingly, the young man is an amateur taxidermist with an interest in tattooed flesh, and the sister turns out to be a crazed sex killer. Strangely though, Larraz doesn't play up the incest angle like he did in "Whirlpool". He also throws in a couple sex orgies with the brother's hippie friends that are pretty gratuitous and really detract from the eerie isolation of the estate. Still this movie has a lot more atmosphere than "Whirlpool" and it has acting that, while certainly not good, does not take away from the plot at least. Probably the he oddest thing about this movie is the sexual coupling of some very unattractive middle-aged and elderly men (including a hilariously horny druggist)with very attractive young women. (If I ever become bald and paunchy and sprout a pair of bad pork-chop sideburns, I think I'll relocate to the English countryside where all the action apparently is).

This is probably not the best place to start if you're not already a fan of Jose Larraz, but those already familiar with this offbeat director will no doubt find it pretty entertaining.

Larraz proved himself remarkably adept at creating macabre, off-beat, evocatively shot erotic psychodramas, deservedly lauded for his genuinely unsettling mini-masterpiece 'Symptoms'. The prodigiously gifted Iberian genre filmmaker creates an equally skewed vibe with his dope-raddled, spectacularly smutty beatnik boff-fest 'Deviation'. Following an late night automotive mishap, a blandly bickering couple are offered succour in a distinctly doomy domicile by openly hedonistic, morbidly oversexed taxidermist, Julian (Karl Lanchbury) and his erotic con-conspirator, the strikingly sinister strumpet, Rebecca (Sibyla Gray).

Shaken by the accident, the querulous couple swiftly discover that their horny hosts are an unusually gregarious pair, uninhibitedly holding wild, chemically-enhanced sex orgies within their eerily isolated mansion. Wonderfully warped, and wickedly lascivious in equal measure, Larraz's deliciously degenerated, off-kilter exploitation gem is ripe for rediscovery. Not without missteps, the goofy hippy patios is hilarious, and there's rather more soft-core shunt than grue, but, Larraz is an estimable, uniquely stylish perpetrator of far out fleshly phantasmagoria, and 'Deviation' remains a tantalizingly lurid trip into THC-soaked 70s saturnalia.

Jose Larraz is a very skilled filmmaker. His SYMPTOMS (1974) is among the most atmospheric and best of horror pictures. It boasts a miasma of nuanced menace that is not unlike Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW (1973). Immediately after "Symptoms" Larraz made the stylish but sleazy VAMPYRES, and thence charted a course of exploitation films.

DEVIATION is one of his earliest films. In terms of quality it falls somewhere in between "Symptoms" and "Vampyres". The intense, unsettling, fabulously edited pre-credits sequence, replete with a pulse-pounding score by Stelvio Cipriani, had me prepared to proclaim Larraz one of the pre-eminent horror directors. The following 20 minutes or so are also very good, as the story follows a young couple that becomes stranded in the middle of nowhere and is offered overnight refuge in a large English manor. The male half of the duo senses something is wrong and investigates. He is quickly despatched, and the house's inhabitants, a sadistic brother and sister, turn their lascivious attentions to the female boarder, who is blissfully unaware of any peculiarities.

Sadly, the middle section of the film, involving a tiresome succession of drug orgies and couplings, isn't nearly as strong. Larraz's command of the cinematics, however, remains consistently excellent. He has an innate ability to craft scares and suspense, but it is sometimes simply supplanted by his predilection for (fairly innocuous) sex scenes.

Despite the unevenness, "Deviation" is well worth seeking out.