Le notti di Satana

Something is wrong with Leila (Grace Mills) and Father Adrian Dunning (Paul Naschy) is called in to evaluate the situation.

Some may call this a ripoff of The Exorcist with Linda Blair, but I'd rather see the flesh displayed here than some special effects. The fact is that The Exorcist was not seen in Spain before this film came out.

Anyway, it's a Paul Naschy film, and I am a completest.

You won't see amazing special effects, because they didn't exist. So it looks fake at times, but it was a good story and an interesting film.

Paul Naschy stole the show. I wasn't his finest hour, but he was head and shoulders above the rest. The makeup was good, and one could ignore how the film seemed to go all over the place just to see Naschy.

Suspense, mystery, shocks and grisly horror is this middling terror film . It results to be a creepy movie plenty of horrible and disgusting images . This filthy and spooky movie concerns about Grace Mills ( a Linda Blair character lookalike) , she's a young with unsettling problems , at the beginning she has a car crash in an accident along with her boyfriend and then she results wounded . Meanwhile, a satanic cult in the small village commits a series of ominous crimes that have the Police Inspector baffled , as there appears various head-spinning corpses . The dead hold spitting signs on their tombs as ¨Bitch¨ and ¨Son of bitch¨. Her mental problems and intervention an Anglican priest (Paul Naschy , a Father Karras-alike) lead to an act of possession . The mother ( the late Maria Perschy who worked for Howard Hawks and here plays as an Ellen Burstyn role-alike ) who has two daughters (Maria Kosti and Grace Mills)and another son adopted is worried and asks help for her small daughter, the latter is possessed and Naschy attempt to free her from possession by the devil suffering from the effects of being deeply harassed . She's throughly possessed and the Anglican tries to help the lass. An exorcism by the Father exorcist seems to be the only mean to heal the young . The priest suffering incredible risks trying to unravel mystery of demon living inside the daughter.

This terrifying exploitation picture displays eerie horror ,witchcraft, grisly killing, satanism and lots of blood . This is a fairly suspenseful and horrifying story, based on a supposedly true flick. This tale about a young girl who is possessed by a malevolent spirit begins well and grows more and more until the creepy and ghastly finale .Revolting, horrible scenes and nasty images take place on orgy scenes worshipping a rare idol . Mediocre performance of Paul Naschy or Jacinto Molina . The late Naschy was a good professional , writing, filmmaking and acting about hundred titles , mainly in terror genre. ¨Exorcismo¨ is written by Molina along with 21 screenplays as ¨Mark of Wolfman¨, ¨Night of Walpurgis¨, ¨Vengeance of the mummy¨, ¨Licantropo¨, among them . He directed 13 films as ¨The Cantabros¨, ¨Return of Wolfman¨, ¨The Beast and the magic sword¨ and several others.

¨Exorcismo¨is made in ¨The Exorcist¨ style , its an early exploitation , in fact in Spain was previously exhibited and as Jacinto Molina told was written three years before . The Exorcist spawned countless imitations and rip-offs, , as in Spain were made three at the same time , as ¨ Devil play¨ by Jorge Darnell (74), ¨Endemoniada ¨ by Amando De Ossorio(74) and ¨The Spiritist¨(1975) . ¨Exorcismo ¨ packs colorful scenarios filmed in England with a lush mansion and sinister and mysterious atmosphere with acceptable cinematography by Francisco Sanchez , though cheesy special effects on the levitation scenes. Creepy and frightening soundtrack fitting to terror scenes . Acceptable and scary make-up by Adolfo Ponte .The motion picture is regularly directed by Juan Bosch. He's a Spanish craftsman, working from the 70s in all kind of genres and B movies. Rating : 4, 5 , Average . Pretty grim but interesting for genre aficionados and Paul Naschy fans.

Paul Naschy is a kindly priest in this psycho-demonic thriller, with plenty of nods to THE EXORCIST without being a complete clone thereof. One obvious difference is that the girl in EXORCISM (aka: EXORCISMO) is possessed by her eeevil, dead father instead of the devil.

This movie is on par with other European possession epics of the era.

BEST BITS: #1- The possessed girl's hideously transformed eyes! #2- The devil dog attack! #3- The naked devil women running around during the Satanic ritual sequence! #4- The all-too-short grand finale!

Another triumph for Mr. Naschy...

While I certainly consider The Exorcist to be a horror classic, I have to admit that I don't hold it in quite as high regard as many other horror fans do. As a consequence of that, I haven't seen many of The Exorcist rip-offs, and if Exorcismo is anything to go by, I'll have to say that's a good thing as this film is boring as hell and certainly not worth spending ninety minutes on it! In fairness to the other Exorcist rip-offs, this is often considered one of the worst, and so maybe it wasn't the best place for me to start. It's not hard to guess what the plot will be: basically it's the same as the one in The Exorcist and sees a girl get possessed by a demonic spirit (which happens to be the spirit of her dead father). The village priest is then called in to perform the exorcism. Like many Spanish horror films, this one stars Paul Naschy, who is pretty much the best thing about the film. Exorcismo was directed by Juan Bosch, who previously directed the derivative Spanish Giallo 'The Killer Wore Gloves'. I haven't seen any of his other films, but on the basis of these two: I believe that originality wasn't one of his strong points. There's not a lot of good things I can say about the film itself; it mostly just plods along and the exorcism scene isn't worth waiting for. I certainly don't recommend it!

Exorcismo (1975)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Leila (Grace Mills) goes to a "love in" with her boyfriend and soon afterwards she begins acting strange towards her family. Over time her attitude grows more aggressive and before long her family asks Father Dunning (Paul Naschy) to look at her. Before long he realizes that she fell into a Satanic sect and has become possessed.

EXORCISMO is a Spanish horror film that's yet another cash-in on the success of THE EXORCIST. Naschy, who co-wrote the screenplay, says this was written before he saw that film but who knows what the truth is. Either way, for the most part this here is a mildly entertaining horror film that starts off well enough and ends on a good note but there are some questionable moments stuck in the middle.

If you've seen enough of these EXORCIST-rips then you know that all of them add a few touches of their own. The screenplay here pretty basic stuff, although the love in is something new and there are a few other new things including something involving a dog. I thought the film actually worked quite well in a sleazy type of way and especially early on with all of the nudity. The ending of the picture is also quite good as the possession aspect goes full steam and we get a pretty good exorcism sequence.

As I said, the biggest flaw with the movie is the middle section. For some reason the sleaze factor pretty much dries up and we've got around forty-five minutes worth of bland footage where not much is going on except for characters talking to one another. I do feel that Naschy gave a good performance and it was nice getting to see him in a straight role that didn't require make-up or messing around with women. Molina was also attractive in her role and added some fun.

EXORCISMO isn't the greatest film that you're going to see but it does offer up some mild entertainment that makes it worth watching if you're a fan of Naschy or the genre.