Las amantes del diablo

This Spanish-Italian horror movie from 1971 revolves around the evil Doctor Nescu who seduces various beautiful women, until they take part in his satanic rituals. Altogether tame and very slow moving, not to say boring. It feels like half of the running time is spent by people standing around talking, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. Then smoking another cigarette and drinking another glass of wine. If you didn't watch this movie, you didn't miss much. To mention a few positive things: Krista Nell, usually only in supporting roles, stars as Hilde who tries to escape from the Doctor's spell. She can be seen in a good lead role here. Occasionally we get some nice psychedelic camera work, and a good, scary soundtrack with plenty of organ playing is provided by skilled Italian composer Carlo Savina.

I'm a big fan of Euro horror and went into this one hoping for something along the lines of Sergio Martino's excellent paranoid Giallo All the Colours of the Dark, and came out of it severely disappointed. The plot focuses on Hilda Torres, a woman who decides to infiltrate a strange cult when her sister goes missing. She soon gets noticed by Tils Nescu; doctor and leader of the cult, and he has his own designs in Hilda. The film does look very nice and this is complimented by a cast featuring several nice looking ladies, but this doesn't cover up this film's main problem - that being that it's far too slow and the plot is completely uninteresting for most of the film. There's a hell of a lot of talking in the movie and it started to grind me down after a while. Usually with films like this, I can pick out a few good things to say about it; but Feast for Satan is seriously lacking in anything positive aside from the aforementioned good looking cinematography and actresses. There's a little twist at the end that doesn't really add much to the film and overall I feel safe in saying that even you're a fan of Euro horror, you can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Euro-sleaze from the 70's doesn't get any more prototypic than "Feast of Satan", with its lurid atmosphere, scantily clad women running through the woods all petrified, horrible dunning, sinister organ music overload, shamelessly borrowed influences of American landmark horror movies and the thinnest possible storyline imaginable. When her sister Maria is repatriated from a vacation resort in a severe state of mental shock, with the characteristics of being petrified still noticeable on her face, Hilda Salas travels to the area to investigate what happened. She gradually becomes entangled in a world of occult mystery. The more Hilda gets acquainted with the local high society, and particularly the hunky Dr. Tills Nescu, the more her life is endangered. As said, "Feast of Satan" is pretty standard guff and thus predictable, derivative and largely boring. The film is surprisingly – and unfortunately – very sparing with nudity and gore, so you simply have no choice but to pay attention to the decrepit plot. Due to the complete lack of action and suspense, the film seems to go on forever without revealing any clues regarding the denouement. That is especially annoying since the title pretty much openly gives away what will happen at the end: one giant satanic orgy, of course! Though I have to admit the final couple of twists and red herrings, as well as the climax sequences, uplift the quality level of the movie in general.

Here's a tip in case you really get too bored to be bothered with the actual film. Keep an eye open for the Dr. Tills Nescu's short-sized and mustached employee. He makes the highest amount of pointless cameo appearances I've ever counted. It's like he came for free with the camera!

This is actually more a Spanish horror movie than an Italian one (so it's really more "paella horror" than "spaghetti horror"). I'm sure there was probably Italian co-production money involved, and the cut I saw was obviously not a Spanish one (since it had some brief nudity). But most of the cast was Spanish except for the Austrian actress Krista Nell, who was usually relegated to supporting roles but acquits herself well here as the lead. She plays a woman whose sister has gone around the bend after accidentally becoming involved with a satanic cult, so for some reason she tries infiltrate the same cult with not much better results.

As far as the plot goes, the movie is pretty weak. The directorial style doesn't begin to approach either the best Italian horror/gialli films or the British Hammer films, but it's not bad for early Spanish horror, and this is one of the few Spanish films that could actually be described as "psychedlic" in places (Spain's dictator at the time, Francisco Franco, had little use for the kind of decadence sweeping the rest of Europe that period, but, hey, if it's a bunch of satanists doing it. . .). The acting in general is unremarkable, but Nell and Teresa Gimpera, who plays the jealous girlfriend of the cult leader, are better than average. This is one of those movies I wouldn't look to hard for, but it's worth watching if you somehow run across it.

Not much happens that doesn't involve talking. The women are all quite lovely and can act too and the locations are also pretty, though zoom happy camera-work/direction mar this.

There is one pretty fun dream scene but it takes almost an hour to get to it. Lots of zooms to people's eyeballs. You'll lose count. The villain plays the organ a lot, no reason other than I suppose so you know he's the villain.

Some brief nudity but very little violence, it's well enough done to keep you going but just barely, there isn't any psychological dept to the situation and the plot is pretty straight forward--you'll be ahead of the lead investigation almost all the way so that adds to a level of, "Oh let's get on with it." But despite the zoom's overuse this is well produced, but more of a mystery I suppose than a thriller and if you think you're in for a Satan movie.... Well, look elsewhere to scratch that itch. Rather silly gray hair in some scenes, when you see it you'll know what I mean. Mostly for those who need to see everything but there are worse films out there. Too much talk is this one's downfall.