As Filhas de Satã

I'd never heard of this 70's horror movie until the other night when TCM had a late night airing. I've always liked Tom Selleck and even in this effective but somewhat cheesy scare-fest he does an awesome acting job! For the time and plot, this movie does include some chilling suspense and eerie music and/or chanting--the freaky calling out of the wife's name in the middle of the night was a perfect tool to get you on the edge of your seat!

However, the ending was really stupid in my opinion! I don't want to say what happens, as I don't want to really include a "spoiler." But, with all the build-up and suspense, the way the film concludes was a total let-down and ridiculous! To me no matter how awesome or superb a movie was...if the end is terrible then it ruins the rest of it as well.

I would not recommend bothering with this...unless you're a die-hard Selleck fan, or a 70's cult-horror film collector (that doesn't care how films play out or end). However, if you like Selleck...stick with "Magnum, p.i.!"

Vic Diaz was so good in The Big Bird Cage that I just had to see him again to see if he was as funny in all his films. He was in 112 films and is considered the jolly evil fat man of Filipino exploitation cinema. It may take a while to track them all down.

As a bonus, this is Tom Selleck's (Magnum P.I., Blue Bloods, Jesse Stone series) third film. He even has a mustache then.

Jim (Selleck) finds a painting of a witch burning, and the with looks like a dead ringer for his wife Chris (Barra Grant). Suspicious things start occurring. She blurts out the exact date of the burning, and a dog in the painting disappears after she sees it for real. Things just get stranger from there.

It's all about revenge for a 16th century crime. Very interesting.

A very rarely seen little oddity this but I like it. The unusual location of the Philippines is pleasing and there a couple of very creepy sequences. The Robertsons seem positively crazy about each other which is a sure sign she'll end up doing very nasty things to him, but they were both quite believeable and the supporting cast were all adequate. The painting that is the centre of the whole mystery is very chilling, especially in the scenes where Jim meets the new housekeeper and then glances at the picture and sees her in it. The death of the Doctor is very eerie but best of all has to be the very simple scene of Chris lying in bed and hearing a voice in the night calling out "Christina..." Very creepy especially if you are watching this movie for the first time on late night television and wonder if the sound is on the screen or not! There is also an extraordinary sequence where Jim sees movement outside the house at night and investigates only to be attacked. When he returns to the house the incident is almost forgotten in his bemusement..just like a sort of "was it a dream?" sleepy kind of unreality. My main reason for liking this movie is that compared to what Hammer were churning out it is different and scary, unlike most of Hammer's films, and doesn't need to rely on gore. It also predates The Omen and The Exorcist and yet deals with the subject matter intelligently, so in a sense it is ahead of it's time. Good stuff...not exactly the greatest movie ever made but effective and successful in its clearly limited ambitions.

Was Tom Selleck really in this film? Yes. He wasn't a star yet - "Magnum P.I." was still a few years away. The rest of the cast isn't much to talk about, although there is a scene where a blonde women is stripped topless, her arms strung up high, and she is whipped as part of a cult event. Other than that, not much else to talk about. I have to give credit to the actress who played that role - she looked uncomfortable and I wonder how much of it was acting.

Early Tom Selleck film where he and his wife encounter a coven of witches. The coven think that Selleck's wife is a reincarnated witch from a painting. It is always good to see the great character actor Vic Diaz but even he can't help with the fact that the material here just isn't that compelling. Some good exploitation like when Barra Grant as his wife is strapped down naked and whipped. But there are too many slow scenes that drag on agonizingly and I think the film could have been boosted with more shots of the exotic Philippine locale. Not terrible but story needed some sort of adrenaline shot somewhere in the middle.