Los ritos sexuales del diablo

Extremely thin 'plot' of satanic rituals or some such mumbo-jumbo provides the hokey excuse to thread copious amounts of sex scenes together. Straight vanilla sex, masturbation, lesbianism, S&M, bestiality, incest, and a few other sexual proliferation's all get their time in the spotlight here. The problem is the storyline is so dull that the rampant sexuality gets pretty tedious after awhile. Who knew that a film with an intimate goat/ girl encounter could be so damn boring? Well now I do.

Eye Candy: Venessa Hidalgo shows all; Helga Line provides T&A (both on display quite frequently); women viewers get the occasional penis.

My Grade: D+

Region 1 DVD Extras: Trailers for "Pick Up", "Legend of Eight Samurai", "Don't Answer the Phone", "Prime Evil", & "Sister Street Fighter" (also the same DVD holds a second feature movie "Evil Eye")

Jose Ramon Larraz's "Black Candles" is a rare Spanish horror/sleaze film about a young woman named Carol who finds out that various family members are involved with a satanic cult.The film is loaded with sleazy sex and satanism,so I wasn't disappointed.Still it's not as memorable as Larraz's erotic masterpiece "Vampyres".The lighting is poor and the acting is amateurish.The sex scene between a black goat and a woman has to be seen to be believed.There is also an incredibly nasty moment which has a man killed by having a sword shoved into him between his legs.To sum up,if you are into European exploitation cinema give this one a look.However if you like your horror without sleaze avoid this one like the plague.7 out of 10.

What Black Candles lacks in plot and character development, it makes up for in sleaze and overt sexuality. I can't think of the last time I saw a semi-mainstream film this steamy and overloaded with sex scenes and nudity. Most of the time, it's riding a fine line between softcore and hardcore.

Since all the performances have been dubbed, it's hard to judge many of the performances or the dialogue. The story seems to be a take off on Rosemary's Baby with a paranoid woman thinking she's being roped into a Satantic cult for some nefarious reason. These reasons are never made clear and, besides one nasty scene where a man is stabbed by a sword through his rectum, it's light on horror.

Black Candles (1980)

* (out of 4)

Spanish horror film has a sister and her boyfriend going to a rural castle in Spain to search for her brother. What she doesn't know is that her brother got involved in a sex crazed Satanic cult and they've got their eyes on her now. This film is best known for all its softcore sex scenes, which eat up at least half of the 82-minute running time and this isn't a good thing. The film tries desperately hard to be an erotic horror picture but it fails on both levels and by the ten minute mark I started watching the clock waiting for this thing to be over. The sex scenes are trying to be erotic but they often times create some unintentional laughs and this includes a scene where a woman is raped by a goat. Nothing graphic is shown but this is just one example of this film being watered down compared to other movies that were out there in this era including several by Joe D'Amato, which didn't stop at softcore scenes. The horror elements, clearly inspired by Rosemary's Baby, are also very lame and don't contain enough suspense, gore or violence to keep things moving. The pacing of the film is the biggest problem because you'd expect eighty-minutes to fly by in an exploitation film but that's not the case as each scene just drags on and on. This includes the before mentioned sex scenes but the dialogue sequences are even worse. The performances are all bland, which is just the death nail to this thing. Director Beaunstein made films in this horror/sex manor before so all the blame must fall on his shoulders.

I know and like Vampyres, another movie directed by José Ramón Larraz in 1974. That one mixes softporn scenes with some bloodthirsty female vampires. Los ritos sexuales del diablo aka Black Candles mixes some satanic witchcult with, well, softporn. So all in all I dare to say that both movies by Mr. Larraz are only of any interest to you if you like your movies sometimes sleazy and dirty, in that oldschool softporn way. The by other viewers mentioned "goat act" is so obviously fake, it's rather funny than shocking. Anyway, entertained I was. Recommended if names like Jess Franco or Russ Meyer don't let you run away screaming in terror and pain ;)