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'Scream of the Demon Lover' stradles the time period when sex and gore were slowly becoming more explicit and extreme in European genre movies. Made in 1970, the cast is a hodgepodge of nationalities and names, leading one to wonder if anyone could understand each other during shooting...the dialog ie obviously dubbed, so it's possible that the wooden acting is really the result of too many languages being spoken at once. Similar in some ways to Bava's far superior "Whip and Body", this film presents the story of a young female chemist who comes to live in a town's gothic castle helping the young baron find a way to bring his dead brother back to life. Most of the plot twists come from Italian gothic horror films of the 60's , and there is really very little original or striking about the locations or performances. In short, 'Scream of the Demon Lover' is a well-paced but cliche-laden movie that probably will entertain completists only.

I basically rented this one for two reasons: First, I had really enjoyed 'Autopsy' and was curious what other young German genre directers were doing in this vein; secondly, in reading the box credits, I saw that Elke Sommer was in the movie, albeit in a small role. As my personal choice of the hottest of the 60's screen sirens, I was curious as to what she was doing now. The answer to this question, at least if 'Flashback' is any indication, is 'walk-on rolls in domestic B Movies'! This is forgettable nonsense regarding a young woman who is hired on as a French Tutor at an country estate. The direct inspirations seem to be Henry James 'Turn of the Screw' and the American slasher flicks of the 1980's. Just about every cliche of the slasher genre is brought in somewhere...the spoiled kids, the sexually-repressed girl, the strange caretaker (played by Sommer...who looks great for her age, I am happy to report!) , the hedonistic and sadistic 'cool' kids who you just know are not going to be with us to the end of the picture. It's been done, and it's been done far better than 'Flashback'. One other comment, although I rarely mention things like this: the English Dubbing is AWFUL...not even close to synched to the lip movements, and you get the feeling that they were trying to make the movie more 'topical' to an American audience by changing parts of the script. The worst example of this is one of the cloddish local Maintainace Men who finds the first body is given a American Southern Redneck accent, even though his companion is decked out in liederhosen and Tyrolian hat!! For Slasher genre completists only...3 out of 10!

I never saw this movie with English subtitles, and my Spanish is not the best, but Telemundo ran this on Halloween a few years ago and I taped it. I would put this film in the very top tier of horror films, as gripping as Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Director Gruener gets to the real root of the horrific; that horror is not some lunatic standing outside your door with an axe, per se, but a human reaction to trauma and isolation. He emphasises this idea by frequently contrasting the wealth of the young couple at the center of the action with the poverty, misery and superstition found in any Third World country. As the young woman decends to the verge of insanity, she finds herself more and more in contact with this gutteral, almost bestial world that all their luxury cannot protect her from. The shattered fishbowl of the opening scene is used as a metaphor(I think) for the narrow margin between these two worlds; wealth and poverty,the beautiful (Suzane Zamora is an eyeful!) and the grotesque; the sane and the mad. A great film, thoughtfully and sensitively presented!