La endemoniada

Demon Witch Child is Amando de Ossorio's answer to The Exorcist. It involves an evil witch who is killed and later takes possession of an innocent little girl to continue her misdeeds. Most people are aware of de Ossorio through his Blind Dead movies. To be honest, I didn't realize he had other horror outings. So this was a surprise to me when I picked up a "Grindhouse" box set which featured Demon Witch Child. After viewing it, I wish I still didn't know de Ossorio made other films. Not only is it a terrible film, but it is also on the boring side. A cardinal sin in my book. It never once shows the promise or atmosphere that Tombs of the Blind Dead had. Unfortunately, I still feel that de Ossorio is an overrated director.

A person breaks into a church, and steals a chalice while leaving behind a mess and a Satanic calling card. That would be bad enough, but just wait until a little girl gets possessed and becomes the Demon Witch Child! Written and directed by Amando de Ossorio. He has made a number of low budget horror films, particularly in the "blind dead" series.

Interesting score, vaguely reminiscent of Claudio Simonetti's work.

The girl, Susan, is very weird, like a small child trapped in a preteen's body. Some of this may be due to the off dubbing, though. Her extreme innocence does seem logical in comparison to her transformation, making it seem more extreme. Very nice makeup effects, too. (Was this you, Pablo Perez?) (Interestingly, the actress playing Susan was the Spanish dub for Linda Blair in "The Exorcist").

There are some "Exorcist" similarities, but it is not a blatant ripoff, even if this film was clearly inspired by it. When the priest gets called either "queer or impotent", that is pretty amusing.

There is some completely erroneous nonsense about inheriting languages through genes, which may remain dormant for generations. I cannot imagine that any credible scientist would ever say such silly things.

Absolutely deserves a decent DVD release. Whoever owns the rights, if any, and the original negative needs to get this one released to us in a clean copy. Someone call Dark Sky! They are the people for the job.

This film apparently was a Spanish attempt to cash in on the success of The Exorcist, which came out the year before. To sum up the cliche'd plot, a cult of Satanic gypsies kidnaps a little baby boy, and the police arrest an old gypsie witch that they suspect has the child. The witch jumps out of a window to her death, but manages to possess the police chief's teenage daughter. The girl starts getting a foul mouth on her, and later transforms into a teenager version of the old witch and sacrifices the missing baby to Satan and then proceeds to kill a few more people for good measure. After the little witch tries to kidnap her baby cousin to sacrifice, finally a priest tries to exorcise her leading to the rather pointless ending.

Overall, the movie was very slow and had little originality to offer. The violence wasn't particularly gory or graphic and there aren't many special effects to speak of. The only good thing I can say for this movie is that they did a good job of making the transformed version of the young girl look a lot like the old witch.

An old hag kidnaps a baby as an offering to Satan from her gypsy witch coven. The authorities, under pressure from their commissioner, bring her into custody, and during an interrogation she leaps from a window to her death. The commissioner is hence cursed by her gypsy "family", and soon his pretty daughter becomes host to the old hag's evil spirit. As one might expect, she starts talking like a trucker, slapping her mother, and taking to an overall Regan Macneil-ish nastiness(which, in this case, includes a castration wherein we find her skipping about gleefully with a bloody, floppy dong in her paw). Before long, she undergoes a physical transformation into something resembling a child with Rapid Aging Syndrome.

DEMON WITH CHILD/THE POSSESSED is generally noted as a kenspeckle Spanish Xerox of THE EXORCIST, though it does have a few small marks of intrinsic distinction. Despite the poor dubbing and intermediate production values, a macabre atmosphere is retiringly maintained which saves the film from buckling over completely...but barely.

In toto, this is a nominal treadmill chiller, but I can't say I found it a regrettable watch, or even that I wouldn't possibly watch it again.

4.5/10

Demon Witch Child (1975)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Amando de Ossorio, director behind the four Blind Dead films, wrote and directed this rip of The Exorcist but he adds a few neat twists to make the film stand on its own. A young baby goes missing and the police suspect a local Satan worshipper so they bring her in for questioning. During the interrogation the witch praises Satan and then kills herself but soon her evil spirit returns and takes over the body of a young girl. There are countless items in this film that borrow heavily from The Exorcist but do Ossorio also adds some new stuff like the twist of the possession coming due to a witch. There's also a couple eerie scenes involving the witches and the ending is quite good. However, like all these Italian rips, there's a lot being ripped off from the troubled priest to the dirty talking little girl. The dubbing to this film is pretty bad so the dirty talk from the child comes off with more laughs than anything else. This is no great masterpiece but it's certainly one of the better rips I've seen.