Exorcismo

A young woman participates (unknowingly) in a satanic ceremony and gets possessed by the spirit of her late father.

The big issue with this film is whether or not it ripped off "The Exorcist". Some say it did, and can point to such scenes as the "reverse head" murder as evidence. Writer (and star) Paul Naschy claimed he had written the script earlier and it just was not filmed at the time.

Troy Howarth sees something of a middle ground, and suspects that Naschy had read the book but not seen the movie. As such, certain elements would have been lifted. Now, not having read the novel, I do not know hoe much it differs from the film, but assuming there is a great deal of overlap, it does make sense that uncredited source material might result in a similar movie.

The truth of the matter, though, is that it makes no difference. Whether it is a ripoff or just a similar theme, the movie is a lot of fun. A priest acting as a detective, a 1970s possession, and lots of good, clean European cinematography.

Sure, this is not the classic "The Exorcist" is, but it might just be more fun. We never get anything nearly as scary, and the Satanic elements make it in many ways more interesting than a simple possession.

If this were not a very blatant rip-off of "The Exorcist" (which it very obviously is) it might be a halfway decent movie. Not a GREAT movie, but not too bad. But

instead, we get some scenes that we've seen before and were better the first

time around. A young, rich beauty (is there any other kind?) unknowingly

participates in a Satanic ritual and becomes possessed by the spirit of her late father, who died in an insane asylum. Things get moving with a head-turned- around-backwards murder (sound familiar?) and proceed onto the inevitable

demonic fried-egg eyeballs and scabby, vomit encrusted special effects make- up. There's nothing very new or original here. That said, it's still not the worst movie I've ever seen. It suffers from bad dubbing and a lame ending, but there's a few genuine scares, some groovy hippie coolness and lots of naked girls

dancing around, if you're into that sort of thing. Fans of the demonic possession genre may enjoy it, but die-hard fans of The Exorcist may be somewhat

disgusted. Four stars out of ten.

Suspense, mystery, shocks and grisly horror is this middling terror film . It results to be a creepy movie plenty of horrible and disgusting images . This filthy and spooky movie concerns about Grace Mills ( a Linda Blair character lookalike) , she's a young with unsettling problems , at the beginning she has a car crash in an accident along with her boyfriend and then she results wounded . Meanwhile, a satanic cult in the small village commits a series of ominous crimes that have the Police Inspector baffled , as there appears various head-spinning corpses . The dead hold spitting signs on their tombs as ¨Bitch¨ and ¨Son of bitch¨. Her mental problems and intervention an Anglican priest (Paul Naschy , a Father Karras-alike) lead to an act of possession . The mother ( the late Maria Perschy who worked for Howard Hawks and here plays as an Ellen Burstyn role-alike ) who has two daughters (Maria Kosti and Grace Mills)and another son adopted is worried and asks help for her small daughter, the latter is possessed and Naschy attempt to free her from possession by the devil suffering from the effects of being deeply harassed . She's throughly possessed and the Anglican tries to help the lass. An exorcism by the Father exorcist seems to be the only mean to heal the young . The priest suffering incredible risks trying to unravel mystery of demon living inside the daughter.

This terrifying exploitation picture displays eerie horror ,witchcraft, grisly killing, satanism and lots of blood . This is a fairly suspenseful and horrifying story, based on a supposedly true flick. This tale about a young girl who is possessed by a malevolent spirit begins well and grows more and more until the creepy and ghastly finale .Revolting, horrible scenes and nasty images take place on orgy scenes worshipping a rare idol . Mediocre performance of Paul Naschy or Jacinto Molina . The late Naschy was a good professional , writing, filmmaking and acting about hundred titles , mainly in terror genre. ¨Exorcismo¨ is written by Molina along with 21 screenplays as ¨Mark of Wolfman¨, ¨Night of Walpurgis¨, ¨Vengeance of the mummy¨, ¨Licantropo¨, among them . He directed 13 films as ¨The Cantabros¨, ¨Return of Wolfman¨, ¨The Beast and the magic sword¨ and several others.

¨Exorcismo¨is made in ¨The Exorcist¨ style , its an early exploitation , in fact in Spain was previously exhibited and as Jacinto Molina told was written three years before . The Exorcist spawned countless imitations and rip-offs, , as in Spain were made three at the same time , as ¨ Devil play¨ by Jorge Darnell (74), ¨Endemoniada ¨ by Amando De Ossorio(74) and ¨The Spiritist¨(1975) . ¨Exorcismo ¨ packs colorful scenarios filmed in England with a lush mansion and sinister and mysterious atmosphere with acceptable cinematography by Francisco Sanchez , though cheesy special effects on the levitation scenes. Creepy and frightening soundtrack fitting to terror scenes . Acceptable and scary make-up by Adolfo Ponte .The motion picture is regularly directed by Juan Bosch. He's a Spanish craftsman, working from the 70s in all kind of genres and B movies. Rating : 4, 5 , Average . Pretty grim but interesting for genre aficionados and Paul Naschy fans.

Paul Naschy is a kindly priest in this psycho-demonic thriller, with plenty of nods to THE EXORCIST without being a complete clone thereof. One obvious difference is that the girl in EXORCISM (aka: EXORCISMO) is possessed by her eeevil, dead father instead of the devil.

This movie is on par with other European possession epics of the era.

BEST BITS: #1- The possessed girl's hideously transformed eyes! #2- The devil dog attack! #3- The naked devil women running around during the Satanic ritual sequence! #4- The all-too-short grand finale!

Another triumph for Mr. Naschy...

Maybe I am biased, because I am a great fan of the late Spanish Horror/Cult icon Paul Naschy, but I do not understand how this film is so widely hated. Even my fellow Eurohorror enthusiasts seem to agree that "Exorcismo" (1975) is awful; while this is doubtlessly an incredibly cheesy, silly and trashy slice of Eurosleaze, and furthermore probably the most shameless and obvious of the many European rip-offs of "The Exorcist", I personally still found it to be entertaining enough. I'll be the last one to deny that it lacks suspense and creepiness or that the plot is illogical and stupid, or that the film overall could have used a lot more gore and exploitative elements, and that it has some lengthy parts; personally, I still didn't get bored.

After a car accident, the pretty young Leila (Maria Perschy) changes her behavior drastically. When her brother approaches Father Dunning (Paul Naschy) for help, telling him that it is the bad influence of his sister's boyfriend that has changed her behavior, the priest does not believe him at first. When a person close to Leila turns up dead with the head twisted by 180 degrees, things are getting suspicious...

As mentioned above, the film is probably the most shamelessly obvious rip-off of "The Exorcist" there is, so there is no need to discuss how the plot line lacks originality. There are many elements in this film which may be seen as crappy by some, and as amusing by others. I tend to the second category. The characters are eccentric and their actions often make little to no sense. A Woman who is in her 30s has a son who is in his 30s. Leila's brother and her boyfriend both look extremely weird; the latter lives in a room with silly-looking masks hanging down from strings attached to the ceiling and cupboards on which quotes like "All you need is to f***" are painted. The investigating police-officer is a superstitious freak who thinks the fact that a murder victim was drugged at the time of death is proof that the crime was a ritual murder. The role of a priest is probably not the first one that one might think of as fitting for Paul Naschy, but it actually fits him kinda well (though I tend to like the guy in any role he plays). Naschy is, of course, the main reason to watch this film. Furthermore, there is a lot of stylish sleaze and (as usual for Naschy flicks) tons of gratuitous female nudity. The female cast members are nice to look at: Lovely Grace Mills plays the possessed girl; her mother is played by Maria Perschy, who had previously worked with Naschy in "El Jorobado de la Morgue" ("The Hunchback of the Morgue", 1973) which is probably my personal favorite Naschy-flick, and "Los Ojos Azules de la Muñeca Rota" ("Blue Eyes of a Broken Doll", also 1973), which is also very good. The female cast furthermore includes María Kosty, whose face (as well as her body) is known for her roles in a variety of Spanish Horror and Exploitation features. Everybody keeps complaining about how awful the makeup in this film is, but I actually found it to be decent.

Overall, I can fully understand anyone who calls this film pure crap. It is, without a doubt, cheap and incredibly silly trash; but, personally I still found it entertaining and even enjoyable. This sure isn't for everyone, and apparently not even for all fellow Naschy fans. However, elements such as possession, gratuitous female nudity, satanic orgies, amusing cheesiness and Paul Naschy as a priest are enough to make a film entertaining in my book. 5/10