Exorcismo

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.

Paul Naschy claimed to have started writing the screenplay for "Exorcismo" long before "The Exorcist" came out. It is difficult not to conclude that he finished writing it afterward. There is a scene in which the possessed young woman interrupts a party with some Satanic behaviours that immediately recalls the famous "Exorcist" urination scene.

However, the subtle difference between the two scenes is striking. You see, Eurohorror (and especially Giallo, which"Exorcismo" is not) exists largely to show rich people being horrible and living empty lives. The women in these stories are usually creatures of pure hatred.

The scene with young Regan surprising the well-to-do party guests was truly disturbing, as we had an innocent child doing decidedly non-innocent things. The scene in "Exorcismo" when the not-as-young possessed girl makes a scene at the snobbish party, you're thinking, so what? She's only doing what women always do in European horror flicks.

At first I thought they just didn't have the budget or the know-how to make the girl look "possessed", so they just had her act horribly to the other characters, apparently unaware that all women in Eurohorror act that way anyway, so there's nothing shocking about seeing it here.

The movie does, eventually, make with some contact lenses and make-up, and give the possessed girl someone else's voice, but it's too late. There's just not enough going on in this movie to hold your attention for more than a moment. You're either thinking about how much better "The Exorcist" is than this movie, or you're not thinking about this movie at all.

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...

While I certainly consider The Exorcist to be a horror classic, I have to admit that I don't hold it in quite as high regard as many other horror fans do. As a consequence of that, I haven't seen many of The Exorcist rip-offs, and if Exorcismo is anything to go by, I'll have to say that's a good thing as this film is boring as hell and certainly not worth spending ninety minutes on it! In fairness to the other Exorcist rip-offs, this is often considered one of the worst, and so maybe it wasn't the best place for me to start. It's not hard to guess what the plot will be: basically it's the same as the one in The Exorcist and sees a girl get possessed by a demonic spirit (which happens to be the spirit of her dead father). The village priest is then called in to perform the exorcism. Like many Spanish horror films, this one stars Paul Naschy, who is pretty much the best thing about the film. Exorcismo was directed by Juan Bosch, who previously directed the derivative Spanish Giallo 'The Killer Wore Gloves'. I haven't seen any of his other films, but on the basis of these two: I believe that originality wasn't one of his strong points. There's not a lot of good things I can say about the film itself; it mostly just plods along and the exorcism scene isn't worth waiting for. I certainly don't recommend it!

Exorcismo (1975)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Leila (Grace Mills) goes to a "love in" with her boyfriend and soon afterwards she begins acting strange towards her family. Over time her attitude grows more aggressive and before long her family asks Father Dunning (Paul Naschy) to look at her. Before long he realizes that she fell into a Satanic sect and has become possessed.

EXORCISMO is a Spanish horror film that's yet another cash-in on the success of THE EXORCIST. Naschy, who co-wrote the screenplay, says this was written before he saw that film but who knows what the truth is. Either way, for the most part this here is a mildly entertaining horror film that starts off well enough and ends on a good note but there are some questionable moments stuck in the middle.

If you've seen enough of these EXORCIST-rips then you know that all of them add a few touches of their own. The screenplay here pretty basic stuff, although the love in is something new and there are a few other new things including something involving a dog. I thought the film actually worked quite well in a sleazy type of way and especially early on with all of the nudity. The ending of the picture is also quite good as the possession aspect goes full steam and we get a pretty good exorcism sequence.

As I said, the biggest flaw with the movie is the middle section. For some reason the sleaze factor pretty much dries up and we've got around forty-five minutes worth of bland footage where not much is going on except for characters talking to one another. I do feel that Naschy gave a good performance and it was nice getting to see him in a straight role that didn't require make-up or messing around with women. Molina was also attractive in her role and added some fun.

EXORCISMO isn't the greatest film that you're going to see but it does offer up some mild entertainment that makes it worth watching if you're a fan of Naschy or the genre.