Bacchanales infernales

This one has tons of titles, like Exorcist 3: Cries and Shadows, The Possessor, Un Urlo Dalle Tenebre and Naked Exorcist. It lives up to those titles, trust me. Particularly the last one.

A nun learns that her brother, Piero, has become possessed due to a pendant he found and a mystery woman who he isn't sure that he saw. Within minutes — no need for the build of the original here — Piero has chest pains, is flipping out on everyone and sometimes becomes the previously mentioned woman. His powers aren't well defined, but you won't care. Your jaw will be on the floor at the craziness that this film has in its grip.

Oh yeah. There was also a huge Satanic orgy in the house a few years ago. We know this because this scene is repeated throughout the movie. Luckily, the Exorcist (Richard Conte in his last film. Conte was going to play Don Corleone in The Godfather, but as the film increased in budget, A-list actors started competing for the part. He did end up playing one of the film's villains, Don Barzini.).

If you watched The Exorcist and thought, "This would be so much better with b-roll footage of Rome and, oh by the way, could we make it a ton sleazier?" then yes, this film is exactly what you want. Franco Lo Cascio is the perfect director for this, as despite starting his career with 1975's Mark of Zorro (starring George Hilton from All the Colors of the Dark as Zorro!), he's worked mostly as Luca Damiano in the Italian porn industry.

For all the movies that Warner Brothers sued out of theaters, the fact that this one got through unscathed is a miracle. Then again, when we're referring to movies about Satanic possession, perhaps that isn't the best choice of words.

A warning: this film is not for the weak. If you were offended by The Exorcist, you're in for it. If Amityville II: The Possession upset you, you are also in for it. If you're looking for a film that doesn't suddenly stop the narrative and starts showing b-roll footage of nightclubs, you are also in for it.

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There were many good and bad European Exorcist clones turned out in the mid-Seventies but for my money this manages to be one of the most ridiculous and sex filled Exorcist clones of all time. Released on its native Italian soil as `Un Urlo Dalle Tenebra' and given the well deserved come-on title Naked Exorcism when it was released in English. Hard to believe that anyone could better Naked Exorcism for a greater English title, but someone did just that when it was re-released on tape in both the US and UK in the the mid-Eighties as Exorcist 3-Cries and Shadows with seemingly drug induced video sleeve notes. Luckily for the cheeky distributors, the producers of the official Exorcist 3 never sued but to further complicate things one of the Italian titles translates as The Exorcist Part 2 (then again it is more watchable than the real Exorcist 2). Directed by one Elo Pannaccio in 1975, Pannaccio apparently directed another horror film (Sesso Della Strega) which also boasted an Exorcist inspired plot, he's also responsible for numerous sweat and grunt home grown pornos, and here tries to fuse the two genres. Naked Exorcism is about Mark a mild mannered archeological research participant who is gradually possessed by the Devil, and ends up puking on and insulting members of the clergy and his family. The reason for his possession and subsequent flying furniture attacks on priests is a toss between the influence of an 18th century Devil worship orgy which happened in his house (and is repeated a lot in the film) or the person the bizarre and inept video notes describe as `evil Haggia', an Italian floozy who frenziedly overacts and spends lots of time in the nude. Haggia appears to be some witch who torments Mark after he picks up a sacred talisman. She forces him to cut his girlfriend's throat, then later tries to cop a feel of Mark's mother before throwing her downstairs. Mark himself is eventually possessed although the acting is so bad that he actually comes across more like a drunk in a bar than the Devil. His sister cops most of his verbal abuse `stupid slut, lecherous bitch' since she's a nun. What is remarkable about the whole endeavor is how err religiously it follows the Exorcists set pieces- we're talking whole scenes here. In fact the only moments in the film that don't rip off the Exorcist are the endless nude and many lesbian scenes. Unnecessary to the plot, but for sleazy sexploitation fare like this a necessity. The most shocking footage appears in flashbacks, where its revealed that the nun sister turns out to have spent time in an asylum, what I here you ask has that to do with anything? Well nothing really other than a chance to show some very real looking footage of mentally deranged women in an asylum, and mad naked women being tied down to beds while gratuitous bongo music plays in the background. The Exorcist himself doesn't turn up till about an hour in, in the form of a tired looking Richard Conte ( in one of his final roles) and in the film's piece de resistance of rip-offs he stands outside a window with light coming out of it, just like in another certain film. Exorcist purists will no doubt be horrified since if you stick with it you'll also witness disco music, childlike make-up that apes Dick Smith's Linda Blair makeup, a soundtrack borrowed from the Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, not to mention pointless flashbacks to the Middle Ages that seem like outtakes from a long lost 70's remake of Witchcraft through the Ages. Eurotrash fans should also look out for Bruno Mattei regular Frank Garfield (Zombie Creeping Flesh's ping pong ball eyed soldier) as the master of ceremonies in the orgy scenes. As I've already mentioned the film is one of many which uses the Exorcist format to spin off a sex pot-boiler. The bait of Devil possession proving an excuse for numerous deviate sexual behaviors in ways that the puritan Friedkin movie wouldn't dare was obviously just too hard to resist for most Euro sleaze personalities - Jess Franco, Andrea Bianchi, Paul Naschy, Amand o de Ossario and many more all made their own versions with varied results. Naked Exorcism certainly has little claim to be best attempt at this, but its certainly the most wackiest and incoherent. Pannaccio (or Frank C Lucas as he is called in the English version) obviously knows his kinky sex scenes and piles on the nude scenes at a gobsmaking rate. I don't think he had a clue when it comes to the movies horror trappings, and overplays all the horror scenes in a barnstorming fashion -resulting in a truly deranged mess of a film. This thing really is incredible, boasting to be a `film you will never forget' you've probably heard that come-on tag line a zillion times before, on movies that were anything but memorable, but in this case believe me there's truth in advertising.

This is one of your more blatant Italian "Exorcist" rip-offs. The main difference between this and the original model though (besides the criminally low budget and incompetent film-making) is that the possession here involves an adolescent boy rather than adolescent girl. The devil takes the form of a voluptuously naked, red-headed witch, who the boy first spies while taking pictures of a waterfall. Later when she shows up in his room, he does what any normal teenager would do when confronted by an attractive and willing woman--he tries to strangle her! Then he slashes her throat with a knife which somehow causes his tease of a girlfriend to drop dead miles away where she's frugging to bad music in a disco. Finally, the witch takes control of the boy and uses him to go after his mother and his sister (who's a nun) in quasi-incestuous/quasi-lesbian scenes that only the Italians could (or would) perpetrate. It turns out the witch actually had a relationship way back during the Inquisition with an ancestor/previous incarnation of the sister(they're played by the same actress anyway), and she somehow "impregnated" this ancestor with a devil child, who was spared the latter's burning at the stake. This plot-line is summarily dropped, but it does allow the movie to rip-off Mario Bava's "Black Sunday" as well as "The Exorcist", and even more importantly, it allows for lots of scenes of satanic orgies and that old Italian favorite--hot, naked nun sex!

With the exception of the most famous (and most boring)of them, "Beyond the Door", all of these Italian "Exorcist" knock-offs added a lot of sex into the mix. Some are satanic movies with sex ("The Antichrist", "Damned in Venice", "Ring of Darkness") while others could be better describe as sex movies with a little satanism ("The Eerie Midnight Horror Show", "Malabimba"). This movie is roughly half and half with a lot of nude scenes by the sister, the mother, and obviously the witch. This might keep heterosexual male viewers, at least, from slipping into a boredom-induced coma. The movie really suffers, however, from a lack of name or even recognizable actors. Richard Conte collects an easy paycheck by showing up at the very end as the exorcist. Partizia Gorzi, who plays the sister/nun, was in the giallo "Crazy Desires of a Murderer", and also played another ill-fated woman in Joe D'Amato's sleaze classic "Emanuelle's Revenge".

I'd definitely recommend this to all the Italian devil movie completists out there--but that might be tantamount to recommending it to myself. As for everyone else, uhhh. . .

Richard Conte picks up one last easy paycheck before checking out for good in his last film. Conte fans should probably be warned right away that the man himself doesn't show face until one hour and seven minutes into proceedings, but don't write off the film because of that - there's plenty of stupidity here to keep you going before Conte shows up.

Now, this Exorcist rip-off establishes its plot in a series of flashbacks so it takes a bit of patience to figure out why the film has seemingly jumped to the young guy tied to a bed talking like the singer of Cannibal Corpse. All of this seems to involve young Peter being drawn to a medallion lying in a river by a naked redhead that sends him mental and driving away his childhood sweetheart. Peter by the way sports a massive mullet and can act about as well as a discarded sock lying in the central reservation of the M5.

Peter starts acting a bit strange and when the redhead turns up in his room she prompts him to slash her throat, which causes his girlfriend's throat to be cut even though she's miles away in a disco giving it laldy on the dancefloor. This prompts a series of events where Peter himself tries to do away with family members or he turns into the redhead and does the same. This has got something to do with Franco Garofalo holding some sort of orgy years prior to this which is explained by a priest but by this point I was wondering when Richard Conte would show up.

Basically, this film takes scenes from the Exorcist (moving beds, swearing, spewing up, etc etc) and inserts rampant nudity and sleaze in between. At one point Peter even tries to shag his own mum, then his sister! That's the kind of romantic subplot you need in a film like this. It's bizarre how people's opinions differ massively on these Exorcist rip off films - some say this is the worst, but it's far from boring, and yet others say Beyond The Door is most boring, and I thought that one was the best.

This is pure Italian trash by the way so if you don't like that stuff, forget it. Richard Conte's last film too - he had a fatal heart attack the same year this was released.

Elo Pannacciò's "Un Urlo nelle tenebre" aka "Cries & Shadows" (1975) is another Exorcist rip-off from the Italian continent, by a director who was totally unknown to me before (and is likely to remain so, too!). There are bad bad films and good bad films, and I'm glad to say this makes it more to the latter part, due to its incredible badliness that makes some of the stupidest efforts of Italian / European exploitation cinema look very convincing. I mean mostly the acting of the possessed protagonist teen; rarely have I seen anyone expressing his emotions of "fear", "hatred", "blasphemy" and so on more unconvincingly and amusingly! Just look at his eyes and how much he tries in every scene! The film runs 82 minutes in PAL version (from Luminous, if anyone knows about possible cuts, please contact!) which is not bad for a film like this and I managed to sit through it very well. The Devil worshipping scene at the beginning of the film is rather funny, with huge, inverted and red pentagram on the wall and bunch of people around the "sacrifice." There's some of the usual nunsploitation/exploitation elements on display, like the group sex orgy and some gore, but compared to some other films of the time and genre, this is surprisingly tame and goreless. I hugely recommend Renato Polselli's "The Reincarnation of Isabel" which is among the sleaziest demonic b-films of the seventies.

There is one thing I find especially amusing in "Cries and Shadows". When the Devil inside the character starts to speak to the exorcist and another people around him, he screams "I live by your lies!!" and the like which makes me wonder how can he be in physical existence in the first place, if the writer suggests the religion He originates from is only lies? Maybe I really shouldn't think about it any more, but it managed to make me smile for the rest of the film! I recommend not to waste too much time or money to track this rather rare and unknown title down, but if you do, some juicy laughs are guaranteed to follow. I promise!