Bacchanales infernales

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. . .

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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The infamous Zodiac killer went on record in 1973 in a letter to the San Francisco Police Department where he/she/it stated that "The Exorcist is one of the funniest satirical comedies ever made." I wonder what they would have thought of NAKED EXORCISM, an Italian made clone that stars Eddie Munster as a troubled young man with latent designs on his MILFish hottie mom, a taste for pretty young nuns with nice perky breasts and a penchants for wandering around the house naked.

Made by two directors nobody has ever heard of before and culling many of THE EXORCIST's most infamous moments for effect, the film has retained the ability to amuse for decades beyond the time when William Freidkn's movie lost most of it's ability to shock. Eddie Munster finds an ancient amulet while out wandering through the woods one day with his camera taking pictures of Euro Horror Sex Sluts that aren't really there, and slowly starts to fall under the influence of an ancient Pagan Sex Cult that practiced satanism back in the 15th or 16th century. We see glimpses of their orgies in historical flashbacks that include images of human sacrifice, lesbian sex and idol worship, and wonder where Rob Lowe is in the picture.

Is he crazy or is he possessed? the film wants us to ask ourselves, and then goes out of it's way to show us that Eddie's new fondness for barking out vile obscenities to those who love him is in fact demonic in nature. Meanwhile his attractive late 30/early 40-something mom is starting to wear more revealing nightgowns, the Euro Horror Sex Slut starts to appear nude in Eddie's bedroom, and a hot young nun with a fantastic rack moves into the house to try and curb his growing fondness for wandering around the house naked, either in his own form or that of the nude female succubus which has possessed him. This leads to various sadisto-erotic lesbian encounters with both the nun and mommy, assorted deaths and eventually Eddie is tied to his bed and an Exorcist is called in.

He is played by Richard Conte, a fixture on Italian genre cinema at the time, most notably appearances in Italian Police/Crime thrillers like MILAN CALIBRE NINE, and it is amusing to note that he plays more or less the same character albeit armed with a priest's frock & a bible instead of a small machine gun. The scene where Conte arrives at the airport and ominously stalks into Eddie's house reminded me of a Spaghetti Western when the professional hired gun strolls into town to confront the wicked and dispense justice, but then again I have been on a Spaghetti Western kick and may just be projecting. The main difference is that the bad guys in Westerns never hurl dressers and chairs at their opponents while rocking about in a bed, spewing liquefied cranberry sauce from special effects hoses and made up to look like Marilyn Manson. Eventually the young nun goes all Jason Miller on the succubus, offering herself instead of Eddie for eternal damnation, and with a rack like hers you can't blame the harlot from Hell for taking her up on the offer.

The bottom line here is that demonic possession movies are absurd in the first place, and once you get down to the brass tacks this one is no better or worse than any of the others. If anything you have to admire the Italians who made this for being honest about their intentions to make a skin flick disguised as a horror film rather than allow the polymorphously perverse nature of the genre formula to exist merely as suggestive, shadowy Freudian references involving little girls ... eww. If you can suspend your disbelief and watch the movie drunk it's actually kind of a hoot, with ample nudity, some interesting gore sequences, perverse sexual juxtapositions and a groovy little musical score.

But if you go into this expecting something profound, shocking or revelation-inducing you are wasting your time. This is a horror movie not a documentary on global warming, you don't have to take it seriously and you are allowed to let it turn you on. It is garbage, trash, and knows that about itself. I found the honesty and self-awareness to be quite refreshing, and wonder when it was that nuns stopped being so hot.

4/10

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!

Cries and Shadows, or Exorcist III as it was released in some places (got to love those international copyright laws), is one of the sleaziest Exorcist ripoffs that I have encountered. That is neither an endorsement nor a warning, just a statement.

The plot has a young man finding a strange medallion while on vacation with friends. Because of this medallion, the teen becomes possessed by a succubus (Mimma Biscardi, here often nude). The possessed's acting out is of a sexual nature. The teen as the succubus (whom, strangely, the victims can see) first tries to rape his mother and then his sister, who is a nun. At about the hour mark, Richard Conte shows up as the priest who will carry out the exorcism. And, that is about all there is to the film.

The film's one asset (aside from Mimma Biscardi's bare skin) is the setting. The film takes place in a village built on a hillside. The bourgeoisie family's villa is at the very top. It is a striking location and used well by the filmmakers. The rest of the film is mostly forgettable. I had seen this film once before and had remembered almost nothing except for the setting. As these type of films go, I prefer The Night Child (aka The Cursed Medallion) and The Antichrist (aka The Tempter). Nonetheless, Cries and Shadows does revel unapologetically in its bad taste. Fans of Exorcist ripoffs might be amused.