Exorcisme

There are reportedly at least three very different versions of "Exorcism" around. I am reporting here on Eurocine's original version as recently released by Anchor Bay.

Jess Franco surely is a gifted director. Although most of the few movies I know from his immense production are below average, they often include some ingenious scenes and a good soundtrack which largely saves the movie. Nevertheless, I start to get disappointed when the movie does not develop its potential because the director just didn't take the pain to think a little about constructing some tension and a climax.

This applies, e.g., to "Female Vampire" and to "Exorcism". The first part of the movie brings us to a strange world. People are visiting phony black masses featuring the slaughter of a pidgeon and sadomasochistic rituals in order to get sexually aroused. Jess Franco plays an ex-priest who writes S/M-stories for a magazine "based on true experience" stating that "you have to know evil in order to fight it". He is attracted to the lesbian S/M-performer Anna and on the other hand pursues the participators of the black masses with bloody and deadly exocirsm rituals. There are nice interiors which were shot in a beautifully decorated "day time hotel" near Paris.Unfortunately, after having introduced all this material, the movie gets completly stuck. Instead of developing, e.g., the character of the priest, his madness (as he did for example in "Jack the Ripper"), Franco just repeats the shots of black masses and exorcism over and over again or fills the movie with extended sex scenes. This leads utterly to boredom and the ending lacks any interest to justify the waiting.

As usual, Franco has trouble to keep his camera in focus and the editing is crude. Take for instance the ending. Franco brings Anna to his castle outside of Paris. Then, Anna phones somehow her friend to tell her that she is alright. A few seconds later, we see Franco back in his Paris appartment and then driving back to the castle (so that his pursuers have the chance to follow him). Although the timing might be possible, I found this unnecessarily confusing.

So the movie is just another unfulfilled promise by the director. It is without technical merits and doesn't deserve much attention.

**A quick note but I watched all three of these at different points over the years so the reviews are a little out of place with one another. I'm posting them in order of the Synapse version, the XXX version and then the 1979 re-edit.

Exorcism (1974)

*** (out of 4)

This was one of the first Franco titles that I actually watched and I hated it with a passion. Over the next year I started to check out a few other Franco films and I guess you could say I finally "got" what he was all about so I went back to watch this one again and ended up really enjoying it. I think the film gets better with each new viewing, although I think the film plays best as pure camp. In the film Franco plays a deranged writer who witnesses a fake devil worshiping and is certain that he must kill the people to save their souls. This film has a lot of trademark Franco items from countless sex, nudity and violence all the way to the erotic nature of the story. This is a very strange little film that manages to be quite surreal in its black mass scenes and the movie just contains a weird vibe throughout. The film also have some hilarious moments, which I'm sure was unintentional. I also get a huge laugh at of Franco's acting during the orgy scene. When Franco hides his face in shame, it's just downright hilarious. Another funny moment happens when Romay is leaving a restaurant and she opens the door the wrong way and ends up running into it. This certainly isn't Franco's best film but it is one of his most enjoyable.

Sexorcismes (1974)

** (out of 4)

Once upon a time (1974 to be exact) in a country far, far away (Spain to be exact) there lived a director named Jess Franco who made a movie called Exorcism. The film dealt with a looney writer (played by Franco) who stumbled upon a sex show with witches and demons. To make them pure, the writer goes on a killing spree. Then, in 1979 Franco decided to remake the film but didn't have enough cash for a full movie so he edited out forty or so minutes of Exorcism and mixed it with about forty-minutes worth of "new" footage. This disasterpiece was called The Sadist of Notre Dame. However, back to 1974's film Exorcism. The French producer's weren't happy that Franco didn't make the film extreme enough so they offered him a tad bit more money to go back and shoot hardcore scenes so that the film could be released into French porn theaters. That end result was released as Sexorcismes and that's the version I watched here.

The Sadist of Notre Dame was a horrible film in my opinion and one (of several) that I gave a BOMB rating to. Exorcism on the other hand is a film I always enjoyed for its surreal and bizarre sexual nature. That film was a straight horror flick with your typical amount of Euro nudity but there wasn't anything hardcore. Several of Franco's films during this period were shot "soft" and "hard" but usually the hardcore versions were nothing more than cheap inserts that really hurt the original film. I had been interested in this French version of Exorcism for quite sometime and it finally arrived and as I suspected the hardcore scenes add nothing to the film but they do take away quite a bit.

The most shocking thing about these new shots is that doubles weren't used, which was normally the case. Most of the original cast are involved in these new scenes and that includes Franco himself! I remember the first time I saw Romay in hardcore scenes I was rather shocked because I always considered her an "actress". Seeing Franco in these scenes just made me laugh my ass off because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Having seen Franco in countless interviews and other films, to see this here was simply shocking. Either way, none of this stuff is shot too well and it's clear they were filmed differently than the rest of the film. It's also worth noting that the producer's didn't bother to change the soundtrack, which leads to some pretty silly moments. In the "horror" version there are several scenes were women are stabbed and we hear their screams. This soundtrack of screams is also used in this hardcore version, which makes for a few funny moments since these screams don't match up with what's going on in the film.

Sadist of Notre Dame, The (1979)

BOMB (out of 4)

Jess Franco at his laziest. The film might be worth one more star but I'm not going to give it to this. An ex-priest (Franco) escapes from a nut house and starts killing people in God's name. This film is a re-edited version of Franco's 1974 film Exorcism with newly shot scenes added. I enjoy the "original" film but this one here is just downright confusing and poorly made. The new scenes add nothing and the editing to them is the worst I've ever seen. The pacing is horrid and the re-editing even ruins scenes from the original film.

My copy is titled Exorcism and is absolutely great. There's naked girls chained upside down getting whipped and covered in sacrificial blood and some demented ex-priest stabbing people with at least one scene of guts or a heart or something removed from what was probably a dead pig.

I think maybe this movie should be viewed as a comedy, its certainly believable that it was intended as such.

As much as I hate watching cut and dubbed versions of Euro horror movies I'll take any opportunity to watch a Jess Franco movie. So I haven't seen either the softcore or hardcore versions of this film but the butchered cut known as 'Demoniac'. Maybe anything I say about this version is worthless, but as it is it's far from Franco's best, yet still surprisingly watchable. Despite the lousy English dubbing I thought Franco's acting was more than adequate, in fact he easily gives the best performance in the picture. He plays Vogel, an intense and tortured defrocked priest who writes salacious stories for a racy magazine, the editor of which hangs with a swinging crowd who stage fake sadomasochistic performances for fun (shades of one of Franco's best 'Succubus', but don't get your hopes up). Vogel secretly witnesses a black mass, and not realizing it is fake, decides he must save the souls of the participants via exorcism, which in reality basically equates to murdering them. 'Demoniac' is presumably a lot less explicit than the other versions available. There is a fair bit of nudity including arguably the dullest orgy ever seen on screen. Franco's wife and frequent star Lina Romay is always a pleasure to look at, but if you want to see her at her best check out 'Female Vampire', the one where she kills via fellatio, remember? As I haven't seen the "real" version of this movie I can't honestly say whether it's good Franco or bad Franco, but if you're wanting to explore his work try and see 'Vampyros Lesbos', 'Eugenie De Sade', or 'Succubus' first.

My wife bought me this by mistake! Some company called Boulevard entertainment had somehow mixed this up with another film called Exorcism (and American religious film or something), but when Lina Romay's pubic hair appeared within 0.001% of a second of the film starting, I thought "We're back in the land of Jess Franco!"

That's bad news for most of us, by the way. There is a small fraction of the populace that rather enjoys a Franco film, but if you've sat through any of his films you know what to expect here: Endless scenes, much nudity and little sex, plenty of misogyny, and zoom shots.

Truth be told, this is nowhere near as painful as Succubus or Oasis of the Zombies, but it's also nowhere near as funny as White Cannibal Queen or the Devil Hunter. It involves Franco himself as a crazy ex-priest running around Paris carving up women that are involved in some sort of half-arsed black mass ceremony, with his prize being Lina Romay, who, surprisingly, spends most of the film naked or tied up and naked.

That's your plot, and reading that back over I realised that I've made Exorcism sound a bit exciting, which it's not. "Crazy ex-priest running around Paris" doesn't sound right. How about 'slowly moping around Paris, usually hiding behind things, staring"? Instead of 'carving up women' I'll say 'very slowly tormenting women and gibbering on about how they've got the devil in them for endless minutes'? I'll stick by the 'half-arsed black mass' though. Plus there's an orgy scene which seems to involve nothing but naked people writhing around and not doing much (and this is the early seventies – all them naked bodies must have reeked!). Additionally, there's this old guy who has a hilarious blue rinse, so watch out for that.

I loved how, when the dust settled and the film was over, the police just got back into their car and drove off, leaving all the bodies/victims behind. Hurrah for realism! Also, hurrah for nepotism as Franco himself gets to run his gnarled hands over quite a few naked actresses!This film gets an extra point for the sadly departed Lina Romay, who is the only good thing about this film. Do they have pubes in heaven?

I've just noticed Jess has now gone off to the soft-core film in the sky too. Shame - I know I rag on most of his films but still, he'll be missed.