Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2016 | 51/52 | Italian Horror
A crowd gathers in front of the Virgin Mary. The priests run swords into the heart of the statue. All have someone ill for whom they are praying to Mary for healing.
Ippolita, who is paralyzed from the waist down since 12, tries to walk to the statue but falls. Her father hands her her cane, and they leave. When she returns to her estate, a maid cries for her.
Ippolita sees her father embrace Greta and confirms her suspicions that he is dating her. The revelation breaks her heart, as she has grown anxiously attached to her father.
Ippolita visits her uncle, a priest. He feels a psychic turmoil and takes her to a parapsychologist who performs past life regression with her. The idea is that the experience could help her paralysis
Through that, Ippolita experiences her ancestor, who was a witch during the Inquisition. The ancestor had made a pact with Satan.
When Ippolita comes back, the ancestor has possessed her. When her ancestor takes over, she can walk. She also resumes her pact with Satan.
It’s around here that The Exorcist similarities come in: her voice changes as she rants about sucking cock, and her mouth foams. The paintings fly off the walls to fervent violin and Satanic laughter.
That’s also when the film gets boring. I’m not into these “watching people possessed for an hour” movies.
I still like the movie — I just came away less excited for an underwhelming back half. I enjoyed how weird this movie was otherwise.
* STRAY THOUGHTS / SPOILERS*
- Dead silent credits with two title cards.
- Beheaded frog in the tithe!
- They put too much makeup on her brother — his face is one tone.
- The Inquisition Rotunda!
- The match cut to the father seeing a shadow and Ippolita stabbing her father’s picture
- The flashbacks are wild as hell
- The coven orgy! The visuals are wild
- The frog decapitation is horrifying
- Woah, she’s licking that goat’s butthole
- Haunted organ!
- Everyone accepts immediately that she’s possessed by Satan and that it’s scientific.
- Uh oh, she’s trying to fuck her brother
- I love the busts of the heads all looking down the hall! I would do that in my apartment if my landlord wasn’t… well, a landlord
- That’s some goofy-looking floating
- Disembodied arm choking a guy!
- Eww, eating vomit
- Bored