So, what if I told you we were about to watch a movie that featured all of these names:
Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Joe D’Amato, Mel Ferrer (Nightmare City) Arthur Kennedy (Cave of the Sharks), Alida Valli (Suspiria, Inferno, The Third Man), Gianfranco Clerici (Cannibal Holocaust, Murder Rock, New York Ripper, Macabre, Don’t Torture a Duckling, Nazi Love Camp 27, Last Cannibal World, House of Clocks, Delirium – hell, this guy worked for Fulci a lot!) and Edmondo Amati (Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Cannibal Apocalypse, Four of the Apocalypse)
I know what you’d be thinking, because it’s exactly what I was thinking too. Pedigree.
THE ANTICHRIST
original title: L’anticristo
Italy, 1974, Alberto De Martino
Now if there’s one thing I love more than a Jaws rip-off, it’s an Exorcist rip-off, and this one is pretty good. The Antichrist starts off with a dark and unsettling credit sequence that repeatedly shows the title of the movie between every couple of names.
We fade in on a disturbing scene, echoing the beginning of The Exorcist, at a religious healing ceremony (destination unknown, somewhere in rural Italy). Our protagonist, Ippolita (Carla Gravina), is disabled and looking for alternative spiritual remedies to help her walk again. She seeks healing from a statue of a saint, but is cruelly humiliated when she falls flat on her face in front of the statue. Revealing it as a fraud, one mentally unstable man, dribbling green fungus from his mouth, loses it and runs out of the building before throwing himself off a cliff edge. Slight overreaction, but that’s religion, folks.
Ippolita returns home, miserable. We learn she also harbours incestuous desires for her father (Mel Ferrer) and her brother, a Martin Short look-a-like (Remo Girone). It’s this perverse desire that drives her downfall into depravity. While her father is getting it on with another woman, Ippolita slips into a hallucination, wandering naked into a lustful forest, surrounded by humping couples and muscled men in goat masks. I’m pretty sure the majority of the budget was spent on this one scene. The movie certainly hits it peak and never really recovers. Don’t believe me, watch and see for yourself.
So yeah. That happened. It’s not as subtle as the possession scene in The Exorcist, but it certainly pushes the envelope a lot further, and that’s what this movie does best. What it lacks in original ideas, it more than makes up in gusto. For a start, Ippolita learns how to talk dirty, turning the air hilariously blue every time she opens her mouth. Rarely is she not talking about cocks or fucking, and she’s constantly showing everyone her vagina – causing people to wince uncontrollably.
So, with Ippolita now possessed, and able to walk again, she goes on a horny hunt for men. Inexplicably, she decides to follow a class of teenagers on a school trip where she awkwardly seduces and kills a teenage boy by making his head spin, literally.
Returning home, she continues her seduction spree by sleeping with her brother
This is all to the disgust of the housemaid (Alida Valli) who brings in the services of the worst witch-doctor to have ever lived. This is one of the more entertaining scenes, as the film starts riffing on the more fantastical elements of the genre it’s ripping off. No stone is left unturned, bodies float, furniture moves around on its own. There’s also a lot of vomit (a requirement for this kind movie) and it doesn’t hold back.
However, it does throw a few of its own ideas into the mix, like when Ippolita’s arm floats by its own accord to strangle the rubbish witch-doctor…
… or when she spews on her hand and demands he lick it clean.
He obliges.
Eventually, Ippolita’s family decide to ask their friend and local priest to arrange an exorcism. After a particularly embarrassing confrontation with Ippolita’s vagina, he decides that an exorcism is the only thing that can help. In steps a monk named Father Mittner (George Coulouris). And believe me folks, Father Merrin this ain’t. To say that Mittner is rubbish would be an understatement. In fact, at one point he actually grabs a laughing Ippolita by the shoulders and starts screaming at her “I EXORCISE YOU!!” over and over again. It doesn’t work.
Sadly this is where the film really falls apart, as it unsuccessfully apes the better movie that it’s ripping off. However, the actual climax is bizarre enough to keep your attention as Ippolita escapes from the exorcism and goes on the run, chased by her Father and Brother. When they catch her, they force the demon out themselves, just through pure unity. And you can bet Father Mittner takes the credit for doing it, too. All of this is played out in the final ten minutes whilst a roaring, church organ driven Ennio Morricone score blares through the soundtrack.
It all leaves you a little shaken up by the time it finally stops, and for that I have to praise it. Is it a good film? I guess so. As far as Exorcist rip offs go, it’s one of the better ones. It doesn’t have many ideas of its own, but what the film does with those few ideas is incredibly entertaining.
But like I wrote earlier, the film never recovers from this image.
And neither will I.
Availability:
The Antichrist is available in the US from Lionsgate. In the UK, it has a DVD release from Optimum.
