"The Devil Within Her" (1975) d/ Peter Sasdy

Hungarian-born director Peter Sasdy has had some great genre moments over the years, from Taste the Blood of Dracula(1970) and Countess Dracula(1971), to Hands of the Ripper(1971) and Nothing But the Night(1973). Tonight's review, alternately known as The Monster, Sharon's Baby, and I Don't Want to be Born, is an entirely different story altogether. Besides Joan Collins showing her full acting range as a pleasure-starved trollop in various states of undress, you've got Donald Pleasence, Caroline Munro, and Ralph Bates and Eileen Atkins in a "Worst Italian Accent-Off" that'll have your ears bleeding out like a pair of emo-cutters on a suicide pact in a warehouse full of cutlery. Wait, it gets worse...


Acting 101: Is Joan Collins giving birth or in the sensual throes of earth-shattering orgasm?
Despite being in her forties, we first see Lucy (Where does "Sharon's Baby" factor in to any of this? I don't think anybody in the whole cast is named Sharon...) as she's clearly enjoying the arrival of a nearly twelve pound baby boy through her birth canal. Dr. Finch (Pleasence) notes that her son "doesn't want to be born", before the little bugger scratches up his mother's facepiece (off-camera) to further amplify that sentiment. So troubled she is from the outset at her boy's antisocial behavior, that her ridiculous-sounding Italian husband Gino (Ralph Bates) seeks out his even more ridiculous-sounding Italian sister, a nun called Albana (Eileen Atkins) for help, as his little troublemaker makes a general off-camera nuisance of himself; shoving his pram-pushing babysitter into the Thames, punching Lucy's former lovers in the face, and biting anyone foolish enough to let their baby talking rubber faces slip too close to the little devil, or " dev-EEL" as Albana would say.


" 'Ere, Bates, was that supposed to be an Italian accent, then?"
A distraught Lucy confides to one of her stripper mates named Mandy (Caroline Munro), in between shopping sprees and candlelit dinners, that all of this strange phenomena may be occurring since she once denied the amorous advances of the co-star of her stage show during her own dancing days, a British dwarf named Hercules(!), and the jilted little fellow slapped a curse on her. Sounds legit. In any case, Lucy's son escapes his playpen, bending the bars on his nursery window, and hanging-ah poor Gino-ah from a tree outside-ah. He later lops off Dr. Finch's head with a spade, and runs his own mother through with a dagger in the tit. Albana performs a mostly uninteresting exorcism on the troubled infant in the end, while Hercules unconvincingly slumps dead on stage at the strip club, surrounded by showgirls. Phew, that one hurt.


" I've 'eard you was a free-thinking sexy broad with a dirty mouth. Wanna try for 'free-thinking sexy broad with a dirty mouth wot's shagged a randy dwarf in a jester costume' ?"
Pleasence gives the only performance that doesn't reek of week old rubbish here, and even then, it's not even one of his better turns, by a fucking long shot. Even the ever stunning Caroline Munro is wasted as a stripper who never strips, only spouting mundane Cockney dialog that seemingly always ends in exaggerated hand gestures and "Dahhhhhling!". Ralph Bates probably should have known better, too. Despite possessing exactly zero moments of on-screen tension and plenty of hokey off-screen mayhem, you just might spend the whole screening laughing out loud, as I did, and whether that was the intent of the film's producers or not(it wasn't), laughing's never a bad thing. One wop on the scale...


So that's how Donald Pleasence's head comes off. Always wondered about that.

"The Devil Inside"(2012)d/William Brent Bell

Upon seeing the trailer for tonight's review, I turned to my associates and evoked the rite of "callsies" for our next trip to the cinema, it visibly being no clone of Skyline(2010) or Battle Los Angeles(2011), which would cause it to fall outside my genre jurisdiction, and thus, fieldable by the Doctor, who, indeed, grooveth upon the space fodder out of us.As most of the regular readers already know, the films that tend to get labelled "demonic possession" films are usually the ones I get the biggest kicks out of.The more over the top the exorcism criteria, the more my dimples get to poppin'.I could tell ten seconds into the aforementioned trailer what I was gonna be in for with this one, the second effort in the chair from Bell, with lots of Cannibal Holocaust-style found footage and unholy hijinks, and after sawing logs three quarters of the way through Sir Anthony Hopkins bleccch-xorcist copy, The Rite(2011), it was just what ol' B-Dub ordered.Sure, there's nothing much original about Inside, and it borrows heavily from prior less-is-more basement budgeted documentary-style flicks like Blair Witch Project(1999) and Paranormal Activity(2007), but there's plenty of joint-locking, ancient language-speaking, blasphemy-growling chicks with over-dilated pupils skittering in and out of the shaky handheld darkness here, if that's your bag, too, and really, why wouldn't it be.Why wouldn't it be.Despite being panned by critics and moviegoers alike early on, the movie still managed to gross nearly fifty-seven million after topping the box office with a strong opening weekend, proving many of us are just as succeptible to devil women as Cliff Richard was back in 1976.Forwards...

Baby, you had me when you crawled in upside down, screaming "Non Salvus!" in a chorus of baritone voices.
Twenty years earlier on the night of October 30th, Maria Rossi(Suzan Crowley) committed a triple murder while undergoing an exorcism, having spent the past two decades locked away in a psychiatric hospital under Catholic care in Rome.In the present, Rossi's daughter, Isabella(Fernanda Andrade) is producing a documentary on exorcisms, and looking to better understand what happened to her mother all those years ago in the process.After visiting a Vatican-approved exorcism school in Rome, she joins forces with two young priests, Ben(Simon Quarterman) and David(Evan Helmuth), who perform the rites regularly, tagging along as they continue to try to exorcise the demons from a young joint-locked unfortunate named Rosalita(Bonnie Morgan), using modern medical equipment to document her body functions, such as pupil dilation, to help discern whether she suffers from true demonic possession or merely some undetermined mental illness.Rosalita spouts blasphemies in various voices and languages before attacking the film crew, and even calls Isabella by name, despite having never met her.The young woman musters up the guts to visit her mother at the asylum, only to be met with a cell's worth of obsessive paintings and a mammy who's decked herself out in gouged inverted crosses that whispers to her daughter of the murder of children and God's will before letting loose with a wits-rattling shriek.You crazy hot old bitch you. I saw that coming and you still managed to jostle my popcorn bag.Isabella tells the priests that she underwent an abortion some time earlier, and that her mother, institutionalized like Mike Muir, had no way of knowing that tidbit.

"If you'll excuse me, I have a drowning to attempt, errr, baptism to oversee."
With mounting evidence of demonic possession, or, as I like to call it, "aggressively sexy/horny", the priests move ahead with plans of an unauthorized exorcism for Maria, during which she spouts off about "knowing what Ben did" and her daughter's unborn child, before breaking the fuck loose from her restraints and treating both holy men like soft punks, earning some yummy vein sleep-candy from the doctors who rush in afterwards.Ben agonizingly scrutinizes the audio from their session, managing to discern multiple demonic voices speaking in unison during one exchange.Meanwhile, David is performing a baptism for a newborn when he suddenly takes the immersion slightly too literally, and tries drowning the baby in holy water(!) before passing the fuck out, it having been a service of great energy expenditure, little droogies.Later at home, in the throes of possession himself now, obviously, he'll blow his own brains out with a ganked officer's service revolver just as Isabella goes into seizure.At the hospital, Ben sees mortally wounded emergency room nurses as possible evidence that Isabella is also possessed at this point.Certainly a theory, right?Together with Michael, he leaves in a car with her to get her a much-needed emergency exorcism, but she manages to creep him out with talk of that "thing he did" and tries to force Michael to crash the car.Moments later, Michael's also looking pretty possessed as he drives headlong into oncoming traffic, and the video cuts out after the vehicle flips several times.Cue: unsolved case/phony website info before the credits roll.

"No! Not the bore worms!"
Fernanda Andrade, apart from being lovely and Brazilian, worked almost exclusively on television before landing a role in tonight's review, on shows like CSI:Miami, CSI:NY, Law and Order:LA, and Sons of Anarchy.We dig her, highly.Evan Helmuth has also done a lot of work in television, video games, and movies like Garfield(2004).Suzan Crowley has appeared in BBC fare like Grange Hill, The Knock, and Backup, while director Bell took the chair for 2006's genre entry, Stay Alive, prior to tonight's review.I'd file Devil Inside somewhere behind The Last Exorcism(2007) but well in front of The Rite(2011), in terms of effective recent supernatural chills.There's just something inherently cool about losing control of one's body and soul to an agent of pure evil, and when it's a female of the species, well then, I'm gonna need some quality alone time, if you follow me.An overall mediocre affair, but an enjoyable one thats chock full of jump scares and atmosphere, especially if demonism and possession are your bag.On the scale, Inside earns a score of Two biggies.Worth a look.

Another one with twist fever and a double case of guitar blues.

"Exorcist 2:The Heretic"(1977)d/John Boorman

ca·tas·tro·phe/kəˈtastrəfē/Noun
1. An event causing great and often sudden damage or suffering.
Usually, when a sequel fails, it's because it serves up a whole lot more of the same things the first movie provided to an audience who believed they wanted more of those things after enjoying them the first time round, then discovering that the familiarity that has replaced the excitement they originally felt has left them, more often than not, kinda flat.Duplicating all the wonderful, horrible things that make The Exorcist a genuinely terrifying box-office smash and one of the greatest horror movies of all-time apparently wasn't an option in John Boorman's sequel four years later, as Heretic not only avoids them completely, it seeks an identity all its own:a deliriously overblown, badly acted, perplexingly scareless, heavy-handed, putrid disaster full of unintentional laughs.The producers seemingly ignored the fact that William Peter Blatty and Billy Friedkin walked away from a creative pow-wow convinced that an effective sequel wasn't in the cards, and went ahead and evacuated their cinematic bowels anyway, with dollar signs in their eyes, resulting in shame and embarrassment for anyone foolish enough to put their name on this picture.Every aspect of this movie is effectively ineffective:Linda Blair balked at appearing in possession makeup of any kind, opting instead to reveal her teen chunkiness and inability to act worth a lick to the world, forever damning herself to roles in driftwood like Roller Boogie(1979) and Zapped Again!(1990).Never to be out-hammed, the oft-sozzled Richard Burton shouts every line and sweats like John Wayne Gacy if he guest starred on Xusa.James Earl Jones looks rightfully humiliated in his giant locust suit.Director Boorman(who hated the original!!!), normally on point, has nothing to work with here.Even maestro Ennio Morricone's soundtrack is a mishmosh of suspenseless bromidic disco rock that the Solid Gold Dancers wouldn't boogie to.The punchless story is farther from coherence than a Turkish Star Wars(Haven't reviewed that gem yet, have I? Hmmmmm)script as written by Ted Geisel.The MPAA must have imposed their R rating on the film out of pity since there's no nudity, sex, profanity, or violence either.In fact, I'm of the belief that the phrase "epic fail" was coined at a Heretic screening.

Wait.What.
A sweaty, loud priest named Lamont(Burton) is assigned by the Cardinal(Paul Henried) to the Church's investigation into Father Merrin(Max Von Sydow)'s mysterious death while performing an exorcism four years earlier at the MacNeil's residence.His inquiries first lead him to Regan(Blair), who only seems to be possessed these days by a slow metabolism and a burning desire to spend the whole running time wearing little else but unflattering sequined tap costumes and low cut nighties and says airheadedly, "I was possessed by a demon.Oh, but it's okay, he's gone now!".Seriously.While her actress mother is somewhere "on location"(translation:Ellen Burstyn wisely passed on this one), Regan has been roughing it in a lush Manhattan penthouse, still cared for by Sharon(Kitty Winn, who wasn't as wise as Burstyn it would seem) and treated by a psychiatrist named Tuskin(Louise "Cuckoo's Nest" Fletcher, who should have known better), who straps the girl's ample forehead and her own into what looks like an old wood grain eight track player with a lightbulb to travel into each other's subconscious via hypno-telepathy where the original exorcism plays out between Merrin and an obvious Regan stand-in (who didn't refuse to wear possession makeup) that causes Tuskin's heart to "fibrillate"(translation:heave suggestively and make inappropriate lusty noises) in the same manner that Merrin's did.Lamont, who's never seen or used this contraption before, mind you, exclaims "I know where she is! Help me to find her!" and goes under himself, prepared to hypnotize her heart back into beating normally. Later, Regan dreams of Pazuzu, who has taken the guise of a swarm of locusts(huh?) when he isn't possessing people with healing powers, preventing man's inevitable cerebral evolution where he will have achieved oneness with God, after Lamont later hypno-raps with the demon about it.He approaches the Cardinal with the idea of a Church-funded(!) trip to Africa(!!) to seek a man named Kokumo(James Earl Jones) who had survived Pazuzu's onslaught of hungry grasshoppers as a boy, and thus, might be able to teach him how to show Regan to oust the dormant do-badder.

I suppose this'd be terrifying if you were an unsprayed cabbage leaf.
In Africa, Lamont admits to tribesmen that he knows the circumstances behind their holy man's untimely plummet-to-death years earlier by flying there with Pazuzu during a trance(!!!), getting shelled with rocks by the nubians while a sequined Regan feels his pain at an embarrassing interpretation of "Lullaby of Broadway" thousands of miles away, taking a flopper off the stage.The combo priest/human sweat sprinkler system flies to the village of Jepti with the aid of Ned Beatty(what I said about Winn and Fletcher earlier?The same goes for you, Ned) and through telekinesis uses Regan(who's not hooked up to the contraption btw) to get the demon to help him track down the one man who'd defeated him in the past.Yeah, makes sense.Kokumo first appears to Lamont as a disgruntled tribesman-in-a-giant-locust-suit(think A Christmas Story's Ralphie-in-the-bunny-jammies uttering gems like,"If Pazuzu comes for you I will spit a leopard", and by "leopard", he means a sloppy cherry tomato) then as a scientist researching..drumroll... the damaging effects of locust swarms in Africa(what else).Lamont sweatily queries,"When the wings have brushed you … is there no hope once the wings have brushed you?"(verbatim btw, no exagerration) and Kokumo shows him a new breed of female "good locust" that has a calming effect on the evil swarm.A stroke of symbolism as artistically painted by a roller, methinks.After a cheap mixture of phony and real harrowing airplane sequence obviously thrown in to cash in on the disaster craze so popular at the time, Lamont and Regan end up at the Georgetown residence only to be pelted by packing-peanuts-painted-brown-to-resemble-locusts as thrown in front of a wind machine by production assistants, and confronted once again by Regan's possession double who morphs into what-shoulda-been-a-horny-slut-temptress-but-only-comes-off-as-a-gussied-up-busty-chipmonk and tries to seduce Lamont, who sweatily mauls the scantily-dressed teenager(!).Finally coming to his senses, he rips the impostor's heart out of her chest, signalling another locust/packing peanut swarm, which the real Regan dispatches by swinging an imaginary bullroarer over her head like a lasso while spinning in place.Wait.What.Then Tuskin, who's been outside chaotically battling a possessed Sharon the whole time while the building literally cracked open for some reason, turns Regan's guardianship over to the priest.Huh?If you're confused reading this, just wait 'til you actually watch it.

"You are gonna march yourself down off of that altar, and you are gonna call Aunt Mbvotu and thank her for your adorable new locust jammies, young man!"
Also deserving of embarrassment here is an uncredited pre-Diff'rent Strokes Dana Plato as a young autistic stutterer(really!).Well, let's let the poor girl rest in peace, instead.Then there are the names(Walken, Fonda, Carradine, Ann-Margret, Sarandon, Segal, Voight, Nicholson, Kubrick) who either turned down the movie outright, or wisely disappeared pre-stench.During the notorious premiere, the audience laughed and even threw things at the screen at a Hollywood Blvd. theater.Don't listen to the sparse few advocates kicking around the notion that Heretic "isn't as bad as all that", woprophiles, it's that laughably bad and worse.One wop.

You should be swinging that imaginary bullroarer at your agent's head, Linda.

"Abby"(1974)d/William Girdler

Our main course this evening, a delightfully rotten and rare blaxploitative Exorcist rip-off from the man responsible for The Manitou(1979) and Day of the Animals(1977), the late William Girdler.Served upon a gilded platter for your unwavering approval then, a golden turd known as Abby, the only Exorcist clone to ever be pulled from the theaters, after AIP maven Sam Arkoff caved to pressure from a Warner Brothers lawsuit, even after a similar suit against Film Ventures' Beyond the Door(1974) proved ineffective.As a result, Abby plummetted from a profitable first theatrical run to an urban legend of sorts, rarely seen but often discussed.Luckily for proponents of such fare, the movie finally turned up as half of a budget double feature dvd with Magdalena(1974), yet another Exorcist rip-off, from a company called Music Video Distribution in 2007.Granted, the print stinks, but then that's a vast improvement over the shoddy eye-straining, tenth generation, ghostly VHS-ripped bootlegs that had floated around for ages beforehand.Girdler might have had himself an original horror movie on his hands had he chosen to explore the possibilities of the actual Nigerian Yoruba religion, or its trickster deity, Èsù, but he went for the quick, exploitative buck instead, as was par for the course of his entire filmography.Lovers of inept schlock can rejoice over his hasty decision to copy Friedkin's hit, as his total failure on every level is often unintentionally hilarious stuff, making for a pretty good time for anybody interested in watching it.Like trying to reproduce the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with a chunk of drywall and a paintball gun...

Who's a black archaeologiss wiff a pith helmet dat juss don' miss?Garnet Williams(William Marshall)!Can you dig it?
We meet Dr. Williams(William Marshall) as he's rappin' with his students in a park about an upcoming trip to Nigeria, and learn through badly delivered dialogue that some of his students have been grooving on the Yoruba religion of that region themselves, recently.To compliment his doctorate and his PhD(!), the funky world-travellin' humanitarian/archaeologist receives a going away present from the group:a hulking silver cross necklace that's just outta sight,baby.Cut to a Nigerian cave where Williams-in-pith helmet discovers a hollow ebony vessel decorated with carvings of the deity Eshu, which the doctor recognizes by "hair in the shape of a cock's comb" and the "erect penis"(!!).He unwittingly opens it, unleashing the contents upon he and his hapless colleagues, when a vengeful wind machine throws them around the cave amidst a frame-flash of a nappy headed, green latex grillpiece, all sneering away an' sheeeit.Meanwhile, Dr. Williams' son Emmitt(Terry Carter),a minister,and his wife, Abby(Carol Speed) are moving into their new home, bequeathed to his church, with the help of Mama(Juanita Moore), her brother Cass(Austin Stoker), a detective, and Emmitt's deacon, who's a dead ringer for Urkel from 'Family Matters'.Through lots of God-inspired banter, we learn Abby is a certified marriage counselor, on top of being involved in a youth program, and junior choir work.Hurry up and possess this bitch, Eshu, before I toss my cookies.A cold wind blows through that night, shaking the furniture and slamming doors.The next morning, Abby's shower takes on added sexual dimensions, as we see her shadow enveloped by a massive phantasmal apparition.The entity toys with her in the laundry room, and again while she and her mother prepare some chicken(It's Kentucky, what did you expect?) for a social function at the church.The bloody poultry suddenly turns her on(!!!), and she's soon writhing about, flicking her tongue around and slashing her own arm with the knife.

I'll give you a few moments to fully drink this screenshot in...
Emmitt takes notice of Abby's behavior, when, clad in a towel and trying to initiate some in-out with his spouse, a gruff unfamiliar voice tells him that she isn't his ho, and then she pulverizes his junk with a well-placed kick, bouncing on the bed and laughing as he writhes in pain on the floor.During a pre-marital counselling session, she's overcome again by the demon, tearing open her dress in front of the uninterested-looking couple, and exclaiming, "I’m gonna take ol’ long George upstairs and fuck the shit outta him!”, and when Emmitt drags her upstairs(“My God, Abby! Whatever possessed you to do a thing like that?!!?”,he says with a straight face), she tosses him on the bed, slapping the piss out of him and laughing maniacally, before raping him off-camera.After Abby is hospitalized for testing(you know, the same ones Linda Blair had to undergo a year earlier), Dr. Williams returns from Nigeria, causing the young woman to break out of the hospital, bitchslapping anyone who gets in her way("I'm goin' home, bitch!" she exclaims, as she throttles a nurse).After throwing Emmitt and his dad into the walls at the homestead, Abby takes her husband's car and drives downtown, looking to score some real action.The minister runs out into the road and carjacks an older white woman(!), which the detective Cass somehow sweeps under the rug.Abby sataically seduces some soulless homeboys at a disco(and a white guy whose A game consists of W.C. Fields impersonations...seriously), as evidenced by Emmitt's car rocking rhythymically with smoke billowing out of the windows when the preacher and cop finally locate her, and Dr. Williams preparing for the inevitable exorcism right there at the discotheque(!!).Garnet's giant silver cross causes the woman to flee in slo-mo across the dance floor, dripping white foam, levitating, and sprouting furry eyebrows.Williams notes that she is possessed by a minor deity impersonating Eshu, and throws on a daishiki, mixing christianity with Yoruba to cast out the demon, ultimately causing the disco ball to explode(!!!) as her body is freed and the demon is trapped inside the wooden vessel.Abby and Emmitt embrace, despite the fact she's forgotten to take her possession eyebrows off.We then see the couple leaving on vacation, apparently free of criminal charges for the murders Abby committed earlier in the film(not to mention the priest's carjack).Nice.

"I’m not your ho! Shit, you ain’t got enough to satisfy me!” jeers a possessed Abby(Carol Speed).
Marshall will be best remembered by genre fans for his participation in Blacula(1972)and its sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream!(1973).Girdler followed this one up with Asylum of Satan(1974),and his second foray into blaxploitation, 'Sheba, Baby'(1975), starring Pam Grier(generally believed to be her worst effort of the era, well done, Billy!).Though Abby only scores one wop on the ratings scale due to its clearly visible ineptitude, it's never boring, and there are a lot of laughs to be had should you choose to check this one out for yourselves.Worth a look.

Nigerian sex demon or Lou Ferrigno after a night of base-piping. You decide, baby.

"L'ossessa"(1974)d/Mario Gariazzo

What would the Devil do if he had control of your earthly body and a death grip on your immortal soul?If we were asking this question to the makers of tonight's entry, you'd most likely spew inordinate amounts of obscenities, masturbate chronically, and throw yourself sexually at anyone who happened to pass you by, pausing occasionally to tear out your own hair and eat it.Demonic possession?Sounds more like standard protocol for regular Wopsploitation readers to me.Minus the hair-eating business, of course.I grew mine out for months over the winter, the first time in almost twenty years, and all it managed to reaffirm was my inborn hatred of the stuff.Never mess with a winning combo, like ol Wop and an eighth of an inch of hair, is what I'm saying here.On to cinematic biz as usual, folks.
Offhand, I couldn't tell you which movie Italian filmmakers loved to rip off more, Jaws(1975) or The Exorcist(1973).I guess the important point to be made here is that tonight's review falls into the latter category, although as a film with many titles, it was even re-released as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show, though Tim Curry poncing about in drag is nowhere to be found here, woprophiles will have to be satisfied with a horny wooden facsimile of Ivan Rassimov horizontal bopping his way back to life, and/or a thorny Lucretia Love doing some interesting things to an FTD Art of Love Valentine rose bouquet in the sack.I love Marcello Giombini's score, with its witchy Latin chants and female choruses over effectively moody incidental strings.Despite being a rip-off of Friedkin's earlier film, Gariazzo's effort still manages to pack a few solid chills, boast of a solid cast of Italian genre regulars, and most importantly, entertain on a couple of different levels if you're in the right mindframe for it.

"For a 15th century woodcarving, that's a pretty uncanny likeness of Ivan Rassimov..."
Danila(Stella Carnacina)is a beautiful and very groovy broad who digs art restoration that's summoned by one of her professors to a fifteenth century church(that had been deconsecrated two hundred years later due to the ungodly sex orgies its clergy and congregation were partaking in...sounds like the Limelight!)where she chooses to restore a life-sized crucifix housing an eerily lifelike wooden statue of one of the thieves that found himself crucified next to ol' J.C.(psst, this isn't gonna go well for you, sweetheart).Her affluent parents throw an outta sight seventies party, to which her mother Lucia(Lucretia Love), who's been humping a particularly sleazy dirtbag(Gabriele Tinti) on the side, has the audacity to invite her lover.Lucia's not even concerned with discretion at this point, as Daniela walks in on her being violently whipped with thorny rose stems while indulging in some sadomasochistic sextracurriculars during the bash.Danila cuts out early to her studio at the university to do some late night painting, when the nearby wooden figure(Ivan Rassimov) starts breathing and springs to life, raping the dumbstruck woman by the warmth of the massive crucifix, which has appropriately caught fire.Afterwards, she finds herself completely alone and unmolested as before the nightmarish vision, but sufficiently freaked the eff out over it, so she splits back to her parents' apartment building, where she's haunted by the sounds of an extra set of footsteps and an otherworldly voice whispering her name.She's inexplicably overwhelmed by sudden baser ruttishness over the spooky events and masturbates like a fucking champ.

"...and to see you cuts me like a knife...I guess eeeeeeev'ry rooooose has its thoooorn!Harder!Harder!!"
Before too long, Danila's hands are exploring her own body like she was Howard Carter dusting off Amen-tut-ankh's mummified grillpiece in the twenties, and she's desperately trying to persuade any passing cock to come give her the spirited hammering the devil seems to look favorably upon at this point, causing her parents to momentarily cease their openly adulterous dysfunction long enough to hire ample doctors and headshrinkers to examine the poor fuck-starved pawn of Satan.Of course, modern psychology has no answers for why she's trying to seduce her own father (or a priest, for that matter), or why she's suddenly displaying Christ-like stigmata wounds in her hands and feet and being plagued by dreams of her own crucifixion at the hands of Satan himself(Rassimov again).One doctor even prescribes a glass of warm milk to the possessed lass for her constant masturbation(!!).The church is called in eventually, and a spectacular good v evil showdown ensues between the horny lass and the exorcist, one Father Xeno(Luigi Pistilli), at a convent in the mountains.Tangibly incensed over the rapid decline of her former picturesque beauty during the rite(her eyes fill with blood and her lips chap as she spouts froth from her possessed pucker), she whips the tits off of the clergyman with a length of chain.In the end, Xeno somehow drives the fervently fiendish presence from Danila as tell-tale green vomit billows from her mouth, collapsing dead himself at the denouement of the devilish ritual.Credits.

Danila dreams of getting nailed.Sorry.
Not as over-the-top in the depiction of demonic possession as similar Italian fare like L'antichristo(1974) or Malabimba(1979), tonight's review still has enough outrageous dialogue and exploitative thrills to merit at least one viewing, or more, if this sort of thing is your cuppa(it's mine, of course).Alpha Video offers a budget release of the bare bones-ish variety, although a slightly more cleaned up print is out there if you're obsessed enough to track it down.On the scale, L'ossessa scores two wops.Worth a look.

"Lo avete comprato biglietti di Subsonica?!!? Ti amo papà!!!"

"Amityville II: The Possession"(1982)d/Damiano Damiani

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"The Last Exorcism"(2010)d/Daniel Stamm

Your body is suddenly invaded by a foul denizen of the nether regions.You spout obscenities,blasphemies,and speak in dead languages that you've never learned.Welts,bruises,and stigmata appear upon your skin.Your joints lock up and your back and extremities flex at impossible angles.You crawl around on the walls and ceiling like a hellish insect.Others are frozen in terror,while I have just one thing to say.Baby,where you been all my life?You come at me oozing sexiness like that,and I'll send your soul parasite screaming back to Hades with an ice pack between its tentacles after a non-stop weekend in Grafenberg Heaven.You may be demonically possessed,but I'm Italian.That's a sucker bet.I've got Giardiniera coarsing through my veins,I've got more obscenities,blasphemies,rough foreplay,and pioneered pleasure positions(that'd have the peanut colored rascals behind the Kama Sutra turning beige)that you can shake a biforcated tail at.Don't make me have to chase you up the ceiling.Compared to most of the so-called "normal" chicks I've sampled,you're deep soul kisses at sunset in a suite at the Chateau d'Esclimont.
Needless to say,I was amped to hear about the upcoming release of tonight's feature,co-produced by Eli "Hostel" Roth,with visions of pillow-chested sex kittens skittering across my walls.The viral ad campaign on the interwebz was classic and effective as fuck.Of course,after I finally screened it,I was faced with a different kind of film than I was expecting at the outset.Exorcism is a mockumentary,in the "you are there" style and tradition of Blair Witch Project,[rec], and Paranormal Activity(which we'll be checking out some time this week,so keep your eyes rolled back for it)with a twist ending that seems like a throwback to Satansploitation fare of the seventies.Sounds great,right?Well,it would have been,if not for that goddamned shaky handheld camerawork that got real old about two movies after it caught on.There's plenty of it on display here,cockblocking a really cool idea from rising above mediocrity.Not to say there aren't cool things happening in Exorcism,because there are a few.If you're into movies about abductions by dark otherworldly forces or a stickler for mood-capturing camera placement vaguely reminiscent of the degree to which your humble N is,you might have a harder time coming out of a viewing feeling much good about it.

Cross illumination?Just make a right past the second cornfield then pull in behind Skeeter's Bronco.
Cotton Marcus(Patrick Fabian)is an evangelical minister who's lost his faith.Naturally,he gathers a documentary film crew to debunk his whole former existence like a jaded magician revealing his secrets in front of the camera lens.He proves his flock are mindless sheep who don't even listen to the words of his sermons by randomly throwing "banana bread" into a filmed one and getting the same applause and cheers from his religious followers.Another of his Godly tools,exorcism,he has sworn off of after reading of a child suffering from autism being smothered to death during a botched rite,too close to home for a father of a disabled boy,as he is.Deciding to perform one titular last exorcism for the cameras,he randomly chooses a letter from a desperate farmer in a remote area of Louisiana who claims his teenaged daughter Nell(Ashley Bell)is possessed by the Devil himself.While seeking directions to the Sweetzer farmhouse,Marcus is advised by a teenaged boy(who turns out to be Nell's brother,Caleb)to go back from whence he came,and the back window of the crew van gets pelted by a cow patty to boot.Nice neighborhood.At the farm,Marcus meets Louis,Nell's father,and assures the God-fearing man that he will rid the girl of the demons inside her.Upon Iris(Iris Bahr)'s direction and in front of Daniel(Adam Grimes)'s lens,Marcus apes for the camera with hidden speakers in his clothes,smoke-billowing crucifixes,and a creaky bed repeatedly slamming the floor,convincing the farmer he is battling a powerful demon named Abalam.He collects a cash fee after he concludes the demon has been exorcised,only Nell mysteriously shows up at the crew's hotel room in the middle of the night,five miles away.

Another satisfied customer dragged kicking and screaming away from the kid over here.Abalam bam,thank you,ma'am.Sorry...
Marcus takes the girl to the hospital,hoping psychological and physiological tests will prove to her father that she suffers from an entirely worldly problem,but the tests all come back negative.Louis takes Nell home,and chains her to her bed for slicing Caleb's grill with a knife(seen that on Cops about three hundred times,big deal).While the farmer takes his son to get his face unfucked at the hospital,Marcus and crew free the girl from her chains,only to be awakened by the sounds of a crying baby in the middle of the night,and Nell standing blankly in the hallway,after which she retreats to the bathroom to drown one of her baby dolls in the tub.The crew finds a juvenile drawing of a dead cat.Hmmm,that's peculiar.That night she steals their camera,pulling and stretching her face in front of it,then smashing the beejeesus out of the family cat with it in the barn before trying to discreetly brain Marcus' dome with it.They find more paintings.Depictions of Marcus being consumed in a giant flame,his director mutilated,and the cameraman beheaded.Strange.Louis makes it home from the hospital to hear an answering machine message that his daughter has a cupcake in her Easy Bake Oven.Marcus deduces that the farmer is an incestuous kiddie fiddler when Sweetzer tells him the demon must have impregnated her,matter-of-factly.Nell attacks Marcus again,and the minister agrees to perform another exorcism rather than let the hayseed blow her away with a shotgun.Out in the barn,Nell lets the evil presence inside her come forth,contorting her body and neck at inhuman angles,speaking Latin,breaking two of her own fingers backwards,identifying itself as Abalam,and asking the holy man if he wants a "blowing job".Marcus,certain that a demon wouldn't flub such choice obscenity,gets the girl to admit she was knocked up by a local boy named Logan and committed her wild aggro play out of the shame of her deeds.Only when they question the alleged fornicator,they discover he's got a bright future as a hairdresser or interior decorator.They return to an empty farmhouse swathed in Satanic symbolism(pentagrams,inverted crosses,ICP graffiti)nad when they roam out into the woods to investigate weird noise,they stumble upon a horrible sight.Most of the town,led by the local Protestant minister, in black occultist robes,chanting over Nell,outsretched on an altar in front of a bonfire,while her father is tied to a pole nearby.She gives birth to something inhuman which the cult tosses into the fire,causing the flames to rise to towering proportions as demonic voices billow out into the night sky.Marcus,faith regained by the Hellish sight,pulls out his crucifix and rushes towards the flame,alerting the cultists to their presence.Iris eats axe-driven Satanic death as Daniel flees the scene,camera in tow.When he stops momentarily to catch his breath,Caleb appears out of the darkness,and beheads the shit outta him.The camera hits the ground,fade to black.Satan-1,Cotton Marcus-0.

Body by Auntie Anne,eyes by the dark lord and master.
The German Stamm's previous feature,A Necessary Death,is another palsy-cam production.There's a shocker.Ashley Bell,who's even pretty cute when she's in control of her own body(and did all her own twisting,being naturally hypermobile....mmmmmmm),acts next in The Day,an apocalyptic film(yaaaaawn) in 2011.The Pennsylvania native,Fabian has cut his teeth in television,appearing in everything from Big Love to Reba,ferchrissakes.Producer Roth,who recently had a cameo in Alexandre Aja's 3D Piranha remake,has giving his faux trailer for Thanksgiving a full feature treatment and The Funhouse 3D next on his "to do" list.I just really hate shaky camerawork,and you probably should by now,too.It doesn't signify "scared" more than "lazy" to me,and really detracts from the genuinely creepy bits which had a chance.I'd love to give this one a higher rating,but we don't grade on failed potential here at the Wop,only finished product.Two wops.Worth a look.

Stay just like that.I'm getting my Levi's off right now.

"The Landlord"(2009)d/Emil Hyde

With August about to dawn on us,I thought I'd say goodbye to July with a good old fashioned low budget independent horror comedy that fell into my lap courtesy of Massive Ego Productions,and wrter/editor/director,Emil Hyde,a personable gent indeed,possessing of the raw materials necessary to press ahead in filmmaking,and given the proper ingredients like a budget,some actors,skilled makeup effects technicians,I can easily see him going on to make memorable movie experiences that leave genre fans ranting long afterwards.Everybody starts somewhere,and I'm guessing this film marks Hyde's starting line to some degree,and to his credit,he has completed his first race,as it were,and the finished product is a likeable comedic romp with ample gore and surprisingly good digital visual effects contained therein.
On the negative side,the budget really shows in some places,most notably the makeup effects which for the most part look like pre-bought Woochie latex appliances and foam rubber severed body parts from the local Halloween store.The acting,which I'm guessing is supplied here by family and friends and/or walk ons,falls a little flat in moving Hyde's original and funny script along from scene to scene.All-in-all though,I can't say I wasn't entertained.

Just look at that mess. Forget about getting your deposit back now.
Enter Tyler(Derek Dziak),the titular chubby landlord of an apartment building that happens to be frequented by a demonic duo,Rabishu(Rom Barkhordar),who's addicted to Hawaiian shirts and late night infomercials,and Lamashtu(Lori Myers),his bitchy hell-queen whose face closely resembles a fox terrier.Together they've been materializing at inopportune times and eating Tyler's tenants,usually before he can even collect rent out of the poor bastards.His sister,Amy(Michelle Courvais),a beat cop who's been conducting an extramarital affair(cunnilingus in a squad car is a kick I haven't tried YET) with her partner, as well as feeding local dirtbags to a crew of vampires(!) in exchange for money and valuables,is aware of the netherworldly couple,and helps her haunted sibling out whenever she can.

"Skyyyyrockets in flight! Afternooon deliiiiight!"
Donna(Erin Myers)shows up at Tyler's door one day,running away from an abusive old man and an unwanted pregnancy,looking for a divorce,an abortion,and cheap room and board after trying her luck at a fleabag motel full of hookers,johns,and drug addicted weirdos who rub danishes on their nipples,overseen by an acid-tongued manager(Emil Hyde himself)with an itchy trigger finger.After a romantic evening of karaoke at the local dive bar,our pudgy protagonist takes a shine to the troubled girl,which only complicates matters at home,where Lamashtu hankers to eat her unborn infant(!!!).How can Tyler keep Ribishu from buying useless junk with his credit card,keep the detectives off the bloody body trail,keep his sister out of trouble with the vampiric vagabonds,AND keep his new love interest off the menu?You'll have to find out what goes down in the knock-down,drag-out brimstone-baked finale for yourself.Contact the folks behind http://thelandlordmovie.com/ and score yourself a copy of this quirky horromedy.Remember,the more you support independent,original horror, the less you'll be wasting your time with brainless Hollywood remakes.

These mirror-gashes are gonna do wonders for your eyes,sweetie!
Despite its budgetary shortcomings,Hyde's film boasts of some impressive force fields,flaming portals to Hell,supernatural witchcraft battles,baseball bat beatings,broken bottles to the labonza,brain-ladeling,and obligatory limb-munching.You could do a lot worse than this one during the week,believe you me.Barkhordar has done acting and voice work in television and videogames while Courvais acts in the Windy City.Hopefully we'll be seeing more in the future from Mr. Hyde and company.Give it a shot,droogies.

Whoa,maybe I should've stopped at four double-dipped blotters.