Las amantes del diablo

If you like Hammer horror flicks, you might like this Italian effort grounded in the same genre. Well- possibly.

You know the formula: pretty girls in white dresses (esp Krista Nell), central casting bad guy in a dark cloak- and a gothic pile in which to set events.

All pretty derivative, but done in a competent but generally unchallenging manner.

If you want sleaze, then this is not for you. Some gore. Very little nudity. In fact very little "edge" at all. Saw mine on German DVD as "Tanz des Satans". No better in translation .....

For someone who has bought "Pierrot le Fou" (1965), "Massacre pour Une Orgie"(1966) "Affare Beckett l'" (1966), "The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance" (1975) in the hope of seeing Christa Nelli (most often billed as in my title), this 1971 film is the best film I have seen of her.As it is some 32 years old it has been out of circulation for some while and hitheto has been a difficult title to find.However a German company, "Marketing Film", has recently brought out a new 2003 Dvd reissue edition (89 mins) under the title "Tanz Des Satans".This is an excellent product with crystal clear pictures and Dolby sound.There is no grainy picture as on some old videos and it looks as if it could have originally been filmed this year.

Instead of her black beehive hairstyle most often seen in her mid-sixties films, Krista Nell sports here a lovely head of light auburn hair and dresses very fashionably in different outfits for most of her scenes.Basically the story involves two sisters, Maria and Hilda (Krista Nell).Maria works as a nurse and is due for a long holiday which makes her very happy indeed.She only just manages to escape and is rescued from a traumatic event and is then rushed to a sanataorium to recover.Someone has evidently played with her mind!However the evil and hypnotic Dr Tills Nescu (Espartaco Santoni) will not be denied and with inside help, manages to abduct her from the sanatorium, taking Maria back to his forbidding castle.Hilda resolves to find her beloved sister and with the help of the local police and Interpol together with a friendly and helpful doctor from the hospital, she manages to track down where Maria was last seen.Dr Nescu has a secretary Andrea, (Teresa Gimpera who looks very much like Jill St. John) and who is obviously very much in his power.He is something of a playboy what with his yacht and trappings of a millionaire.Andrea also has to suffer all the girlfriends of her boss around his yacht much to her displeasure.Soon however Dr. Nescu has fallen for Hilda who he sees as special, much to the resentment of Andrea whom we suspect has lesbian feelings for Hilda herself (although this is never consummated).

To find out more, Hilda follows Dr Nescu and his entourage back into his castle where grisly horrors await.I will not divulge any more of the plot but it does involve devil worship.A good film I rated it 6/10.Please bear in mind the original language is Spanish but my Dvd came with German/English dubbing options.One gripe however.Italian Krista does not provide her own English dubbing as in "Affare Beckett l'??" and I wish these type of European Continental films provided proper credits so one can read the cast list, production values etc. as in most British/American films.

Euro-sleaze from the 70's doesn't get any more prototypic than "Feast of Satan", with its lurid atmosphere, scantily clad women running through the woods all petrified, horrible dunning, sinister organ music overload, shamelessly borrowed influences of American landmark horror movies and the thinnest possible storyline imaginable. When her sister Maria is repatriated from a vacation resort in a severe state of mental shock, with the characteristics of being petrified still noticeable on her face, Hilda Salas travels to the area to investigate what happened. She gradually becomes entangled in a world of occult mystery. The more Hilda gets acquainted with the local high society, and particularly the hunky Dr. Tills Nescu, the more her life is endangered. As said, "Feast of Satan" is pretty standard guff and thus predictable, derivative and largely boring. The film is surprisingly – and unfortunately – very sparing with nudity and gore, so you simply have no choice but to pay attention to the decrepit plot. Due to the complete lack of action and suspense, the film seems to go on forever without revealing any clues regarding the denouement. That is especially annoying since the title pretty much openly gives away what will happen at the end: one giant satanic orgy, of course! Though I have to admit the final couple of twists and red herrings, as well as the climax sequences, uplift the quality level of the movie in general.

Here's a tip in case you really get too bored to be bothered with the actual film. Keep an eye open for the Dr. Tills Nescu's short-sized and mustached employee. He makes the highest amount of pointless cameo appearances I've ever counted. It's like he came for free with the camera!

I'm a big fan of Euro horror and went into this one hoping for something along the lines of Sergio Martino's excellent paranoid Giallo All the Colours of the Dark, and came out of it severely disappointed. The plot focuses on Hilda Torres, a woman who decides to infiltrate a strange cult when her sister goes missing. She soon gets noticed by Tils Nescu; doctor and leader of the cult, and he has his own designs in Hilda. The film does look very nice and this is complimented by a cast featuring several nice looking ladies, but this doesn't cover up this film's main problem - that being that it's far too slow and the plot is completely uninteresting for most of the film. There's a hell of a lot of talking in the movie and it started to grind me down after a while. Usually with films like this, I can pick out a few good things to say about it; but Feast for Satan is seriously lacking in anything positive aside from the aforementioned good looking cinematography and actresses. There's a little twist at the end that doesn't really add much to the film and overall I feel safe in saying that even you're a fan of Euro horror, you can find something better to do with this part of your life.

This is actually more a Spanish horror movie than an Italian one (so it's really more "paella horror" than "spaghetti horror"). I'm sure there was probably Italian co-production money involved, and the cut I saw was obviously not a Spanish one (since it had some brief nudity). But most of the cast was Spanish except for the Austrian actress Krista Nell, who was usually relegated to supporting roles but acquits herself well here as the lead. She plays a woman whose sister has gone around the bend after accidentally becoming involved with a satanic cult, so for some reason she tries infiltrate the same cult with not much better results.

As far as the plot goes, the movie is pretty weak. The directorial style doesn't begin to approach either the best Italian horror/gialli films or the British Hammer films, but it's not bad for early Spanish horror, and this is one of the few Spanish films that could actually be described as "psychedlic" in places (Spain's dictator at the time, Francisco Franco, had little use for the kind of decadence sweeping the rest of Europe that period, but, hey, if it's a bunch of satanists doing it. . .). The acting in general is unremarkable, but Nell and Teresa Gimpera, who plays the jealous girlfriend of the cult leader, are better than average. This is one of those movies I wouldn't look to hard for, but it's worth watching if you somehow run across it.