Words almost fail to describe my enthusiasm when I stumbled upon a copy of this "Katarsis", aka "Challenge the Devil". A fully restored version on BluRay is available in the fancy boxset "The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee". It's quite expensive, but hey, an ultra-rare gothic Italian movie from the early sixties, and starring the almighty Lee can't be bad, right? Well, unfortunately not, and even a film like this is obscure and forgotten for a good reason.
All the main issues of this film, and they are quite plentiful, can basically be brought back to one major and incomprehensible default. "Katarsis" - seemingly - didn't have a script. During the credits, and nor here on IMDb, there isn't anyone listed as writer. So, what I imagine, is that director Giuseppe Veggezzi (who apparently never did anything else in the film industry) gave instructions to his cast like: "Just do something. Whatever. Improvise, people!".
The absence of a script would explain a lot, though. "Katarsis" is - hands down - the world champion of useless, endless, and irritating padding footage! Although barely 80 minutes long, minimally 20 minutes of those are pure filler. Boring dance acts, entire songs, random party footage... all lasting for several long minutes. Even the process of going up a flight of stairs is stretched eternally. Ironically enough, the group going up the stairs also says: this seems to take forever! Even worse, however, is the unfathomable and surreal narrative structure of "Katarsis". It makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.
It starts with two hired assassins going after a man. They shoot him, and the wounded man seeks refugee in a monastery where he knows one of the monks. The man tells the monk the killers were after him for documents that his ex-girlfriend stole. The monk goes to the nightclub where the ex-girlfriend (a hideous woman) works. Out of the blue, the monk starts telling her why he became a monk via a flashback. Apparently, he used to be a ruthless thug, and together with five others, they broke into a castle and stumbled upon an old man. Hey, there we finally have Christopher Lee! But he's gone again after five minutes... At the request of the old man, who may be the Devil himself, they roam around the castle in search for a woman. And, surprise, the six hoodlums turn into remorseful young people.
Seriously, what is this?!? Craziest. Trash. Ever.
I'm nevertheless giving "Katarsis" one point extra, solely because Christopher Lee has three different faces in hardly five minutes of screentime. Oh, and the little twist-ending about Lee's character real identity is reasonably ingenious, but it doesn't save anything.
