Night of the Damned

Having been a long term fan of Pierre Brice originating from "The Mill of the Stone Women", I went to great lengths to get a copy of this film, finally procuring a French print entitled "Les Nuites Sexuelles" which is more appropriate. Despite an intriguing and promising plot the film is merely an excuse for interminable nude and unerotic lesbian sex scenes between the various starlets cast in it. Brice appears only briefly and has not nearly enough to do in the film to come anywhere near saving it. This is not a horror film so much as a borer film...one would wind up damning oneself on any night when 90 minutes was wasted watching it. Cutting by 70 minutes or more would be a definite improvement. To be avoided at all costs.

Amateur detective Jean Dupris(Pierre Brice)is summoned to the home of his friend Gil.Not long after Dupris and his wife(Patrizia Viotti) arrive Gil dies in his sleep.Gil's companion turns out to be a witch who kidnaps women,engages them in sex orgies and then kills them when she's through.Dupris decides to hang around and help solve these range murders.Unfortunately he doesn't notice that his wife has fallen under the control of the lesbian witch,who enjoys scratching female breasts."Night of the Damned" is a pretty sleazy Italian Gothic horror with beautiful women and a good amount of nudity.The action is pretty slow and there is not much suspense,but if you are into Italian horror give this one a chance.7 out of 10.

Typical for the period horror film, Night of the Damned features a castle, a curse, some nudity, and a few murders (mostly off screen). A reporter visits a sick friend who believes himself cursed. Relatives of the friend are being inexplicably bumped off under strange circumstances. Is this a supernatural phenomenon or the result of an all too human inheritance plot? The film goes down easy enough but is not overly memorable. The color cinematography is warm but there is little atmosphere. The trippy climax is enjoyable but the film could have used more psychedelia. Bottom line: die hard fans of Euro-horror might want to give Night of The Damned a look. Don't expect The Reincarnation of Isabel/Black Magic Rites - a much wilder ride.

Jean Duprey (Pierre Brice), the hero of Night of the Damned, is a renowned sleuth who helps the police with particularly difficult cases - he's like a '70s Euro-Sherlock Holmes, except being Italian, he has a tasty wife, Danielle (Patrizia Viotti), instead of a loyal male companion.

When Jean receives a puzzling letter from his old friend Prince Guillaume de Saint Lambert (Mario Carra), the detective and his wife decide to pay a visit to Guillaume's castle, where they meet the prince's creepy wife Rita (Angela De Leo) and become embroiled in a centuries old mystery involving a witch's curse (no prizes for correctly connecting the dots).

The scene is set for lots of atmospheric gothic horror with cobwebby, candlelit corridors, dark, dank dungeons, and creaky, crumbly crypts, but sadly director Filippo Walter Ratti conjures up very little in the way of tension or scares, the majority of his film being a slow, uneventful, dreary mess that not even some gratuitous nudity and light lesbianism can make bearable. The film also features several murders (of naked women, of course) but there is no gore to speak of- just a few scratch marks on the victims' breasts.

2.5/10, rounded down to 2 for Danielle's annoying hysterical screaming.

After receiving a strange letter, a couple decides to visit a friend of theirs at their Gothic castle, where they learn that he's been stricken by a family curse that has affected others like him, but they soon realize it's a ploy by a malicious witch to steal their vitality and must stop her.

This was a fairly fun if somewhat problematic Gothic horror outing. Among the better elements here come from the immensely fun setup that allows the film to mix the Gothic sensibilities of the past with a modern presentation. The central starting point here, focusing on the couple arriving at the mansion home of a friend of theirs to speak with him after a mysterious letter, and finding that his belief in a family curse that's affecting other members of his family and bringing them into the mix, allows this one to get together with a solid old-school Gothic starting point. The idea of the past coming back to haunt the living is a great starting point, much like the actual reveal about the whole affair being done by a vengeful witch to carry out justice from several centuries earlier, which ties into everything even better. That this is in the modern day and allows it to dalliance into police investigations or other forms of conveniences not normally associated with the older films to give this a generally great touch. With this established, the film's journey into sleazy exploitation realms makes for a fun time here. The couple being at their friends house means there's an excuse for a never-ending series of temptations and seduction sequences that take place either among fog-enshrouded outdoor crypts or inside Satanic altar rooms filled with ornate paraphernalia that allow for the perfect follow-up to the Gothic setup earlier only now it's providing the setting for a series of explicit, sexually-charged couplings between pretty much everyone involved. The difference between the locations is rendered moot when they're both utilized for taking on seductions for the couple that contains a series of stylish sequences involving the psychedelic camera-work and colors to work out their erotic content as the witch seduces her targets in these scenarios. It's all done in such close-up that there's a much more in-depth look at the sexual shenanigans than expected, with everyone taken to bed and focused on these bizarre features, which adds a lot of depth to the storyline presented here involving the purpose behind the seduction. Outside of these factors, there are some big problems here with the film's sluggish and outright bland pacing. The majority of this tends to focus on the exploits of the witch going around seducing the other female members of the family at the castle, while no one is aware of what's going on, something that renders the film a mindless repetition of scenes that meander along at the same general format the entire time. So little of the setup beyond that makes for a dull experience, as it all tends to meander around this bizarre series of setpieces, trying to make sense of everything, but it doesn't do much to keep the excitement level going, so long as the seduction scenes are taking place instead of genre content, which might hold this down for some. As a whole, this is the main factor against the film, as there's not much else holding this back.

Rated Unrated/NC-17: Constant Full Nudity, Hardcore Sex Scenes, Violence, and Language.