The Devil's Lover

You can't go totally wrong with a movie featuring the mouth-wateringly luscious and genuinely talented 70's Italian cult actress Rosalba Neri (aka Sarah Bay), but this is not one of her better films.

It starts in modern times (as of 1972) with Neri's character "Helga" and two of her blonde, generously breasted, mini-skirt clad girlfriends coming to tour a castle that is supposedly owned by Satan himself. For reasons that eluded me, they all decide to spend the night there (apparently it doubles as a bed-and-breakfast?). That night "Helga" has a dream where she is transported back to the 16th century where she is a virginal bride about to be married. While she is trying on her wedding-night garments, she sees a man looking through her window. It is apparently an ill omen for another man to see these garments, so she tracks the man down--perhaps not a good idea since he is wearing a crimson robe and hood, and, of course, turns out to be the Devil. The Devil demands she kill her husband on their wedding night and then join him as his lover. Meanwhile a spurned female lover of her husband is plotting to kill her. There are several subplots involving other characters (I don't know about anyone else, but I'm usually in ALL the scenes in my dreams). Perhaps the best is where an old witch lures her big-breasted virginal friends (all the characters in the dream are the same characters as in the modern story a la "The Wizard of Oz")to a cave where they are assaulted by two randy highway-men in a kind of defloration/orgy.

In a way this is the opposite of the standard Italian Gothic horror film. Where your typical Italian Gothic has a dumb or nonsensical plot, but an effective atmosphere and visual style, this has a fairly decent plot, but it's very hamhandedly executed style-wise. Some of it was no doubt the print I saw, which messed up the day-for-night shooting so that all the scenes seemed to take place in broad daylight (even while some on-screen characters remark on how dark it is!). A lot of it though is the fault of director Lombardo, who maintains a positively glacial pace and seems to cut away to a boring subplot every time the main plot threatens to gather any momentum. After a (very long) hour you do get to see Neri's incredible nude body, but it was used to better effect in at least a dozen other Italian horror movies and giallo thrillers. Neri herself isn't bad, but she's just a lot better playing a wicked villainess than an innocent virgin (and she was also about thirty-five at the time). This is not a bad movie if you like Italian Gothic horror, but it is kind of a disappointing one.

The heyday of the Italian Gothic Horror genre was the early-to-mid-1960s; even so, the style lingered on well into the next decade but the results were often far beneath what could be accomplished at its best. Naturally, this is one such example: actually, we start off here with a contemporary setting and the heroine ("Euro-Cult" favorite Rosalba Neri) dreams herself back at least two centuries – under the influence of an old mansion where, legend has it, the devil used to reside! An element these later efforts certainly took advantage of was the relaxation in censorship, except that then we tended to get copious nudity at the expense of plot (and even atmosphere): at one point, for instance, a couple of nubile girls are gang-raped and forced to copulate between themselves inside a cave, a sequence that has no bearing whatsoever on the central plot! For what it is worth, the narrative involves two girls (one is Neri and the other is played by a companion of hers in the modern 'bookends') who both love the same man; when he chooses Neri, the rival (herself pursued by another, played by Robert Woods) turns to a witch who puts a curse on the former. This results in Neri being seduced by a stranger (Edmund Purdom), losing her lover to him and getting burned at the stake for the latter's death…all on her wedding night and, surprise surprise, the interloper is eventually revealed to be Old Nick himself! While the lethargic pacing is decidedly characteristic of such fare, the inept handling is not and, in this case, makes the film a snooze-fest as opposed to the mood-piece its creators probably intended! When I first came across this one, I was intrigued by its description as "the greatest Rosalba Neri movie ever"; however, having checked it out for myself now, I regret to report that things could not be further removed from the truth!

Three women stay the night at a castle supposed owned by the Devil - in the night, one of them has a dream where she is transported to the 16th century where a bunch of odd events take place.

The main selling point of this movie has to be Rosalba Neri. This Italian actress appeared in a number of genre films from around this time and always added quality to proceedings, in terms of her sensuality, sexual forcefulness and genuine acting ability. She's probably the best thing in this film too. Its an example of an Italian gothic horror film, at the latter end of the sub-genre's cycle. And on paper it does include a lot of promising elements - sexual deviants, vampires, religious fanatics, a red-hooded devil, a witch, beautiful maidens and ornate, crumbling locations. But director, Paolo Lombardo, was hardly a master at this kind of thing and, in fact, only helmed a further two minor films. The result is a fairly lethargic picture on the whole, with the odd interesting moment. If you like Italian gothic, it is certainly good enough for a whirl and Neri is always worth seeing in anything.

Traveling through the countryside, a group of friends stop off at a local castle to take in the sights, which soon prompts them to imagine a time centuries earlier where they're turned into rivals for the same figure that promises to sell her wildest dreams in exchange for her soul.

This was a fairly underwhelming and somewhat problematic Gothic horror outing. Among the big problems here stems from the implications of what's going on while the group stays at the castle. The setup involving the group going around the countryside trying to find a place to relax and coming across the castle where they're invited to stay, while the count, who lives there, starts to close the facility up, starts the film with a rather intriguing setup, but it's far too confusing to make much sense otherwise. The whole idea of the present-day friends being rivals in the flashback scenes makes sense when you know who the characters are beforehand so that when the characterizations switch there's some stakes to things, which doesn't happen here when it takes the girls into different personas almost as soon as we're introduced to them so there's a disconnect to what's going on from when we're initially introduced to them and then no less than five minutes later are told that wasn't important and to follow a different storyline instead. It doesn't help matters that the flashback scenes are just as confusing and difficult to follow. This never makes it clear what's supposed to happen, as it seems to drop the characters into various different scenarios but never commits to anything, with the friends being confirmed as witches, vampires, and ordinary sexual deviants at several points here, depending on the importance of the scene in question. With the storyline follows up on this by throwing a Satanic cult, a mysterious red-hooded figure wandering around the outskirts of the story, and ornate occult rituals for the woman because of what happened on her wedding day, but it's not all that interested in tying these together with any kind of clarity. These things just seem to happen, and it moves on to the next setpiece with everything barely connected or referenced again, making it even harder to make sense of what's going on. The other big factor here is the sense of dullness and boredom from what's presented here. The central idea had plenty of potential to provide some Gothic-tinged goodness with the past revelations making something out of the present-day situation, but rather than doing anything of any substance, all we get are endless scenes involving the duplicitous relationship where she steals the man's boyfriend and manifests the need for capturing the relationship in earnest. None of this keeps the film moving along with any kind of momentum or energy, and it feels like a dull drama for long stretches of the running time, as the only times it really changes things up are when there's some romantic couplings that bring about some fun nudity or the attempts at catching the demonic pact coming together. These scenes offer up some likable factors for the film, but it's not enough to overcome the other drawbacks on display.

Rated Unrated/R: Nudity, Violence, Language, and sex scenes.

You gotta love the 1960s and 1970s European horror flicks. Most of them, anyway. "L'amante del demonio" (alternately called "The Devil's Lover" and "Lucifera Demon Lover" in English) is too slow-moving, and much of it looks like scenes that they added to fill space. There's no shortage of sex, but the movie has so much wasted potential. I prefer it when these movies have lots of blood and guts, and this story of a young woman who goes to sleep in the 20th century and wakes up in an earlier century (where she sees all manner of evil things) just doesn't have enough of that. I recommend sticking with a Jess Franco movie or a Michele Soavi movie if you're looking for some classic Euro-horror.