Exorcism

Paul Naschy is a kindly priest in this psycho-demonic thriller, with plenty of nods to THE EXORCIST without being a complete clone thereof. One obvious difference is that the girl in EXORCISM (aka: EXORCISMO) is possessed by her eeevil, dead father instead of the devil.

This movie is on par with other European possession epics of the era.

BEST BITS: #1- The possessed girl's hideously transformed eyes! #2- The devil dog attack! #3- The naked devil women running around during the Satanic ritual sequence! #4- The all-too-short grand finale!

Another triumph for Mr. Naschy...

While I certainly consider The Exorcist to be a horror classic, I have to admit that I don't hold it in quite as high regard as many other horror fans do. As a consequence of that, I haven't seen many of The Exorcist rip-offs, and if Exorcismo is anything to go by, I'll have to say that's a good thing as this film is boring as hell and certainly not worth spending ninety minutes on it! In fairness to the other Exorcist rip-offs, this is often considered one of the worst, and so maybe it wasn't the best place for me to start. It's not hard to guess what the plot will be: basically it's the same as the one in The Exorcist and sees a girl get possessed by a demonic spirit (which happens to be the spirit of her dead father). The village priest is then called in to perform the exorcism. Like many Spanish horror films, this one stars Paul Naschy, who is pretty much the best thing about the film. Exorcismo was directed by Juan Bosch, who previously directed the derivative Spanish Giallo 'The Killer Wore Gloves'. I haven't seen any of his other films, but on the basis of these two: I believe that originality wasn't one of his strong points. There's not a lot of good things I can say about the film itself; it mostly just plods along and the exorcism scene isn't worth waiting for. I certainly don't recommend it!

I know I'm in the minority, but I've always considered The Exorcist to be a rather dull film when the pea soup isn't hitting the fan. Exorcismo, a Spanish Exorcist rip-off starring Paul Naschy, is boring even when the possessed girl is doing her thing, and only regular nudity from its pretty female cast members prevent the film from being a total waste of time.

The girl with the demon problem is Leila (Grace Mills), whose heretical activities with a local Satanic cult has left her possessed by the malevolent spirit of her late father. Naschy plays priest Father Adrian Dunning, who is called by the girl's stepmother to lend his expertise. Meanwhile, people are turning up dead with their heads facing the wrong way.

The main problem with this film is that Leila doesn't develop cracked lips, crazy contacts, and bad complexion until well over an hour into the film, and even when she does, it's not very impressive, the few pesetas in the coffer not nearly enough to replicate the head-turning, vomit-spewing craziness of The Exorcist. With everything leading up to the possession being boring (nudity excepted), and everything after being almost as boring, the result is... well... boring.

Bums, boobs and bush aside, the only thing I found remotely interesting was that, despite being Spanish, the film was set in England (although certain shots of arid countryside are clearly not the rolling hills surrounding Bristol), and that Father Dunning is only too happy to carry out the exorcism without the go-ahead from his superiors (I always thought that express permission had to be granted by a bishop).

If this were not a very blatant rip-off of "The Exorcist" (which it very obviously is) it might be a halfway decent movie. Not a GREAT movie, but not too bad. But

instead, we get some scenes that we've seen before and were better the first

time around. A young, rich beauty (is there any other kind?) unknowingly

participates in a Satanic ritual and becomes possessed by the spirit of her late father, who died in an insane asylum. Things get moving with a head-turned- around-backwards murder (sound familiar?) and proceed onto the inevitable

demonic fried-egg eyeballs and scabby, vomit encrusted special effects make- up. There's nothing very new or original here. That said, it's still not the worst movie I've ever seen. It suffers from bad dubbing and a lame ending, but there's a few genuine scares, some groovy hippie coolness and lots of naked girls

dancing around, if you're into that sort of thing. Fans of the demonic possession genre may enjoy it, but die-hard fans of The Exorcist may be somewhat

disgusted. Four stars out of ten.

Something is wrong with Leila (Grace Mills) and Father Adrian Dunning (Paul Naschy) is called in to evaluate the situation.

Some may call this a ripoff of The Exorcist with Linda Blair, but I'd rather see the flesh displayed here than some special effects. The fact is that The Exorcist was not seen in Spain before this film came out.

Anyway, it's a Paul Naschy film, and I am a completest.

You won't see amazing special effects, because they didn't exist. So it looks fake at times, but it was a good story and an interesting film.

Paul Naschy stole the show. I wasn't his finest hour, but he was head and shoulders above the rest. The makeup was good, and one could ignore how the film seemed to go all over the place just to see Naschy.