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Our
surreal, subtitled journey begins around
the town of Nomen Tumm. Rumored to be a
place of "dark miracles," a
local well is believed to contain healing
waters that can restore the youth of those
who are pure in heart. Unfortunately,
most who come to drink from its waters are
more of the vain and evil variety. Also, a
coven of female succubus have set up camp
nearby, and using their demonic feminine
wiles, lure those who are corrupt away to
the sea. Once there, they drown them,
sending their souls to the Evil One
in hell. As she puts the
lethal-finishing-touch on the latest
lout, Kia (Allyson Ames) grows
tired of luring these contemptible fools
and wants the challenge of going after
someone who is pure. Confessing these
desires to Amael
(Eloise Heart) -- the head
succubus, she warns Kia that that's a BAD
idea. Noble spirits are not to be trifled
with. They have a bad habit of corrupting
demons with some evil thing called love.
Ignoring
these warnings, Kia goes in search of
someone who is good. She goes to the local
monastery, an obvious place to start, but
finds the monks are into some weird
religious practices that involves toad-sucking.
Her search a bust, she returns to the well
and spies a brother and sister taking a
drink. Arndis (Ann
Atmer) helps her wounded brother,
Marco, take a drink. Intrigued, Kia and
follows them home. Along the way, Amael
intercepts Kia and pleads with her to just
forget her schemes. She tells Kia that
Marco is a war hero who faced death and
rescued many others without hesitation,
making him the noblest of all.
And
who is this Marco character? Why it’s
none other than old James Tiberius Kirk
himself, William Shatner. Yes, the same
guy who in less than a year's time would
jump in the sack at the drop of a tri-corder
is our pure, noble soul. Try to refrain
from laughing too hard. Okay? Back to
the review.
Determined
to get a hero into hell, Kia poses as a
lost traveler and wanders onto Marco’s
farm. Marco and Arndis offer her food and
shelter. As she weaves a tale for Marco,
it suddenly grows dark when a solar
eclipse blots out the sun. Marco warns his
sister not to look directly at it, but
when Arndis goes to check on the animals,
she can’t resist looking at the sun and
is blinded.
I
remember
back when I was in kindergarten, they
wouldn’t let us out for recess during
a solar eclipse because they thought
we’d all go blind staring at it.
Enough of these asides, on with the
review!
Baiting
the trap, Kia desires to go home, so Marco
offers to escort her. The blinded Arndis
tries to call for her brother, but Amael
has cast a spell on her, silencing her
screams for help. As the muted and blind
Arndis stumbles off into the forest, Kia
tempts Marco along, bringing him closer
and closer to the sea -- and his doom.
Slowly and subtly, Marco slows her down.
He professes his love and wants Kia to
come back home with him. Wavering, the
she-demon turns up the heat but he faces
temptation and does not bend. (I
guess Kirk doesn’t believe in
pre-marital sex.) Marco wins her
over and they don’t make it to the
water. (I guess I was a little
pre-mature on the pre-marital sex thing.
Kirk shoots, he scores!)
Meanwhile,
poor Arndis is still lost out in the woods
bumping into trees.
Marco
and Kia’s "encounter" takes a
lot out of her. While she sleeps, he
carries her back to the village. Amael
sees what has happened, releases Arndis
from the spell and guides her after them,
hoping the sister can stop Marco. Taking
Kia into the church, Marco lays her
on the altar. The church bell wakens her,
and the demon is frightened away from the
holy sanctuary. When Amael finds her, Kia
is livid. She has been defiled by
Marco’s love, so they decide to summon
an Incubus to help her gain revenge.
Arndis
finally feels her way into the church and
is reunited with her brother. Telling him
about her really bad day, he then tells
her about his encounter with Kia and
admits to loving the strange girl.
Amael
and Kia go to an abandoned house and
summon the "Lord of the Night."
They beg him to send the Incubus to avenge
his defiled disciple. The monster squeals
in agreement. Then the ground trembles
until it's torn asunder, and the Incubus (Milos
Milos -- gesundheidt!) emerges out
of the cracked earth, ready to do their
bidding. And since they can't touch
the pure Marco, they decide to take it out
on his sister.
After Kia lures Marco away from the
house, Arndis is seduced by the Incubus
and taken to the abandoned house. And
while the coven performs a Black Mass, the
Incubus rapes her. (Boo! Hiss! Boo!
Leave her alone!)
Marco
keeps calling for Kia, but can’t find
her. She suckers him all the way to the
sea, but she can’t go through with it. She
loves him, too. Unable to find her, Marco
heads back home. Upon
arrival, he finds the ravaged and
discarded body of Arndis. Before she
expires, she warns him to save himself and
then dies. Amael and the Incubus are
there, too. Marco and the Incubus fight,
but the demon clearly has the upper hand
and Marco is severely wounded. Amael steps
in and tells the Incubus to let Marco kill
him --
thus corrupting his soul. Marco slays the
demon just as Kia arrives, and Amael
offers the now fallible Marco to her.
Kia
again leads the now delusional, and
mortally wounded, Marco toward the sea --
again! (Giving
a patented Kirk speech the whole way about
the horrors of hell he now sees.)
Marco realizes that this isn’t right and
stops. Realizing he must cleanse his soul,
he makes a u-turn and heads for the church.
Kia
tries to go after him, but Amael stops
her. They have a brief catfight until Kia
knocks her on the noggin and escapes.
Amael removes the stake from the Incubus,
resurrecting him, and then sends him after
Kia. Marco makes it into the church, but
the Incubus catches Kia before she can get
inside. She denounces the devil and makes
the sign of the cross, causing the Incubus
to revert to its true demon form. (A
real live goat!) They fight, but
Kia manages to get away and Marco pulls
her into the sanctuary where they embrace.
The
end
Do
you all remember Count Floyd’s Monster
Chiller Horror Theater on SCTV?
If not, he was the host of a cut-rate
creature feature whose films usually
weren’t all that scary -- except for Dr.
Tongue’s 3-D House of Stewardesses,
starring the legendary Woody Tobias Jr. --
that his programming department stuck him
with. This also appears to be the same
fate that has befallen Joe Bob Briggs on Monstervision.
Anyways, you got the impression that Floyd
drew the short straw among the stations
production assistants and got stuck in the
cape. He really didn’t want to be there,
and neither did his studio audience.
Getting to the point -- and there is one,
trust me -- Floyd thought he finally had a
real horror movie: a werewolf picture
called "The
Lair of the White Wolf."
Very excited, he promises thrills and
chills, and then tosses it over to the
film with his customary wolf-howl. But as
the credits roll, we find out it's Ingmar
Bergman’s "The Lair of the White
Wolf," and the entire first
segment is nothing but two women talking
in circles while the camera constantly
juxtapositions them. When we cut to the
first commercial break, Floyd, not
realizing they're live, is cursing and
yelling at his stagehands: "What the
hell is this!" It quickly
dawns on him that he's live, then clumsily
recovers by going into his howl followed
by mock praise of the not-so-scary film,
swearing it will get better...But the
entire movie is nothing but the women
talking. During each break, Floyd is still
swearing -- a lot. He also swears
that a werewolf appeared at the window
during one scene -- "Didn’t you see
it! With the bloody fangs, and burning
eyes! Oh, forget it." -- and begs and
pleads with you to stay tuned...
While
watching Incubus,
all
I could really think of was to wonder what Count
Floyd’s commercial breaks for it would've
been like. I came across this film when
friend of mine at work, who knew I was a
fan of odd films, said his dad had a movie
where William Shatner played a guy who
could resist some female sex-demons, so
they had to produce a bigger sex-demon to
take him on. He then asked if I'd like to
see it. Now how could I pass that up!
The
only "art film" in Esperanto, Incubus
was released in 1965. An
unfortunate by product of the early 60's,
when this artificial language briefly
resurfaced, it's affectionately known as
pig-Italian here at 3B
Theater.
It's been said that the cast learned the
language phonetically and didn't have a
clue as to what they were saying. The film
was a big hit in the art houses, but an
accident resulted in the original negatives
and all copies being destroyed. The film
was thought to be lost forever until a
complete copy was found in Paris. It has
since been digitally remastered and
released on video.
I
can easily see the film's high art appeal.
It is beautifully photographed and filled
with startling imagery, disturbing content
and ghostly surroundings --
cinematographer Conrad Hall would go on to
be nominated for four Academy Awards over
the next five years. Fresh from creating
"The Outer Limits"
director Leslie Stevens' staging is very
Bergmanesque and it oozes pretentiousness.
The Esperanto serves a useful purpose as
well, keeping you a little off balance as
you try to keep up with the dialogue. Also,
prepare yourself for endless scenes of
women shouting "Marco?" and see
how long you can resist answering
"Polo!"
So
is Incubus a good film?
Sure.
It’s beautiful to look at no matter how
odd it gets -- and very entertaining
because it pushes well beyond these
oddball boundaries into some kind of
delirium.
Shatner is fine as Marco, it’s just hard
to absorb after seeing him in everything
he’s done since. (There
are plenty of Prime Directive jokes to be
made here.) The strongest
emotion the film got out of me was that I
felt really sorry for poor Arndis -- and
on a sad note, actress Atmar committed
suicide not long after the film's initial
release. Equally tragic is the
tale of Milos Milos, who went on to murder
his girlfriend Barbara Ann Thompson, the estranged wife
of Mickey Rooney, before killing himself.
And it only gets more bizarre from there.
Check out this website dedicated to the The
Curse of Incubus for all the strange
and sordid details.
So
it's good --relatively speaking, but is it
high art?
Well,
I’ve always thought art was art and crap
was crap, and never the two shall meet, no
matter how pretentious it tries to be. Incubus
tries real hard to be art, but can’t
quite shake its stinky origins.
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