70's Foreign Horror Part Seventeen

THE MONK

(1972)

Dir - Ado Kyrou

Overall: GOOD

 

Long in the works as a project for Luis Buñuel, The Monk, (Le moine, Der Mönch und die Frauen), finally came to fruition some years later under the direction of Greek filmmaker and Buñuel's personal friend Ado Kyrou.  This was the first proper cinematic interpretation of Matthew Gregory Lewis' 18th century Gothic novel The Monk: A Romance and it adheres to many of the tropes of the era concerning the psychological price paid for temptation within the confines of extreme religious servitude.  Franco Nero plays the disgraced title character that is both devout and seemingly unshakable in his faith while enforcing it in a draconian manner, that is until he increasingly succumbs to a demon woman in disguise and her sexual devotion, an act which only leads him further and further into the arms of damnation.  Nero is appropriately over the top when necessary but also aghast and speechless at later intervals as if he is persistently comprehending the extent of his fall from grace.  There are touchy elements to the story, (namely that it involves the lustful desperation towards an underage girl), but Kyrou could have gone much further exploitative wise both with this and the eventual arrival of the inquisition, something which is generally ushers in gratuitous torture scenes that are thankfully lacking.

 

THE OVAL PORTRAIT

(1973)

Dir - Rogelio A. González

Overall: MEH

 

Shot in Canada by a Mexican director, written by a South American screenwriter, and co-financed by the low-budget American company Northwest Motion Picture Corporation, The Oval Portrait, (Edgard Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait), is an obscure, internationally produced Gothic horror outing.  Sadly, it is also not very good.  The presentation is squarely in line with TV movies from the era, with incessant, overblown music playing almost constantly and everything being shot in fully lit interiors sans a few exceptions where the handheld camera goes for wacky closeups as the thunder and lightning blares outside.  Enrique Torres Tudela's script takes as many liberties with Poe's source material as any other adaptation of the author's works, but the structure is clunky where the entire second act is a flashback which makes the rest of the narrative half-baked.  Even with super imposed spirits, poltergeist activity, ghostly laughing on the soundtrack, and a guy dancing with and making out with a corpse, the presentation is so melodramatic and the performances so hilariously dreadful that the entire thing becomes an unintentionally goofy mess.

 

SEVEN WOMEN FOR SATAN

(1976)

Dir - Michel Lemoine

Overall: WOOF

 

A star vehicle for writer/director Michel Lemoine, Seven Women for Satan, (Les week-ends maléfiques du Comte Zaroff), is Euro-trash of the most tortuously boring variety.  The title is misleading in most respects since there is no occult angle whatsoever to a story about the descendant of The Most Dangerous Game's Count Zaroff being just some businessman who hallucinates a couple of scenes involving women either being killed, sadistically treated, made love to, or just running around in their birthday suits.  There are about three pieces of music played over and over again, plus the plot is so utterly barren that it almost seems to not even be there.  As is usually the case with low-budget sleaze such as this, the naked moments slow what is already a detrimentally unengating presentation down even more, though the movie does not solely belong in the softcore pornographic realm since such exploitative gratuity takes up a comparatively small portion of the running time.  Lemoine does attempt a surreal atmosphere, but he does so awkwardly after too many sluggish bouts of absolutely nothing of interest taking place.  Some slow motion/funky synth/wah-wah guitar music, fog, and soft focus photography hardly provides enough jolts of faux-artiness to make any kind of a difference.