cinema history class: the demons

Session: Mark of the Devil Rip-Off Month, Week 4
Movie: The Demons (1973)
Directed by Jesus Franco

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A bunch of nuns get possessed by demons and are then tortured. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Sean summed it up best: "This movie was bullshit."

I can't argue with that, and that being the case I am back to thinking that I am grading things too highly. I gave it a 5.5, thinking that's a pretty bad grade. But the outsider is likely to see a 5.5 and think it's a reasonably OK film. I think we've all (except for Sean) gotten into a pattern of grade inflation. But that's another matter.

As to the movie itself, I kept feeling as if I was watching the softcore edit of a porn film (and a fetish -- nun and torture -- porn film at that). There was that much nudity, including full frontal and a couple of long loving close-ups of an attractive young woman's backside -- she is bent over anticipating oral and digital attention from her interlocutor.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not prudish about nudity, and I do appreciate the naked female form. But if I want porn, then I believe there's some available on the internet. At least that's what I've heard.

Seriously, though, the problem here is that the sex and sex serve as substitutes for a plot that's missing in action. There really isn't a coherent coherent story. And the torture scenes seemed so unreal as to be comical. There was an interesting touch that one of the women turned out to be an actual witch, capable of turning anyone who kisses her (on either set of lips) into a skeleton. But that didn;t make its appearance until more than an hour and twenty minutes in. It was, as Joe put it, "too little too late."

Ratings:

Me: 5.5

Dave: 9

Joe: 9.2

Sean: 1 out of 4

Bechdel:
The Demons passes the Bechdel test easily. There are many scenes of nuns discussing religion and sex without thinking at all of men.