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 They lay it on pretty thick for this one. "Lost sleaze masterpiece" the box
promises. It's also supposedly "chock-a-block with lesbianism, whippings, black
magic and dubious dubbing." You are also supposed to get "huge dollops of
seventies style." Man seeks help for injured woman at "gothic" castle only to
find that it's housing their "darker halves." The box copy inexplicably ends
with this: " Ooh err! " 1974, 82 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
Redemption, you've done it again! They've combed the darkest recesses of the
world's film vaults and have come up with yet another absolutely atrocious
offering devoid of any entertainment value except that somehow someone ended up
with about $12.50 (no way would I pay retail!) of my money for something that
is surely going to end up as a silver coaster in my humble abode. Nude For Satan has languished hidden in Italy's most secret U-Store-It facility since its
initial release back in October, 1974. According to the liner notes it was only
seen by 500 people when it was released. At least I know there are 500 people
on this planet as stupid as me. As I was watching this one, I never did quite
figure out what was happening. It seems that there is this guy who is driving
along some mountain road and he sees someone in the road. He skids and does
some Duke Boy style driving to avoid colliding with her. He stops on up the
road and then he hears the sound of an auto accident from where he just came.
He goes back and finds a sexy girl in a miniskirt and go-go boots knocked out
in her wrecked car. He grabs her and drives straight away to the nearest creepy
castle. Once there, they encounter a count with an absurdly round head who seems to
make faces at us a lot. At this point any semblance of coherence disappears and
all I remember is a jumble of disjointed images that served to merely bore the
viewer instead of challenge him or her. So, out of boredom, I began to take
advantage of the odd language options this DVD presented. I could watch the
movie dubbed in English. I did. I could watch the movie dubbed in Italian. I
did that as well. I could also watch the movie dubbed in Italian with English
subtitles. I even checked that out, after all there were still about 68 minutes
to kill on this oucher. Maybe I missed some important plot developments through
the characters' exposition while I was playing linguistics professor, but I
don't think so. So we're in this castle and get this - weird stuff starts to
happen! I know, I was like, no way! We're in a creepy castle and there's weird
stuff going on? I immediately grabbed the DVD box to check for Jean Rollin's
name, but was disappointed only to find that the director was some loser named
Luigi Batzella (as Paolo Solvay). I guess Luigi felt compelled to protect the
Batzella name, thus the pseudonym. Come on Luigi, show a little pride, it aint Cannibal Ferox bad!  The weird doings in the castle involve our two heroes, the guy and the girl
from the big car swerving scene at the beginning of the film seeing strange
people in the castle. Let's see. One of them sees a really old geezer with
nasty teeth in 17th century duds and very pasty face. They also see doubles of
one another! Bring on the metaphors about divided self and our "dark side" and
how there's two sides to every coin and BORING! Well as you can well imagine,
each of our main characters wonders at the odd behavior of the doubles because
they think it is really the other person or something. If you're recovering
from a car wreck, why are all running around the castle looking for strange
people and odd phenomena? The doubles act weird by not responding to their name
(I do that sometimes - it must be my "darker half!"), and by running away and
acting strange when they are spoken to (I also do that!). At some point in the
film (right around where the filmmakers don't even bother pretending they know
what they're doing anymore) the main guy is just running around in the castle
gardens and we get all these crazy camera angles and I cant remember for the
life of me if he was running after someone or running from someone. Luckily, it
had nothing to with the plot (ahem) so you don't really need to know anything
about that to follow things from there on out. In the course of this film there are several ridiculous sequences, most of
which fade from memory as soon as they happen. There are a few moments though
that do attain a certain "classic" status. One of them involves the woman our
hero rescued. Oh, and if it seems like there's not really any cohesion to this
review and that I'm randomly commenting on what happened in the movie, it's
just that I'm aping the style of the movie in question. So this woman from the
car wreck is in her bedroom in the castle and she decides she's going to
explore the castle. Now, if you're a veteran of the movies this site reviews
you know what type of clothing she's going to wear. Yes, this season's
explorers of creepy castles are clad in a sheer black baby doll nightgown with
matching black panties. For the life of me, I don't understand why this outfit
was brought to the castle by the guy who rescued her and if she's alright
enough to run around the castle pretty close to starkers like that, was that
really much of a car crash? In any event, she parades around awhile and sees
some torture sessions that made this viewer drowsy and then she falls down a
hole or trapdoor or something. She lands in a giant rope like deal that turns
out to be... a giant spider web! Eeeek! So she's writhing in all her black
lingerie glory caught in this web and then the spider makes his big appearance.
I'm looking at this thing and I'm kind squinting my eyes at it because all I
can see is an oversized ovenmit with pipecleaners sticking out of the sides of
it. At this point, I'm transfixed, my mouth agape, as this ovenmit starts to
try get jiggy with this stupid girl. I was so amazed by it, I can't really
remember how she got away. I think the hero showed up and shot it. But the
spider did get to second base before his untimely demise.  All good things must come to a close, though, and Nude For Satan is thankfully no exception. There is a big finale that is even worse than the
spider sequence. It somehow involves some dumb medallions, each face
representing a part of our selves or something. I think these people had to
confront their darker selves and that kind of stuff. Kind of like one of those
Trek episodes where there was some kind of transporter mishap and it split
Riker or Picard into a couple of different one-note characters. Now, I'm not
sure how this worked in with the medallions or anything else that had gone
before, but the movie ends with some kind of satanic orgy ritual where the
devil or somebody shows up and these skanky naked chicks dance around and these
guys in loin clothes who have half their body painted silver gyrate about this
cheesy altar or throne or some deal or other. Then the hero sets everything on
fire and the movie just kind of is over. When it ended and the credits rolled,
I then knew how John McCain must have felt when he was repatriated. I wanted to
kiss the ground when this disc finally ceased to spin. To quote basketball
announcing legend Bill Walton, "Horrible! Just horrible!"
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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