If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I like every aspect of this movie! :)It's B&W; very dim and dark; the settings are eerie; the acting is great; the story is well-conceived and scary; the Esperanto language, if one is not familiar, gives the impression that the characters are speaking some ancient and lost language; and, best of all, everything about this old cult-classic gives the viewer the impression that this is set in some Godforsaken, yet, somewhat beautiful, evil European township where incubi and succubi wander the countryside in search of stray human victims! This movie gives off the same creepy vibes as did "The Twilight Zone;" "The Seventh Seal;" and, all of those Spanish and Italian horror movies that came out in the 1960s and 1970s...yet, this was filmed in California!?!? :)Then, again, California isn't all blonde-babes and sunny beaches...at this time, it had Anton Szandor LaVay. This 'California' movie also had its curses - someone destroyed all of the prints of this movie (only one was found later; remastered; and, re-released); Milos Milos, the 'Incubus' in this movie, murdered Mickey Rooney's estranged wife, Carolyn Mitchell, then killed himself; actress Ann Atmar (Arndis - Marco's sister) committed suicide; and, years later, William Shatner was a suspect in his wife's drowning-death.Something great came out of this movie, too, other than the movie itself..."Captain Kirk!"The movie I compare this to the most, due to the terrible events that occurred after production (as with this movie); and, its darkness and evil agenda as far as the incubus is concerned...is "Rosemary's Baby." Like the incubus in this movie, concerning the unsuspecting Arndis, the Devil in "Rosemary's Baby" also played 'hide-the-evil-serpent' with the unsuspecting Rosemary. Despite rumors and urban legend, Anton Szandor LaVey 'didn't' play the Devil in "Rosemary's Baby.""Rosemary's Baby" had a terrible following-of-events as did this movie - "Helter Skelter;" Mia Farrow's on-the-set divorce papers delivery from Frank Sinatra; Roman Polanski's later stachatory rape conviction; and, John Lennon's murder in 1980 at the "Dakota" that was the setting of this movie.However...these are the controversially-scary and believable things that people apply to anything-and-everything in order to add intrigue to an already-great horror movie; or, to anything else.In the end, the succubus (Kia) 'really-did' love Marco after all; and, in the end, she fought the incubus over this. I like how the incubus, after turning into a goat and fighting with Kia showed 'wiggling-tongue' at 1:11:57! I would have, too, if I was on top of her...Allyson Ames was "HOT!" :)This is a great movie, all-the-way, and, I give it EIGHT STARS! :)

Like the Poltergeist's curse, Rosemary Baby's Curse, and lastly the Omen's Curse, many people connected with the film met unfortunate sad fates after the film wrapped, giving rise to an urban legend that Incubus was a cursed production. Actor Milos Milos, the Serbian actor who played the Incubus, killed his girlfriend, Barbara Ann Thomason Rooney – the estranged fifth wife of Mickey Rooney – and himself in 1966, nine months before the film's premiere. Actress Ann Atmar whom played Arndis committed suicide twelve days before the film's premiere. The daughter of actress Eloise Hardt was kidnapped and murdered. William Shatner's third wife drowned in a pool. Lastly, the Director Leslie Stevens and actress Allyson Ames divorced, and Stevens' production company, Daystar Productions, went bankrupt. The film was even lost for many years because the original print of the film burned in a fire and all copies were reported lost, destroyed, or worn away, but a copy of the film with French subtitles was found in the permanent collection of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2001. So finally we the audience get to watch this lost-long haunted film, and it wasn't good. The whole movie is first off, is a foreign language film of a language not many people know of called 'Esperanto'. Esperanto was created by a Dr L. L. Zamenhof, designed to be an international auxiliary language, to be learned to communicate across cultures. Sadly it didn't become that way. The producers thought by having Esperanto be the focus language, they can reach the most audiences. They should have done more research. The Esperanto-speaking audience is thinly spread around the planet, and virtually every country has little Esperantists. Not a very effective marketing strategy, as it turns out to be for them. Incubus was the second feature film primarily using Esperanto ever made. The first, Angoroj (Esperanto for Agonies) appeared in 1964 also failing to connection a audience. Esperanto speakers are generally disappointed by the pronunciation of the language by the cast of Incubus whom had to learn the language quickly. William Shatner sounds like he is forgetting his lines. My opinion is the movie dialogue is well enough pronounced, considering the short time they'd all been speaking it. Only in a medieval fantasy can you have a story line where Esperanto is spoken. It didn't help that the director Leslie Stevens has prohibited the film dub into other languages. The film is set in the town of Nomen Tuum haunted by succubus whom seduce tainted souls leading them to their deaths in order to offer their souls to Hell. A prominent young succubus named Kia (Allyson Ames) get bored, and wanted a challenge by seducing a good person. Her sister succubus, Amael (Eloise Hardt), warns Kia of the danger that a pure soul will bring something stronger than them: love. Kia persists anyway and attempts to find a man to seduce into darkness. Enters soldier Marc (William Shatner) and his over-acting whom come to their sacred water to heal his battle-wounds. She fails as her task, and falls in love with him. While the movie is call 'incubus', we don't see one until late in the movie. It's should be call Succubus. Her sister finally summons an incubus (Milos Milos) that attempts to kill Marc. The rape scene between the incubus and Marc's sister is probably the most disturbing thing in this film. The incubus actor is just awfully bad, mostly walks around in the buff and make weird faces. The movie is full of silly scenes, most noticeable is Kia fighting a goat. The movie is also a bit too preachy, as the film basically hangs on Marc deciding to have pre-marital sex or not, rather than worrying about going to hell for the fact that he murder people in the war. Arguably very Catholic viewpoint. The best part of the film is the black and white cinematography, due it remind us of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Using natural lighting, Conrad Hall contrasts light and shadows throughout the eerily setting to create an ominous feeling with a minimum amount of artificial props. Individual shots often qualify as art pieces—his camera shoots between ferns and wildflowers, through creeping fog and up through the ocean. The long shots of the black-robed succubus slowly proceeding on the beach is amazing. I thought it was very atmospheric. Somebody must have seen Shatner on those two Twilight Zone episodes and thought he would be perfect. Check it out, it's a must for Shatner completest.

Incubus (1965) *** (out of 4)Bizarre film is the only one ever to be filmed in Esperanto, a language created in 1887 and needless to say, it was rarely used. The film tells the story of a blond succubus (Allyson Ames) who lures bad men to their deaths. Her latest catch (William Shatner) isn't evil and ends up falling in love with her so the succubus must try and make him go bad. I guess the best way to describe this film is take the images from Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL and mix it with the atmosphere of CITY OF THE DEAD and you come up with this thing. Now, I'm really not sure why Stevens wanted to shoot this in Esperanto as it does nothing for the film. It doesn't add atmosphere, it doesn't add any creepiness and in the end it doesn't add a single thing. What the film does have going for it is some terrific cinematography by future Oscar-winner Conrad Hall. The look of this film is quite remarkable and comes close to the before mentioned Bergman film. The black and white cinematography adds so much to the movie because this is pretty much a story of good and evil. The evil is constantly shown as black and the good is in white. It's a pretty simple thing but it works wonders simply because of the atmosphere it creates. One of the best sequences in the film is a mixture of the two when Ames and Shatner are getting to know one another and an eclipse happens. Both Shatner and Ames are extremely good in their roles. This is where the Esperanto language is most effective and that's by seeing these actors be able to learn it and act their parts while remembering these lines. Shatner is very impressive here as he perfectly gives off that good guy image and makes us believe that he really is a caring guy of God who can fight off evil. In a strange bit of trivia, two of the bad guys here ended up dead within a year of the film being complete and this is something that many believe is a curse of the film. Ann Atmar killed herself shortly after the movie and Milos Milos also killed himself and murdered Mickey Rooney's, at the time, estranged wife. I don't think the film is a complete success mainly because the screenplay itself is pretty weak. There's not too much of a story here so I can't help but think something a little better would have improved the film. With that said, this is certainly an original work and the cinematography and atmosphere make it worth sitting through at least once.

Esperanto, a nineteenth-century "all purpose"/international language, almost made a comeback with this stark, moody thriller--thought to be lost for many years until a surviving print resurfaced. Leslie Stevens wrote and directed this tale of a beautiful but soulless female demon, working for the God of Darkness, who tempts and lures men with tortured souls to their deaths in the ocean; tiring of her unchallenged routine, she sets out to destroy a pure, heroic man whose only defense is the power of love. Stevens seems to have overdosed on Ingmar Bergman movies, and is too enamored of Conrad Hall's artistic black-and-white cinematography to really get a grip on his narrative (certainly the editor could have cut back on the many shots of William Shatner wandering...wandering...). However, the ambiance of this film is startling and intriguing, Stevens writes some literate dialogue, and several of Hall's visual compositions are haunting. ** from ****