How sad is this?

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

C'mon Satan, get the finger out. You started off okay with Beyond The Door and The Antichrist, then totally fumbled the ball with Magdalena possessed by the Devil. You're supposed to be trying to take the souls of the human race from that of God, so why are you settling on making teenagers randy foul-mouthed rebels? That's what they are anyway!This one starts quite good, with art student Danila getting involved with restoring a very life-like figure on a cross that her university have purchased. Danila's got some domestic problems. Her father (Chris Avram) is drifting away from her mother (Lucretia Love), who is having an affair with hunky Gabrielle Tinti. Lucretia's a bit kinky too, so it doesn't help that Danila happens upon Gabrielle whipping the crap out of Lucretia with a bunch of roses, and Lucretia screaming for him to do it harder. Danila goes off to concentrate on her work, restoring some art back at college.This is where perhaps the best scene of the film happens, as while Danila is working away on her project, the man on the cross behind her suddenly starts moving, comes to life as a Satanic Ivan Rassimov, and makes sweet sweet love to Danila on the floor of the studio while a weird wind blows about. Then again, shortly afterwards, Danila regains her senses fully clothed, restoring her painting. So what's going on? And what creepy bastard is following her around. Of course Danila starts acting possessed and indulges in some furious self-abuse witnessed by her parents, so soon begins the jibber jabber about real illness versus possession and the whole film descends into boredom, save for a nightmare sequence where Danila enters a demonic ceremony and Ivan Rassimov (who makes a good Satan) nails her to a crosss. Sadly, after this bit, it's off to Exorcist-lite territory as Danila gets shipped off to a convent and priest Luigi Pistilli is brought in to sort her out in a very underwhelming finale. This of course happens a lot in exploitation cinema, but it doesn't do us fans much good to track down a film and find it's a weaker version of the film it's trying to rip off. You could probably watch the first half and just switch it off, because up until then it's a fine film. Umberto Raho has a great moustache in this one, however.

This movie is literally the center of the Venn Diagram that would be made of the movies that I love the most.Italian ripoff of a successful film — This movie is obviously trying to be The Exorcist.Satanism — This film has some of the goofiest and most awesome devil tricks of any of I've seen.Exploitation — No one in this film acts like a normal human being and reality has been supplanted by insanity before the demons even get involved.Multiple titles — This film is also known as Sexorcist, The Tormented, Devil Obsession, L'Ossessa and was later re-released post-Rocky Horror midnight movie success in 1977 as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show.And the title card that comes up before the movie begins: THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.Daniela is an art student in Italy who is so respected by her teachers that she gets to join them as they acquire religious sculptures from a church due to be torn down. That church was deconsecrated way back in the 1700's because the priests and nuns decided that they would turn against God and start having orgies in the church. And one of the statues, an incredibly lifelike display of one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus, catches Daniela's eye. She is told that it was pulled directly from a tree, that it was already inside the wood and all the sculptor had to do was bring out the details. However, many tourists have had mental breakdowns just looking at this sculpture.Daniela's life is weird even before the crazy gets started. Her rich parents throw a party and we learn that her mother isn't just cheating on her husband, she's doing it pretty much in public. Yep — Daniela catches her mother getting whipped by the thorns of a rose — a scene that Becca just randomly walked into and asked, "What are you watching?!?"Our heroine leaves for her studio at the university. As she paints, the sculpture comes off of its cross in a scene that can only come from the deranged mind of Italian exploitation filmmaking (director Mario Gariazzo wrote Sister Emanuelle and directed Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind). Of course, that revived religious icon then has sex with her, sex that appears to be a dream as she runs from the studio.Later that night, as Daniela climbs the stairs to her family's apartment, she keeps thinking she is alone, but the sounds of her footsteps don't match up. She hears a demon whisper her name and she runs in fear before the demon overcomes her, forcing her into a state of sexual mania and a dream where she is crucified. She spends the rest of the movie trying to get anyone to have sex with her while stigmata appears on her hands and she does all of the tropes of exorcism rip-offs.And then Ivan Rassimov (All the Colors of the Dark, Shock/Beyond the Door II, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key ) shows up as Satan, giving Daniela her beauty back so that she can work with him to tempt all of the priests, like Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli, Oliviero from Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key). She tries to seduce him, so to forget that she has tempted him he self-flagellates.Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/10/20/enter-the-devil-1974

"Enter the Devil" reminds me why I hated 1974. Danila (Stella Carnacina ) is an artist who studies art. She rides in her boyfriend's VW thing without a door, taking home an old statue of a crucified man, about as common as a miracle in Italy. At home she discovers her mother is having an affair with a man who has better Hasselhoff hair than her husband and can make a rose stem sound like a bullwhip. It isn't long before the statue comes to life and rapes Danila (she appeared to not like it for the first 10 seconds anyway). Later instead of a simple rape, our animated statue man crucifies Danila which leads to possession issues, maybe wishing she was raped instead. Special effects include red eye contacts and Alka-Seltzer. Worth a pass.Guide: No swearing. Sex and nudity (Stella Carnacina Lucretia Love)

Lovely and innocent young art student Danilla (a fearless performance by foxy brunette Stella Carnacina) is tormented by vivid and disturbing dreams of being nailed to a cross. Things get really strange and intense when the crucifix she's dreaming about comes to life and possesses her body, thus turning sweet Danilla into a shameless raving nympho who masturbates and tries to seduce her staid father Mario (a suitably uptight portrayal by Chris Avram). Director Mario Gariazzo and writer Ambrogio Molteni take the blithely lurid story seriously, do a sound job of creating and maintaining a scuzzy atmosphere, and, of course, deliver a few jolting moments of bloody'n'brutal violence along with a handy helping of kinky sex and yummy female nudity (the set piece with the statue making love to Danilla is quite sizzling and depraved). The solid cast of familiar Eurotrash cinema regulars helps a lot: the luscious Lucretia Love as Danilla's sadomasochistic adulteress mother Luisa, Gabriele Tinti as Luisa's sadistic lover, Luigi Pistilli as the intrepid and determined ace exorcist Father Xeno, and, in a deliciously wicked turn, Ivan Rassimov as a cackling lascivious Satan. Moreover, this flick has an inspired sense of warped lunacy to it: The statue coming to life stuff is weird and original and a sequence in which Danilla attempts to escape from a church is positively hysterical. The groovy music, ghastly 70's fashions, and disco dancing give the picture a certain campy retro charm. Carlo Carlini's cinematography makes effective occasional use of overhead camera shots. Marcello Giombini's wonky shuddery score does the shivery trick. Good sleazy fun.