|
The Night Of The Sorcerers
[Deimos]
1974; color
Directed by Amando De Ossorio
Starring: Simon, Andreu, Kali Hansa, Jack Taylor & Maria Kosti
|
|
To date, my experiences with the work of Spanish director Amando De Ossorio have been in the form of his Blind Dead series. Although it's easy to see why those films have garnered so much attention over the years, for sheer outrageousness it's hard to surpass the voluptuous, voracious, vicious voodoo hoodoo of The Night Of The Sorcerers. Honestly, I went into this pretty much expecting to get another Blind Dead movie (with Haitian zombies in place the living dead Templars); and there are a number of similarities between the two entities - especially in the portions where the vampiric leopard women run very slowly through a smoky forest clearing - but they're overshadowed by the differences. The film starts off, like many films with a similar storyline, in the decidedly distant past. And here is where we get the first of many looks at the brutal native ritual that is at the heart of this tale of devilish darkness in all of its brutal native ritualistic glory. Literally; meaning the same footage gets shown a few times over the course of the film. (Easily forgivable though, lots of people re-use footage.) You have to show the brutal native ritual that will later curse our intrepid travelers, as they make themselves comfortable on soil where others met so much discomfort, by the way; it's part of the brutal native rituals of these types of films. Anywhoo, as you may imagine this brutal native ritual isn't very nice. First it starts with the whipping off of a nubile woman's tattered clothing. Then she is raped by a dancing dude with a horn helmet before being moved over to a more traditional ritualistic table setting and laid face down (this aspect will come into play in a second) where the frenzied faithful dance around her. Oh, and while all of this is going on we also see there's a group of white guys in khaki outfits running around the same area toting rifles. Then the aforementioned ritual culminates in the orgasmic moment when one of the topless women, the one brandishing the huge knife, uses said object to lop off our poor sacrificial lamb's head in one fell swoop. (Don't feel too bad for her though, her head appears to be completely hollow so we can assume it didn't hurt that much.) The assembled immediately begin bathing themselves in the blood of their recently deceased captive, completely oblivious to the fact that they are now surrounded by a group of men who clearly do not understand the local customs. They make themselves known soon enough though, by shooting everything in sight. (Everything that isn't part of their group and still has an attached head at least.) Finally, in one of the single most hilariously awesome moments in Eurotrash history, the severed head whips itself around to reveal a quite animated Elvira meets Patricia Morrison-esque teased haired, black eye-linered, pale faced, vampire vixen come to life. Um, from the neck up. PS: we know she's a vampire because she has huge vampire fangs. (Technically she's a vampire leopard woman but let's not get ahead of ourselves.) All of this happens before the credit roll so you can just imagine what happens for the rest of the film. And you'll have to imagine it, or rent / buy it, because that's all the plot I'm detailing. If all of the above isn't reason enough to see this, The Night Of The Sorcerers also has some of the greatest fashions ever seen in a Spanish film from this era and I have seen at least a third of Jess Franco's total fimography. Needless to say, this one has the official Bunny Fontaine stamp of approval. (Or it would, if there was such a thing.)
—Bunny
|
|
