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Hell Plaza Oktoberfest V
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Adam Jahnke - Main Page

Sex, Demons And Death
1975 (2011) - One 7 Movies
Released on DVD on August 23rd, 2011

There's an element of risk involved with being a horror fan. Once you've made your way through the canon, your twitchy addict's fingers start combing through the really obscure stuff, desperate for another fix. I suppose this is true for fans of other genres as well. But there aren't a lot of movies marketed as westerns that aren't actually westerns. With horror, you don't always get what you pay for.

When Sex, Demons And Death arrived at my door, the fact that I'd never heard of it made absolutely no difference. I like all three of those things in my horror movies. Plus, it's Italian, home of such giants as Argento, Bava, Fulci, and Lenzi. How bad could it be?

Originally released as Diabolicamente... Letizia, the movie focuses on an architect and his wife. Unable to have children of their own, she decides to bring home her niece, Letizia, from the boarding school they dumped her at after her parents died. But Letizia has been studying the occult and plotting revenge for some reason. I guess she blames her aunt and uncle for her mom's death, although it's never really clear why. Anyway, she uses her new hypno-powers to turn the household into a sexual playground. Soon the maid's sleeping with the architect, the gardener's putting the moves on the wife, and Letizia's doing everybody. There's also a mysterious man in black lurking around, snapping pictures and occasionally sporting a skeleton mask. Eventually people start dying but not soon enough.

Here's another thing about us horror fans. We're pretty easy to please. A movie doesn't even have to be good for it to be entertaining. But to fall into the "so bad it's good" category, it needs to go way over the top. Sex, Demons And Death does not. There's skin aplenty but the deaths are all relatively bloodless and the promised demons are present only in the audience's imagination. There were a couple of moments that were ludicrous enough to make me laugh but by and large, this is just a big snooze-fest.

One 7 Movies have given this stinkbomb the treatment it deserves on DVD. Picture quality is beyond awful. It's as if only one print of this movie was ever struck and it's been stored in a cardboard box for the past thirty years. It's an OK anamorphic transfer of a damaged, dirty, scratched-up print. The Italian soundtrack is slightly better. Actually, the score by Giuliano Sorgini is one of the few redeemable aspects of the movie.

The film has been indifferently subtitled in English. Expect lots of typos and weird random characters showing up for no reason. At one point, a subtitle appears on screen about 45 seconds before the dialogue, so it just hangs out there until it's needed. The disc also includes the original trailer, possibly as proof that this actually received a theatrical release at some point.

The curse of being a horror fan is suffering through endless piles of crap to get to one forgotten treasure. Sex, Demons And Death is not that treasure. If you like your horror movies with virtually no blood and lots of boring soft-core sex, this is the movie you've been waiting for. For the rest of us, the search goes on.

Film Rating: F
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras): D/C-/D-

Adam Jahnke
ajahnke@thedigitalbits.com

Adam Jahnke - Main Page