The Eerie Midnight Horror Show

Rating:
Summary: Primo schlock, merely adequate DVD presentation...
Review: Despite the fact that the cover art rips off one of my favorite movies, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I decided to watch this one anyway, thinking maybe it would be somewhat entertaining. Unfortunately, I was very, very wrong. This movie is one of the worst ripoffs of The Exorcist I have ever seen. Think of the most pathetic Italian or Mexican horror film you have ever seen (there's probably been many), and you have a vague inkling of the damage it causes to your brain cells to watch this film. No scares, pathetic "devil worship" and posession, laughable FX, no gore, not even unintentional laughs. If anyone out there has seen this movie and now wants to kill me because they like it, you must be seeing something I don't because this movie is outdone in badness only by It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive, and no, that is not a complement.

Rating:
Summary: About as eerie as an episode of Full House
Review: Despite the fact that the cover art rips off one of my favorite movies, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I decided to watch this one anyway, thinking maybe it would be somewhat entertaining. Unfortunately, I was very, very wrong. This movie is one of the worst ripoffs of The Exorcist I have ever seen. Think of the most pathetic Italian or Mexican horror film you have ever seen (there's probably been many), and you have a vague inkling of the damage it causes to your brain cells to watch this film. No scares, pathetic "devil worship" and posession, laughable FX, no gore, not even unintentional laughs. If anyone out there has seen this movie and now wants to kill me because they like it, you must be seeing something I don't because this movie is outdone in badness only by It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive, and no, that is not a complement.

Rating:
Summary: Primo schlock, merely adequate DVD presentation...
Review: It's hard to believe the significant number of EXORCIST rip-offs that the Italians produced so shortly after that U.S. hit's release. Here's another one. If the title "The Eerie Midnight Horror Show" confuses you, that's because it was created by some video marketing genius who thought it might lure fans of "Rocky Horror" or perhaps sound like some sort of long-appreciated cult classic. The title was created for an early 80s video release, but the film is known in Italy as THE SEXORCIST and showed up in theaters here as THE TORMENTED--not to be confused with the early 60s Bert I. Gordon film.

Like in several of the Italian takes on the William Friedkin original, the protagonist is an attractive young woman named Danila (sexy Stella Carnacina), an art student who nabs a 15th Century life-sized statue of a crucified thief from a deconsecrated Italian church. When she brings it to her studio, the damn thing comes back to life in the form of everybody's favorite Euro villain, Ivan Rassimov (who already looks evil and didn't need any significant make-up). Rassimov rips off Danila's clothes in one swift shot, rapes her, and then she wakes as if it was all a dream. A further nightmare has her entering a cave resembling hell, where a group of pale, half-naked women chant, and Rassimov (who we assume by this point is the Devil) gets off from his cross to crucify Danila.

When Danila wakes up, her hands and feet have wounds, and she goes into a masturbating spree and tries to seduce her own father (Cristea Avram). Seeking help, a doctor and some locals decide to bring her to a convent, but she starts chewing on her own hair, and breaks out. When they find her, she's brought back so that a martyring priest (Luigi Pistilli) can perform an exorcism. She attempts to seduce him too, but he flogs himself on the back for almost giving into temptation. Pistilli eventually puts a stop to the pea soup vomiting and other hokum before dropping dead.

The film starts off with some original ideas (the statue coming to life is most promising) but succumbs to the EXORCIST look-alike syndrome pretty quickly and becomes predictable and ordinary. With several nude scenes and a mild coating of perversion, this is pretty typical Euro sleaze and can easily be enjoyed on this level. A subplot featuring Danila's hot mom (Lucretia Love) cheating on her husband with Gabriele Tinti (LISA AND THE DEVIL), who flagellates her violently with some rose stems in a totally gratuitous kink scene. This is really a half-baked cash-in that benefits from a cast of familiar Italian character actors, but not much beyond that.

This is one of the first horror releases from Eclectic DVD and Glenn Danzig's Sinema Diable, and it's hopeful that the other upcoming titles will look better. This print still has the video generated main titles (which show up after the end credits as well) and it seems that the same 80s video master was used for this DVD transfer. The opening credits and first scene are letterboxed at about 1.85:1, but the rest of the presentation is shown full frame and cropped. No vital information seems to be lost with the tight framing, but the transfer is very murky with undefined, bleeding colors and digital artifacting about. The mono audio is in rough shape. The film is badly dubbed to begin with, but the sound is off sync, and the audio blanks out for a few seconds on more than a few occasions. The audio is also full of blaring hiss.

Six chapter stops are included with no extras. This is basically as good a presentation as the VHS versions that came out in the 80s, so Euro trash fans who want to upgrade to DVD can gladly do so, but anyone attempting to show off their entertainment system with this disc will be in for a big disappointment.