Sunday, August 25, 2019

Les Demons (The Demons)



Les Demons
1972
Director- Jesús Franco
From France
Cast- Anne Libert, Britt Nichols, Doris Thomas, Karin Field, Cihangir Gaffari
            
     To be honest, at times this film borders on soft core porn with some pretty lengthy sex scenes, but as the movie clocks in at almost 2 hours, there is still plenty of room for story amongst all the sex.
            
      The film opens with an old hag being tortured and burned for witchcraft. She curses the members of the Inquisition that have sentenced her and promises that her daughters will have revenge. The inquisition then sets out to find these mysterious daughters.
            
      Kathleen (Anne Libert) and Margaret (Brit Nichols) are sisters who grew up in Blackmoor convent as orphans.  Kathleen seems to incite lust in everyone who meets her. Lady Winter (Karin Field) visits the convent looking for the witch’s daughters and decides to take Kathleen away as a suspected witch, to the dismay of her sister Margaret. The Lady Winter is a bit of perv and a sadist. She enjoys watching the young girls tortured and it fuels her sexual desires.
            
        While Kathleen is being tortured, Margaret is visited by the spirit of the old dead hag and then by the devil himself who has his way with her. The next morning, Margaret has come out of her shell and seduces the Mother of the convent before running away. She comes upon an old witch who helps her in her quest for revenge. Meanwhile, Kathleen is going from one man to the next, some who try to rescue her and some who want to abuse her.  Eventually, Margaret infiltrates the aristocracy in disguise and seduces and kills her way through the members of the inquisition.
          


    Anne Leibert and Britt Nichols (real name Carmen Yazalde) starred in numerous Franco  films together, including Virgin Among the Living Dead. They probably felt pretty comfortable around each other since they had previously shot two lesbian sex scenes in Dracula’s Daughter the year before (not to be confused with the Universal movie of the same name).
            
    Les Demons was an ambitious film for Franco. Most of his films are modern and this detour into a historical costume piece paid off I think. It’s an erotic film, and is obviously meant to be, but is very different from most of the other inquisition films of this era. Worth owning for fans of either Franco or Britt and Anne.
 



No comments:

Post a Comment