Black Candles

 

Black Candles (Los ritos sexuales del diablo)

1982

Director- José Ramón Larraz

Cast- Helga Liné, Vanessa Hidalgo, Jeffery Healey, Alfred Luchetti, Manuel Gómez-Álvarez, Carmen Carrión, Paola Matos

From Spain

            The movie has a striking poster with the demonic man carrying a naked woman with more beauties in the background and an angry goat off to the side. Well, there is nothing in this movie that is as scary as that poster, but it definitely doesn’t over sell the sex!

            The movie begins with a schmuck cheating on his wife, Fiona, played by German born Spanish Scream Queen, Helga Liné. Seriously, who would cheat on her!?! Well he gets what’s coming when he is murdered with a bit of witchcraft.

            Later, the schmuck’s sister Carol (Vanessa Hildago) shows up to both pay respects and wrap up family business. Tagging along is her husband who seems consistently pleased with himself.

Carol’s spidey sense begins to tingle when she notices several pieces of satanic artwork on display in Fiona’s living room.  Fiona plays it off and when asked about her husband’s death, she blames it on his drinking. Carol decides to get nosey and finds herself on the wrong side of a witch cult that doesn’t take kindly to strangers.

            The plot of the film is not really that original, incorporating tropes from both the satanic and folk horror genres. However, it packages those tropes quite well and delivers on the eroticism with occult elements that feel authentic and occasionally shocking. Two such scenes include the lithe Paola Matos ,who turns in an unforgettable performance first with a lesbian sex scene and then a scene where she has sex with a black goat as part of a magical ritual! Another scene that stands out is where a man is punished for betraying the coven. He is held down and raped with a sword (don’t betray witches!).

            The real significance of the movie, at least to me, is that it served as the swan song for Helga Liné’s horror career (though she would continue to act for another 25 years in non-horror roles).

Helga’s horror career spanned parts of three decades and involved significant contributions in different horror subgenres alongside some of the biggest names of her era. She had a  supporting role behind the queen of Gothic horror, Barbara Steele, in Nightmare Castle (1965). She starred in several Italian giallo film’s most notably So Sweet…So Perverse (1969) which also starred fellow Scream Queen Erika Blanc. She shared the screen with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas in Horror Express (1972).

            Her most important contributions came, though, as part of the Spanish horror exploitation movement in the early 70s. Its important to bear in mind that Helga was in her 40s by this point and stealing the show from women half her age! She worked twice with the king of Spanish horror, Paul Naschy in the Mummy’s Revenge and had the costarring lead with Naschy in the excellent Horror Rises from the Tomb. She had the starring role in The Loreley’s Grasp directed by the man who gave us Tomb of the Blind Dead, Amando de Ossorio. She also starred in The Vampire’s Night Orgy, directed by León Klimovsky who had worked with Naschy on many occasions.

            Mixed in with these horror staples she also starred in the strange Italian action/ suspense film Kriminal and she even shared the screen with Mexican cult figure Santo in Santo vs. Dr. Death!

            All of that brings us to Black Candles. Helga often took on sexy roles and never shied away from showing skin. Helga was 50 when she did Black Candles but her smoldering beauty had not cooled a degree. If anything, her age made her much more believable as the dominant force in the cult. 

            But Helga always carried herself with the grace and control of royalty (case in point, see her as the witch returned from the dead in Horror Rises from the Tomb). Black Candles is a very erotic role, and as I said before, shocking in places. It makes the perfect exclamation point to a horror career that included the biggest names in Gothic, Spanish, British and Italian horror.

Fun fact- Director  José Ramón Larraz was no stranger to eroticism. He is best known for the bloody, sexy film Vampyres, one of the best films in the lesbian vampire sub-genre.