Synopsis:
A witch burned at the stake curses her
accusers, Lord Jeffreys (Cihangir
Gaffari), Lady de Winter (Karin
Field) and her lover Renfield (Alberto
Dalbes), and she proclaims as she
burns that her daughters will fulfill the curse. Alarmed,
Lady de Winter sets out with Renfield to find the girls, Margaret
(Britt Nichols)
and Kathleen (Anne Libert),
tracing them to a convent where they have become nuns.
Once at the Blackmoor Nunnery, Mother
Superior (Doris Thomas)
tells Lady de Winter that she has had her eye on 2 nuns in
particular who appear to have impure thoughts. Upon closer
inspection Lady de Winter finds out Kathleen is not a virgin
and proceeds to move her to a castle where she is tortured.
Lord de Winter (Howard Vernon)
frees Kathleen from her torture, but Lord Jeffrey's gives
Renfield, who was wrongly accused of freeing Kathleen, 3 days
to find her. The fun only begins there though as Margaret
soon finds herself possessing the evil that "invaded"
her body one night." - from
Xploitedcinema
My oppinion:
I'd never heard of this one before the
director's cut was released on DVD. It started with a bang
as an old witch got convicted and burned on the stake. I'd
say that the camerawork in this one is actually pretty good
compared with many other Franco movies and the acting is mostly
within acceptable standards. Franco really doesn't hold back
on the sleaze here and it's really nicely done. In some of
his movies, I don't find many of the sleazy scenes very sensual
and erotic, but some of these are! Might be because (some
of) the girls in "Les Démons" actually look
very nice and sexy. It's got all the "necessary"
ingredients for a nunsploitation movie, like: naughty, naughty
nuns and torture scenes. Also the guitar riff that gets played
every time there's some erotic action sounds cool.
This sounds like a "perfect" movie, but I wouldn't
go quite that far. Some of the so-called "special effects"
aren't very impressinve. Like the scenes where people get
transformed to skeletons look pretty cheap and silly. The
scene where a guy is looking at the stars through his telescope
in what can only be described as sunlight is pretty fun. Some
of the dialogue sounds kind of corny, but that's a bit fun
too. Another small annoyance was that I got sort of tired
of seeing the witches getting captured, then freed over and
over again.
One more thing I should mention is that some of the dialogue
is in French, but only about 2 minutes, so it's really no
problem.
My conclusion is that "Les Démons" was very
enjoyable and great fun! I'm sure any fan of Jess
Franco would agree with me on that.
My rating:  
Want more info on this movie?:
IMDB
Buy "Les Démons Director's Cut"
at: Xploitedcinema
or Absurd
(not direct link)
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