The Antichrist (1974)

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Day 16 of Sobriety.

No, not the 2009 film of the same name by Lars Von Trier, but an Italian film from 1974, directed by Alberto De Martino, which is sometimes titled The Tempter. I am not familiar with Alberto De Martino, but looking him up on Wikipedia, it seems he made a lot of pepla (sword-and-sandal) films, some gialli, westerns, spy movies, but only a couple of other horror movies.

I’d heard The Antichrist was derivative of the The Exorcist, but I’d say it was more like the unholy offspring (see what I did there) of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. The plot centers on Ippolita, a wheelchair-bound young woman who was paralyzed in a car crash that also caused the death of her mother. However, Ippolita’s paralysis has been diagnosed as psychosomatic, induced by her traumatic experience. That trauma has also caused her to have various other mental issues, including a possessive dependence on her extremely wealthy father. She also seems to be somewhat psychic. Her father has connections to the catholic church, and after a failed attempt at faith healing, she begins to receive treatment from a psychologist cum parapsychologist. The (para)psychologist employs a regressive memory hypnosis technique to try to help Ippolita, and during those sessions, it is discovered that in a past life she was a witch who was executed during the Inquisition, and the inevitable chaos then ensues.

In addition to the elements borrowed from The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, the reincarnated witch trope is also one that is very familiar, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly which of the numerous reincarnated witch movies I was being reminded of.

On paper, The Antichrist looked like it was going to be right up my strada: mid-70s Euro-horror with an occult theme, score by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai—everything was in alignment. Upon viewing, however, although I did enjoy it, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I’d anticipated.

It has some truly awful special effects, including some of the worst superimposure effects that I have seen in a while. Some of them look so off-kilter that they almost veer into David Lynchean surrealism, but not quite. The Ennio Morricone/Bruno Nicolai score was—to my ears—pretty unremarkable, considering their combined talent. I also wasn’t particularly taken by the lead actress—at least not in this role. I have a feeling I could have liked this film a lot more if Ippolita had been portrayed by someone more suitable.

Not necessarily a criticism, but the first ten minutes or so of the film were really disorienting. It consists of footage of what looks to me like a real catholic street festival or parade of some sort. That chaotic footage is intercut with scenes of crowds lining up at a statue of the Virgin Mary to pray for healing. There is a lot of Italian being spoken (and shouted), but none of it was dubbed or subtitled. At first I thought my blu-ray was wonky, but then I realized that was just the way the film is. The blu-ray allowed the film to be viewed either in Italian with English subtitles or dubbed into English, but like many Italian films of the period, it is clearly dubbed both languages, with some actors speaking English and Some speaking Italian. At first, given the film’s very Italian themes and settings, I tried to watch it with the Italian audio, but after a while I realized that most of the main actors (except for Ippolita herself) seemed to be delivering their lines in English, so I switched to that. As always, it’s a compromise either way.

The film had quite a few good things going for it, though. The settings of Rome, the Vatican, and the mansion of the wealthy father all looked stunning. One scene in particular that stood out for me was of a witches’ sabbath in a forest that was filmed on a studio set, giving it a strange almost fairy-tale-like quality. There were also several truly shocking scenes, as well as some that were just kind of gross and stomach-churning.

So, that was The Antichrist. It was not bad, but it didn’t come close to my (perhaps unreasonably levitated) expectations.

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