Following on from Frightfest's 50th anniversary screening of THE EXORCIST, it's really only natural that Albert De Martino's L'ANTICRISTO, aka THE ANTICHRIST aka THE TEMPTER, the first Italian ripoff of Friedkin's film to make it out of the gate back in the day, should get a Blu-ray release (from Studio Canal) this year as well.
When she was a child Ippolita Oderisi (Carla Gravina) was in a car accident that rendered her unable to walk properly. Italian exploitation doctors have diagnosed her problem as psychological, and true to the spirit of the genre she's also sexually frustrated as well.
Her father (Mel Ferrer) decides that the best treatment for this is to take her to a religious ceremony where she sees a man vomiting green bile throw himself from a great height. After that they try hypnosis, but all that does is release suppressed memories from a past life when she was burnt at the stake for being a witch. After all that it's not surprising that poor old Ippolita should agree to being possessed by the devil.
Once she's possessed she vomits, swears, levitates, and does pretty much everything De Martino and his screenwriters scribbled down from their trip to see THE EXORCIST. Arthur Kennedy, fresh from playing the swearing and hippy-accosting police inspector in Jorge Grau's superior LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE, plays a priest but he's not up to exorcising Ippolita - that job goes to dubbed George Coulouris playing Father Mittner (and definitely not Merrin) during a welter of early 1970s Italian special effects.
THE ANTICHRIST isn't a great film. It's not even that good, but it is a fascinating snapshot of the Italian film industry of the period and of what stars who had been in much bigger and better things ended up working in during the 1970s. Full marks go to Ms Gravina who really gets put through being soaked, thrown around and having to behave like a wild thing for half the film (she's very good at it). Film score fans will delight to the music by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, and one of the extras on here, Raising Hell, will tell you who scored which bit.
Other extras include the audio recollections of De Martino from an interview conducted with Eugenio Ercolani back in 2012, opening credits for THE TEMPTER and a 30 second TV spot. The set also comes with four art cards. Finally you get a commentary track from Lee Gambin and Sally Christie which is vigorous and lively but takes a while to get going with gaps big enough at the start that you may be checking to make such you haven't inadvertently switched audio channels.
Alberto De Martino's THE ANTICHRIST is out on Blu-ray from Studio Canal on Monday 11th September 2023
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