The Antichrist (1974)

Director: Alberto De Martino

Starring: Carla Gravina, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, George Coulouris, Alida Valli, Mario Scaccia

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Deliver her from evil.

Plot: Ippolita is a paralyzed young woman with serious mental problems stemming from the death of her mother. Her crisis of faith and the intervention of a well-meaning psychologist lead Ippolita to remember her past life as a witch during the Inquisition. Eventually, Ippolita becomes possessed and starts seducing local men, only to kill them. An exorcism seems to be the only solution to stop the madness.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

When it comes to jumping on a popular film's bandwagon and riding into the ground, the Italians excelled at it and usually with poor results. Surprisingly, though, this film (coming out a year following the immensely successful, THE EXORCIST (1973)) is the best I've seen so far of THE EXORCIST rip offs - almost too good. I rather enjoyed it.


OK, so that's only one really cool scene but the attention paid to lighting, sets, special effects and so on is very solid and professional. The horror sub genre of demonic possession and exorcism created by THE EXORCIST fortunately lasted only a few short years but there seems to be ripoffs from nearly every major country for the 4 to 6 years that followed and most of them are bad. I'm sure I'll catch shit for this but I'd about rather watch this film than THE EXORCIST. At least it's got the goat orgy scene. What's THE EXORCIST got? Head spinning? Anybody can do that. Geez.