Tweet
Released by: One 7 Movies
Released on: 8/23/2011
Director: Salvatore Bugnatelli
Cast: Gabriele Tinti, Magda Konopka, Franca Gonella
Year: 1975
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Sex, Demons And Death is an unusual re-titling for the film originally known as Diabolicamente… Letizia (which is what actually appears in the opening credits), the 1975 sex-occult-slasher hybrid from little known Italian filmmaker Salvatore Bugnatelli. The story follows a full grown 'teenaged' girl named Letizia (Franca Gonella) who, after the death of her mother and father, finds herself shipped off to a boarding school. She's not there for long, however, as her uncle and aunt, Marcello (Gabriele Tinti) and wife Micaela (Magda Konopka), decide to take her in and raise her as best they can.
Things are fine for all of a few seconds until Marcello's servant, Giovanni (Gianni Dei), spies Leitizia in her birthday suit, at which point she puzzlingly turns into a demon that looks very much like a red fuzzy monkey. From there Letizia enjoys some lesbian high jinks with the maid, Giselle (Karen Fiedler), and then, her confidence moving along at full speed, she decides to up the ante and put the moves on her aunt! If this weren't trouble enough for Marcello and Micaela, it seems that Letizia has got some awesome telekinetic/psychokinetic powers that allow her to weird things like move pillows and irritate people at will. After a random encounter with some flower children and a scene in which Letizia decides that only her uncle's love will do, her actions turn out to have consequences and we learn the truth about who she is, what she's really been up to and who has really been pulling the strings all this time.
So the obvious points of reference for a movie like this are the popular occult films that Hollywood was hitting box office gold with during the 1970s, and the knock-offs of those films that Italy seemingly churned out by the bucket load shortly thereafter. The influence of films like The Omen (Letizia is really just an older and sexier version of Damian, after all) are undeniable and as clear as day but you've got to give Bugnatelli for at least trying to do something a bit different here. Throwing in a lot of sex with a film's occult element is nothing new, but red fuzzy monkey demons aren't too common and neither are scenes where people shriek in terror at the site of supernaturally influenced pillows. While it doesn't always make sense and it isn't always effective, there is a sense of creativity behind a lot of what happens in this movie, enough so that it's not quite a direct rip off of the American films that came before it. The incest angle is an odd one as well, and one that plays a big part in a lot of what happens in the later part of the film - it's there for shock value to be certain, but it does wind up playing a fairly interesting part in how the story resolves itself (whether that was intentional or not, however, is entirely debatable).
The movie is reasonably well shot and features some nice location work. The house that the family live in is pretty fancy and the typically 'bourgeoisie' type abode that cinema usually dictates that these types of stories play out in. Giuliano Sorgini contributes a strange and synth-heavy score with which all of the horror and perversions play off of, though horror hounds might lament the fact that the film does suffer from a noticeable lack of serious carnage. Played more for sleazy, sexy shocks than for straight up horror and tension, the movie lets Tinti deliver a pretty solid lead performance and serves as an indicator of where Franca Gonella's career would take her in a few short years (read: sex films!). She's definitely committed to her role here, playing the film with a lot of enthusiasm and diabolical charm and never afraid to vamp it up when the story calls for it. Ultimately, if the movie doesn't always make sense, at least it's never boring.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.66.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer on this disc was, according to the box copy, sourced from the only existing 35mm elements available and, not so surprisingly, the image has its share of problems. Print damage runs rampant throughout the presentation and in one scene the elements must have dropped out somehow as the picture drops halfway out of the frame. There are jumps and cigarette burns present throughout and plenty of scratches as well. Colors don't look half bad here but whatever One 7 Movies had to work with wasn't in very good shape and it doesn't look like any restoration work was done here. On top of that, serious aliasing issues are a constant problem - but hey, at least there aren't any edge enhancement or compression artifact issues, so there's that. Given the age and obscurity of the film, however, it's nice to have this one at all, even if it is in pretty rough shape.
The only audio option is a Dolby Digital Mono track in Italian (it's doubtful that any other tracks exist for this one) with optional English subtitles. The audio is about on par with the video, it's scratchy sounding and has periodic level fluctuations throughout. The subtitles are easy enough to read but contain a few typos and bizarre phrasings.
Extras are slim, limited to a static menu, an Italian language theatrical trailer (sans subtitles) and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
The presentation isn't going to win any awards of really even impress anyone but this is likely a case of take what you can get - the film hasn't ever been released on home video before and the fact that something this odd and this obscure has now been made available uncut, in widescreen and with English subtitles is a minor miracle in and of itself. So yeah, the transfer isn't so hot and the audio could have been better and there aren't any impressive extras, but the movie itself is odd enough to warrant a look, particularly those who dig on Eurocult oddities, which this title definitely qualifies as.
