Demoniacs

R0 NTSC

Redemption USA

Demoniacs (aka Les Demoniaques) is a strangely compelling work of eroticism by Jean Rollin from 1973. Rollin is a French institution, he created the first French vampire film (Le Viol du vampire in 1968), the first French gore film (Les Raisins de la mort in 1978) and pioneered French explicit adult films. While he is celebrated by many, others find his work incomprehensible. His films are never straight forward and cannot be approached like traditional cinema. Rollin makes films like poetry, they have been heavily influenced by Expressionism, Gothicism and Surrealism as well as fantasy and horror cinema. They all have a dreamlike quality and narrative tends to come second to mood, visuals and atmosphere.

Demoniacs is a superb example of his gothic vision expressed through the medium of an erotic pirate film.

The movie opens with a gang of pirates consisting of the Captain and his three accomplices, Bosco, Paul and the dangerously beautiful Tina. They are a violent and uncontrollable bunch and they are only barely tolerated in the small village they live in. They make their living by luring ships to the shore where they pillage the cargo and kill any survivors.

This time the ship produces two survivors, a pair of unnamed beautiful young woman who are in a pretty weak condition when washed up on the beach. They are raped, tortured and left for dead by the pirates with lots of nude shots of Tina along the way !

The gang now go into town to celebrate their latest pillage but the Captain sees the two girls they have just killed. At first he thinks they may have survived or that it could be the booze but soon they realize there are ghosts on their collective tail.

Along the way we learn how the girls became ghosts. It seems that as they were injured they stumbled into a tomb inhabited by some sort of pagan spirit or god. He is accompanied by a hippie priest and a clown ! In exchange for some hot sex, he grants them the ghostly abilities they use to torment the pirates. It seems the girls are not actually dead but have a special ghostly appearance given to them by this deity.

So its ghosts versus pirates with the help of a pagan spirit or god who may or may not be the devil !

But this is just the beginning. As the girls/ghosts return to the tomb they find the pirates have killed the hippie priest and wounded the poor clown. As Tina joins in the fun, the tomb begins to crumble. We are then treated to a rather amusing scene where a statue of Jesus falls onto Tina and seems to be having a rather good time with her !

The pagan spirit, god or devil now tells the poor girls that they must give up their ghostly gift as well as all thoughts of revenge to save the priest and clown. So much for infernal power ! They agree to do so and this time are killed but not before everyone attacks everyone else and they all die !

Demoniacs is certainly a strange film. It is beautifully shot with some truly scrumptious cinematography. Rollin used a small island near France to do the filming and hence was really able to capture the sense of a small island village without any great cost. Demoniacs is very quirky combining pirate adventures, eroticism, brutality and a ghost tale - not bad for one film and one clearly made on a limited budget.

It cannot be taken literally; there are so many motifs that can be interpreted in many different ways. The identity of the pagan spirit or god may or may not be the devil and the actual condition of the girls is unclear. Were they killed and brought back from the dead (and then killed a second time) or do they just get given ghostly powers, it is all very mysterious. The narrative of the plot is certainly eccentric to say the least.

But if we take the film as a dream (or nightmare) it has a beautiful mood and is filled to the brim with dark gothic imagery, eroticism and perverse visions. It is certainly a fascinating cinematic experience.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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