And yet nobody's ever made a movie called Mark Of L. Ron Hubbard
I have to tip my tri-corner hat to the Gore-Met here; dammit, to this day I swear I heard the line "She's ridden to the Sabbath! She's made love to the Devil! She is a witch!", as sampled in a Cathedral song, in The Conqueror Worm. Watching this movie, well, it's right here, so I stand corrected!
Still, this doesn't change the fact that this whole witch-burning corner of the genre, with the lonely exception of the aforementioned film, puts me to sleep every time. I know, the fault for this lies more in me than in the films, but still, zzz.
After an awkward opening credits, where the action freezes every time there are words on the screen, everything stops dead for an opening "crawl" that tells us about the fact-based nature of what we're about to see. We're told that it's based on three real-life accounts, which of course is the movie's claim to behold-the-horror-of-human-history "legitimacy" when really, it's a torture show.
Reggie Nalder stars as Albino, a disgusting pig whose only use for women is to use his power as the local witch-hunter to coerce them into whatever sexual favors he can squeeze out of them. But since he's so disgusting, many women simply choose death. Soon, a couple of witch hunters higher up the witch-hunter food chain show up in town (Udo Kier and Herbert Lom) and threaten to usurp his power.
We're obviously meant to sympathize with Kier, who just stares straight ahead for most of the film, trying to look as flamingly gay as he can. He disapproves of reaching conclusions before evidence is gathered, he doesn't like confessions to be tortured out of people, all very sweet of him I'm sure, but the bare bones of it is that he's still a witch-burner, and he just comes across as a wussy one. Yeah, he's not quite as disgusting as Albino, or Lom's head honcho who extorts money AND sexual favors through his work, but nor is he having nearly as much fun as either.
Mark Of The Devil was somewhat infamous for having barf bags passed out at the screenings; a nice marketing trick but a long ways from necessary, since while it's violent, it's only rarely graphic, with one tongue being pulled out being about the extent of the real grue. I dunno, like I said, I was on the verge of nodding off. Nice German countryside photography, fun costumes, and there's a scene with a cute little bunny rabbit who Albino tries to make into a marionette (it doesn't work), but no.
Also known as (hang on) Austria 1700, Hexen bis aufs Blut gequalt, Burn Witch Burn, Brenn Hexe brenn, Hexen, and just simply Satan. Produced two sequels, both of which I hear sucked much ass.
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