Demon Witch Child (1975)

A Spanish Exorcist cash in, Demon Witch Child has several points of interest in its favour.  Most notably, it was directed by Amando de Ossorio.  Better known as the director behind the 'Blind Dead' series of seventies Spanish horrors, this entry in his CV is nowhere nearly as well known, possibly because, thematically, it lacks the originality of the 'Blind Dead' films, with its horrors instead entirely derivative of The Exorcist. That said, it isn't a slavish copy of the US film and incorporates a number of twists and variations on its inspiration.  The most obvious variation is telegraphed by the title: this isn't so much a tale of demonic possession as it is of possession by the spirit of a dead witch, (who worshipped the Devil).  The witch also has motivation for the possession and the evil deeds that follow, having been - from her perspective - persecuted to her death by the local police chief and prosecutor, so she possesses the latter's young daughter.  The subsequent story takes in everything from child sacrifices and black masses, to exorcism, taking in murder, castration and all the supernatural shenanigans expected from a possessed child in this sort of film, in between.  Indeed, not only does the little girl engage in levitation, but she also crawls down the exterior wall of her house, (in the vein of Count Dracula), speaks in other people's voices and goes one better than Linda Blair by spinning not just her head, but the whole upper part of her body. 

The effects portraying these phenomena are variable, (you can see the strings in the levitation scene), but the scenes where the witch's spirit leaves her body in hospital and subsequently enters the girl's body, as the latter lies asleep in bed, while achieved simply, (by straightforward double exposure by the look of it), is actually quite eerie and surprisingly effective.  Most disconcerting and convincing, though, are the make up effects which transform the child into a miniature facsimile of the dead witch.  These contribute to possibly the film's most disturbing scene, where the transformed girl, speaking in the witch's voice, attempts to seduce the heroine's reporter boyfriend.  In contrast to de Ossorio's better known 'Blind Dead' films which, with their slow moving monsters, tend to move at a relatively leisurely pace, often feeling as if they are taking forever to get anywhere, Demon Witch Child moves at a commendably brisk pace, getting straight into the story and moving things along rapidly to the horror set-pieces without too many diversions.  Most of the diversions we do get concern the local priest and his crisis of faith: in flashback we see how he jilted his then girlfriend to take up the priesthood, leaving her so heartbroken that she becomes a prostitute and eventually commits suicide.  

The film's pace is helped by the fact that the script presents its story in straightforward fashion.  We open with the old crone desecrating a church, for which she is subsequently arrested.  Under interrogation, the prosecutor threatens her with jail time, resulting her in jumping out of a window, (an unusual occurrence in seventies Spain - defenestration was usually the result of the investigating officers getting fed up with the 'no comment' response), taken to hospital, she soon dies.  The path for her possession of the prosecutor's daughter has already been laid by her chief acolyte, who has enchanted the child with a necklace and a Satanic effigy.  The child's governess quickly notices that something is amiss with the previously well-behaved girl, who has now taken to swearing, causing objects to fly about and making sexual innuendo about the governess' boyfriend.  The kid is subsequently taken for medical examination, but not before a local baby is sacrificed at a black mass presided over by the witch-child.  As in The Exorcist, science can provide no answers, with the boyfriend, a reporter on the local newspaper, suspecting a link with the deceased witch and her followers.  Murdering the boyfriend after he rejects her sexual advances, the witch-child then castrates him, presenting his severed manhood - when back in little girl mode - to the distraught governess.  Finally twigging that the child and everything else going on are linked, the priest is brought in, but not before the girl has kidnapped her infant cousin for a sacrifice.  This time, the black mass is broken up by gun-toting and trigger happy police before any harm can come to the baby.  The priest chases the witch-child into the local cemetery for a final showdown between good and evil.  Luckily, unlike John Philip Law in Ring of Darkness (1979), Julien Mateos' who plays the priest, acting abilities are up to the rigours of an exorcism and the witch's spirit is banished, despite visions of his lost love distracting him.

But, despite the witch's defeat, there is no happy ending here, as the little girl, free of her possession, dies.  "She'll let me die in peace now", she says as she expires in her father's arms, with the camera pulling back to reveal there is a knife in her chest. Now, how this got there was unclear to me - I've watched this film a couple of times now and I still don't see her get stabbed - I assume that we're meant to think that, in a final act of evil, the witch's spirit possessing her caused her to fatally stab herself.  Whatever the cause of her demise, I couldn't help feel that this was a pretty harsh fate for the kid.  Sure, she'd sacrificed a baby, murdered a couple of people and castrated that reporter, but it wasn't as if she had agency in any of those things as it was actually the witch doing all of it.  `I was left feeling that this wasn't really a good advert for the priest's faith - surely his God should have been more forgiving and made a miraculous intervention?  However you look at it, it means that the film ends on a hugely downbeat note, with the triumph of good having come at a pretty heavy (not to mention unfair) price.  (Although, to be fair, this was probably the point the film makers were trying to get at). 

In spite of the down beat ending, I found Demon Witch Girl a surprisingly enjoyable experience. Even with the handicap of some very variable English dubbing in the version I saw - which Anglicised all the names, rendered much of dialogue unintentionally bizarre and tried to give the impression that it was set somewhere in the US, despite the locales being obviously Spanish - it still came over as something more than just an Exorcist rip off.  As well as bringing a number of original touches of its own to the well-worn scenario of child possession, it succeeds, in places, in conjuring up a uniquely weird and perverse atmosphere.  As noted earlier, the girl's transformations into a miniature facsimile of the witch are truly unsettling.  It has to be said that the actress involved gives a pretty good performance all round, (even with an English dubbed voice that sounds too old for a ten year or so old girl), being suitably creepy as the witch-child and equally disturbing as the regular, possessed-by-evil version of her usual self.   (In point of fact, the girl playing the role had dubbed Linda Blair in the Spanish language release of The Exorcist.  Sadly, Linda Blair didn't dub her into English in return).  Moreover, the scenes with her as the witch-child making sexual overtures to the reporter and sexually explicit comments to other characters, including the priest, are sufficiently well handled that, while disturbing, never feel overly exploitative of the young child playing the role.  (In contrast, for instance, to the extensive under age nudity of Ring of Darkness).  Demon Witch Child is certainly a superior, not to mention eccentric, entry into the 'possessed child' cycle of horror films that followed The Exorcist.  While its budget and production values might be modest in comparison to both its progenitor and many of its competitors, it makes up for this with Ossorio's sure-footed and well paced direction and a lot of imaginative touches to vary a story which was already in danger of becoming over-familiar.