Enter The Devil (1974)

Enter The Devil (1974) was pat of the first wave of Italian Exorcist (1973) cash ins and was re-issued, under several different titles, throughout the seventies in attempts to cash-in on other similarly themed movies.  On the face of it, Enter The Devil at least seems to take a slightly more original approach to its source material, eschewing demon possessed little girls for an adult female protagonist and a focus upon sexual deviancy as a form of demonic possession, (sure, Linda Blair's Regan masturbates with a crucifix in The Exorcist, but this is more of a throwaway shock rather than a sustained theme).  The devil also manifests himself very physically in this film: no raspy voices from a child here, but rather none other than Ivan Rassimov himself, variously ravishing, groping and even crucifying the heroine.  This last sequence is significant to one of the film's central themes: the inherent eroticism of the image of a semi-naked Christ suffering on the cross.  Most obviously, Satan first appears as a wooden life-sized Christ-like crucified figure, who comes to life in the heroine's studio, drops his loincloth, tears her clothes off and makes love to her on the floor.  (We know that he's Satan as his lovemaking is accompanied by thunder, lightning and a gale blowing through the studio while his cross bursts into flame).  Pursuing the theme, people certainly suffer for their sins throughout the film: the heroine's mother engages in some S&M sex with her lover which involves her writhing in agonised pleasure as she is thrashed with thorny rose stems, while the priest conducting the climactic exorcism self-flagellates after being tempted by the possessed girl's devilish charms.

Despite these variances from its model's template, Enter The Devil is actually picking up on a narrative thread from The Exorcist - the question as to whether supposed demonic possession is nothing more than a form of mental illness.  While The Exorcist ultimately leaves the audience in no doubt as to the reality of the supernatural evil possessing Regan, Enter The Devil is more ambivalent in its presentation of possession.  All of the heroine's encounters with Rassimov's Satan could be dismissed simply as sexual fantasies, triggered by her witnessing her mother's aforementioned kinky bedroom antics.  Indeed, her first sexual encounter with the living effigy occurs directly after her surreptitiously seeing the rose-whipping incident and the cutting of the film seems to make clear that her own devilish sexual encounter occurred entirely in her head - we jump from her and Rassimov writhing on the floor to her standing, fully clothed in the studio, the wooden figure still on her work bench and the cross unscathed by fire.  Likewise all her subsequent encounters, including her crucifixion in the vault of an abandoned church - at best they might be supernaturally induced 'visions', but are presented more like sadomasochistic sexual fantasies.  Equally, her other sexual behaviours - the obsessive masturbation, the attempts to seduce her father and later the priest exorcising her, could also be explained as aberrant behaviour triggered by the trauma of having seen her mother's adulterous sexual liaison.

Enter The Devil, though, like many exploitation movies, wants to have its cake and eat it.  So, alongside this apparent psychological explanation for the girl's possession, it also develops a second theme playing on Catholic guilt and the idea that sex is itself a sin, namely that deviant sex, or even just having a sexual appetite, is itself a product of Satanic evil.  Contact with it is contagious, inducing a form of possession in the witness, driving them to commit the same sins.  The mother's adultery results in the daughter becoming sexually obsessed - first with a Christ-like figure, then later with masturbation and incest.  Only sex within marriage, for the purpose of reproduction isn't sinful.  According to this element of the film's plot, Satan's ultimate aim, (whether he be real or a figment of the girl's imagination), is to corrupt an especially pious priest by arousing his suppressed sexual desires via the possessed heroine and thereby commit the sin of breaking his vows of chastity.  (Interestingly, in order to strengthen his resolve and faith, the priest gives himself a good whipping, which might also be considered deviant behaviour).  While the priest expires, he does complete the exorcism, thereby triumphing over evil without having succumbed to it himself.  Of course, in true exploitation fashion, all this sinful sex has to be shown to us in detail, just so that we can see for ourselves just how evil and filthy it actually is.

Mario Gariazzo's direction is, for the most part, best described as servicable rather than inspired.  That said, however, he does rise to the occasion for the fantasy/vision scenes involving Rassimov's Satan, producing some memorable imagery.  More interesting is the script, which he also co-wrote, which, rather than attempt to slavishly copy The Exorcist, instead takes that film's central idea and spins it off on its own tangent, exploring the relationship between eroticism, evil and religious iconography.  A few years later Gariazzo would write and direct an equally bizarre and wayward take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978), in the form of  Eyes Behind the Stars (1978).  Enter The Devil is, ultimately, an intriguing piece of exploitation, seeking to subvert its source while simultaneously delivering the same sort of shocks and thrills, but more so - it has even more Catholic angst than the original, not to mention even more blasphemous sex and violence!  Its biggest weakness is its inherent misogyny in effectively characterising any sexually active woman as being possessed by demonic evil, (although, to be fair, that is pretty much in line with the Catholic doctrine it is exploring).