Friday, September 10, 2010

L'Ossessa (Italy, 1974)

aka Enter the Devil / The Devil Obsession / The Eerie Midnight Horror Show / The Sexorcist / The Tormented

VHS/Japan/letterbox/Italian dialogue/Japanese subs/uncut print but "underhair" fogged
[click scan for bigger size]

I watched Mario Gariazzo's Italian THE EXORCIST rip-off L'OSSESSA last night. It was even made the same year (1974) as the original and contained some of the scenes we've become accustomed to by now; the possessed girl writhing on her bed, spewing green goo, and being just generally blasphemous and swearing. I must admit she was a major letdown to the film; I mean instead of Linda Blair we get a twenty year old Italian girl with black hair and a perfect body. She ruined every frame she was in! laugh.gif (picture Homer Simpson, head lump-sided, drooling, and going "arrrrrr"). No, actually the only real letdown was the atrociously bad print from Alpha Video (in the States). Fullscreen, a master so obviously taken from a bad video master, and with colours so faint they looked as thought the print were recorded using a cheap two headed vcr! Anyway, none of that ruins the film which was enjoyable. Not at all in the same league as the film it rips off but pretty cool never the less.

The title for the dvd that I bought is The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (!!!) huh.gif
The distributor who came up with that title should be tarred and feathered!! Linking it to The Rocky Horror Picture Show is so way off course that you're just going huh??? The two films have nothing in common!

UPDATE: I wrote this review for Cinehound a little while back. Since then I've got hold of two more versions, one of which you see a scan of in this post; Yes, I was the happy winner of the rare Japanese VHS! (the other tape is an old UK release which I haven't even checked yet but I believe it's letterboxed + English dub and uncut). The Japanese VHS print totally blows away the crappy American DVD! It's a beautiful letterboxed print with colours that don't look like a fucking 3rd generation dupe. It also carries the original Italian audio instead of the atrocious English dub. The tape is uncut but stems from a time when the Japanese still fogged the private parts (which when most Danes say that sounds like something else cos most Danes can't pronounce hard "K" but say "G", haha).















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