L'Anticristo (1974) -

A filthy Exorcist rip-off, which exploits the standard Satanic possession/pregnancy narrative toward extraordinarily spectacular ends. The whole film feels like it's a bunch of Italian Catholics, fully steeped in various strands of Italian Catholicism, coming up with more and more outrageous ways to cinematically blaspheme. The story matters almost not at all: a woman, mysteriously paralyzed since childhood, begins having strange experiences after visiting a fringe religious site. Turns out, she's the reincarnation of a apostate nun who fled the convent and joined a cult of devil worshippers before being prosecuted and burned for blasphemy. Somehow, at the outset of this story, the dead nun's life has begun to be felt in the living, paralyzed body of Ippolita. And then madcap blasphemy ensues. The film is remarkable for it's nearly explicit sexual content, all of which is embedded in either religious or satanic content. The thing about the film is that its story is almost negligible, despite being incredibly complicated, as the whole apparatus of the story seems mostly to be there to provide a basic infrastructure for a series of crazyass possession and/or flashback sequences, each more scandalous than the one previous. I don't entirely understand the family scenario: Ippolita is the daughter of a Prince (Mel Ferrer, entirely unremarkable in the role) and nephew of a Priest (Arthur Kennedy - ditto) and she's got a devoted brother (who basically looks like a lesbian) and a nanny (a very vivid Scandinavianish actress). And then there's a very cute hypnotherapist. All of these folks convene around Ippolita as she tries to cure her mysterious paralysis and, in turn, each becomes involved in the escalating demonic events. I don't really understand. But what's occasionally quite fun about the piece are the possession episodes, some better than others. I especially enjoyed the following: a scene in which Ippolita seduces a German schoolboy in the catacombs; the crazy Devil orgy in which Ippolita -- in a previous life -- performs oral sex on a goat's hindquarters; and the bad table manners scene where Ippolita eats lots of meat before spitting it out and insulting her father's tarty new squeeze and then the giant paintings start flapping against the wall. I couldn't really follow the ending but it seems that the demon might have been purged from Ippolita, but I don't know that it matters. A strange, trashy, lurid and sensationalistic film.