Nude for Satan presents a conundrum for any reviewer.
Or, at least, any reviewer that hopes to offer up something more than
hyperbolic babble about the how bizarre the stuff on display becomes in this
not quite coherent splay of images. Should this film be called stream of
consciousness gothic fluff? Or perhaps a low budget sleazy creepfest? Is it
maybe just a silly shaggy dog story with a punch line that lands with a thud
instead of a pop? Or maybe it should simply be noted as a typical 1970s
European entry in the 'hell is a place on earth' camp of EC comics inspired
horror tales? No. While those labels might do for someone with less interest in
this sub-genre those terms will not suffice for me. This movie more accurately
falls into a category I like to call 'Foregone Conclusion Theater'. You've seen
these stories before. The entire movie builds slowly to a final revelation that
sharp viewers have copped to long before the onscreen characters gasp in
reaction to the supposedly amazing information. Except even that description
isn't quite right because both main characters are openly wondering if they are
really dead by the half way mark of the movie. So what the hell is this thing?
Crazy as a rat trapped in a coffee can, to be perfectly honest. Cinema
delirium! But is it entertaining? Well...
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The story begins simply enough with Doctor Benson (Stelio
Candelli) driving through the night on his way to the Witmore Estate to make a
house call. Unsure of his way, he stops for directions and is warned that going
to the Witmore villa is a bad idea. He ignores this advice and drives on until
a woman dressed in white looms up out of the dark into the path of his car. The
doctor swerves and misses the woman but as he searches the roadside for her
afterwards there is nothing to be found. Puzzled and at a loss to explain this
he is about to continue his journey when a second car crashes on the road only
a few feet from him. Just for the record, this is one of the worst faked car
crashes in cinema history. The sound of a skid and crash are heard on the
soundtrack and a lone tire rolls past Benson in the road. Hysterically, the
tire would never have fit the car it's supposed to have detached from. This was
the first indicator of just how strange things were going to get.
Benson pulls Susan (the very lovely Rita Calderoni), the
only passenger of the 'crashed' car, out and loads her into his own vehicle. He
recognizes her and decides it would be best to get her to the estate to care
for her injuries. Once there he has a strange encounter with a servant who
makes odd statements and then disappears into thin air. Unable to get anyone to
answer his knocking he is about to return to the car when the front door of the
castle opens on its own. Clueless that this is a BAD sign, he enters
and looks around the apparently deserted, dusty and cobwebbed place. Searching
for people he stumbles from room to room and behind each door there seems to be
a new strange sight. There is a laughing, web-covered corpse, a nude woman
being molested by a man dressed in Victorian clothing, etc. Confused as can be,
Benson is then greeted by the hale & hardy woman he pulled from the car
wreck, wearing a 19th century style dress. She insists her name is Evelyn, not
Susan, and persuades the doctor to join her to be introduced to the family as
her beloved.
From here on in it becomes increasingly clear that time has
no meaning and both the present day events and 19th century happenings are
jumbled together. The narrative swings back and forth between the modern day Susan
meeting the lord of the Witmore castle and Dr. Benson trying to figure out his
predicament with Evelyn. Susan is ushered into the house by the mysterious Lord
(James Harris) and it quickly becomes evident that he is some kind of devil or
demon pushing the characters around. Susan acts as if she is under a spell,
never asking his name and blithely going along with his suggestions. She is
shown to a room, given a hot bath and slips very naturally into a lesbian tryst
with the black chambermaid. She then goes to bed but has a dream of her sexy
new female lover that becomes a nightmare as the servant strangles her.
Awakening out of this she goes wandering around the castle while a storm rages
outside. Following odd sounds, she is horrified to find the chambermaid being
whipped by an older male servant. Then things get weird. (I know — just bear
with me!)
Running away from the torture scene, Susan stumbles into a
room and becomes trapped in a giant spider's web. And here comes the big hairy
spider right toward its new prey! Okay. Remember earlier when I said the faked
car crash was hysterical? I should have saved that word to describe the fake
spider in this sequence. Seriously! I have seen some bad fake spiders in my
day. The ones Fulci set next to real ones in The Beyond. The awful one
that leaped onto Rod Taylor in World Without End. The Volkswagen beetle in The
Giant Spider Invasion. All of these now take a back seat to the miserable
excuse for a spider in Nude for Satan. But that's not the funniest part!
By this time the separate storylines are mashed together in such a way that
confusion is par for the course. So when Dr. Benson bursts into the room and
shoots the spider off Susan, all the questions lingering in my mind about what
is actually happening evaporated as I sputter-laughed at the site of what looks
like feathers flying off the thing. Disregard the madness of shooting at
the girl- the fake spider's ignominious
death is a classic of bizarre cinema.
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