Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Black Magic Rites Blu-ray Movie Review

Can we get someone up in here to cast a spell that explains this movie?

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 23, 2012

Get ready for some of the most incomprehensible cult-sleaze you've ever seen. 1973's Black Magic Rites is an acid trip of a gothic horror movie, with washes of psychedelic color, seizure-inducing editing, and a nightmare plot that only makes sense via dream logic. As a film, it's undeniably awful—cheap and poorly structured, with some of the worst acting to ever splatter on the screen—but as an exploitation cinema experience? It's consciousness expanding. And by consciousness expanding, of course, I mean it'll make your brain explode. Look, I don't want to oversell the film—it really is terrible in just about every objectively or subjectively measurable way—but it's so batshit out-there, so deliriously kooky, that fans of Euro-trash b-grade moviemaking owe it to themselves to see it at least once.

The film's director, Renato Polselli, is practically unrecognized outside of Italy and cult-horror circles—he's best known for the proto-slasher Delirium—but while he never had the international success of, say, Mario Bava or Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci, he shares their giallo sensibilities, including a love of lurid color, stylized atmosphere, and nudie ladies getting tortured onscreen. Think arthouse-meets-grindhouse, all sex and death and bloody sadism.

As for the story, it's hard to know where to begin, since Polselli jumps around chronologically with jarring frequency. Loosely, the plot concerns a group of modern satanist vampires intent on resurrecting the "great mistress" Isabel (Rita Calderoni), a 14th century witch who was burned at the stake and impaled with a stake, leaving a giant gaping hole between her breasts. We see see this wound a lot, since the dead-but-mysteriously-not-decomposed witch has been strung up by chains— topless, for some reason—in the basement of a mouldering European castle, where her followers have kept her for 700 years.

It appears that there's some sort of reincarnation/doppelganger-ing at work. In the scenes set in the 1300s, we see Isabel's lover (Mickey Hargitay)—who also happens to be Count Dracula!—agonizing over the witch's death, pulling the stake from her heart with the help of a sympathetic townsman (Raul Lovecchio), and placing her in the cellar. In the present day, Calderoni plays Laureen, a beautiful young virgin whose step-father, Jack Nelson—Hargitay again—has recently bought the castle, which is occupied by an enigmatic occultist, played by Lovecchio. Several other characters are reborn versions of their historical counterparts—a shady priest and a sexually deviant doctor, among them—but I'd advise you not to dwell too much on the connections. The numerous subplots of Black Magic Rites are illogical, confusing, and nigh impossible to follow. The rampant nudity is the real draw here, so I doubt the construction of the narrative was of the highest importance for Polselli.

All you really need to know is this—the vampires in the dungeon cellar require "the hearts and eyes of virgins" in order to bring Isabel back from the dead, and thankfully, there are plenty of unspoiled lasses at the castle this particular weekend, as Laureen is having a party with all her friends to celebrate her engagement to Richard Brenton (William Darni). In case you're curious why the vamps specifically require virgin victims, let me give you a rather frank quote from one of the bloodsuckers: "Vampires need blood that's not contaminated by human semen." That clears that up, I guess, although now you're probably left wondering uncomfortably if blood tainted by non-human semen is acceptable for vampiric consumption.

In the grand tradition of Euro-sleaze cinema, this is one of those outright-misogynistic movies where you're meant to ogle pretty, large-busted women as they're terrorized and brutalized and degraded. It's all a fantasy, of course, but given that most of these films are made by men for men, you rarely see males subjected to the same treatment. The girls at the castle— none of whom have brought pajamas, apparently, since they all sleep naked—are groped and knifed, buried alive, and in one instance, forced into a non-consensual three-way. Some are sacrificed on an alter by the vampires, who have blue-painted faces and wear comically skin-tight and bright-red superhero-style outfits.

The fashion in this movie is fabulous. If you played a drinking game where you took a shot every time you saw a sparkly sweater or a bedazzled suit jacket, you'd be dead-drunk within the first fifteen minutes. For those of you with an unusually high tolerance, take additional shots whenever you spot a particularly luscious-looking mustache. Suffice it to say that the camp/kitsch factor of Black Magic Rites is off the proverbial charts. And oh the acting. To a one, the women in the film either wildly, theatrically overact or else look entirely dead-eyed and out of it as they go though the motions of being terrified then progressively turned on. Expect much moaning and gasping and spasmodic heaving. It's about as sexy as a root canal.

Visually, Black Magic Rites is an all-out assault. Polselli, who edited the film himself, cuts it with insanely herky-jerky rhythms—jumping backwards in time, forwards, and between locations—and he often flashes the frame with almost-neon colors, oscillating between solid reds, yellows, greens, and blues. I'm not sure if he's trying to distract us from the fact that the story has no substance, or if he just has a thing for epileptic editing, but either way, it makes the film feel like an LSD/brain control experiment gone awry. It's fascinating in a what-the-hell-am-I-watching sense, but honestly, Polselli's stylistic eccentricities are attached to an otherwise sub-par Italian horror film that's bafflingly obtuse. The director's script even advises the audience not to think too hard about it. Near the end of the movie, one character tells another, "Don't try to understand it. I told you tonight, it's a fine line between the known and the unknown." Whether you see this as coolly enigmatic or a total cop-out will depend on your tolerance for style over content.

Black Magic Rites Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino Lorber, in conjunction with Redemption Films, has given Black Magic Rites an all-new high definition remaster from the 35mm negative, resulting in a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that looks quite nice considering the film's age, budget, and genre. As usual with Kino releases, the film is essentially presented as-is, so you will notice white/black specks and small scratches, but the damage is minimal and never distracting. (Besides, if you watch a lot of these kinds of films, you're used to it.) On the plus side of Kino's lack of post-process tinkering, there's been no noise reduction, edge enhancement, or other forms of unnecessary filtering. The image looks natural, with noticeable grain and no obvious digital compression artifacts or haloes from over-sharpening. Overall clarity is somewhat soft—mostly because the focusing is rarely precise, with several outright blurry shots throughout—but when the image is dialed in, closeups do display fine textures and otherwise strong detail. As you'd hope, the film's lurid, giallo-inspired palette is reproduced wonderfully, with vivid reds and greens and blues and no banding whatsoever in fine color gradients. Contrast is balanced well too. I'm not sure why the film is presented in 1.78:1 and not the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio, but otherwise, this seems like another true-to-source, warts-and-all transfer from Kino.

Black Magic Rites Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Black Magic Rites is presented with an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo track. Like the picture, the audio is limited by the film's age and production techniques, but this is a listenable-enough mix. What you'll notice immediately is the film's rather schizophrenic soundtrack, which switches styles in just about every scene, from a sort of low-key funk—backed by breathy, orgasmic sighs—to weird, jazzy stop-and-start piano tunes and guitar-riffing acid rock. There's not much low-end in the music, the highs are a bit muddy, and the pitch of the synthesizers sometimes wobbles conspicuously, but que sera, sera, right? At least there are no overt hisses, crackles, or drop-outs here. The Italian dialogue has all been obviously ADR'd in after the fact, but the voices are mostly clear and understandable. The disc includes optional English subtitles, but no other subs or dubs.

Black Magic Rites Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extras on the disc are high definition trailers for Black Magic Rites, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Lisa and the Devil, The Nude Vampires, and Shiver of the Vampire.

Black Magic Rites Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

1970s Italian horror produced more than its share of oddities, but Black Magic Rites—also known as The Reincarnation of Isabel—is one of the weirdest, an incomprehensible gothic (s)exploitation experiment cast in acid- freakout colors and edited with machine-gun-speed, headache-inducing cutting. It's most certainly not for everyone—not even all fans of the genre—but for those with an all-abiding love of trashy Euro-sleaze cinema, it's worth seeing at least once. Of course, whether or not you need to own it is something else entirely. Kino/Redemption's Blu-ray release is short on special features, but the film's new high definition transfer makes Renato Polselli's stylistic excesses more vivid than ever. Recommended only for connoisseurs of the cult and obscure.