A blind teenager called Mark (Renato Cestie) and his slightly older sister Christine (Rena Niehaus) are living in Venice with their grandmother. Their parents died some years ago under never really explained, but most certainly dubious circumstances. Granny mostly blames the mother's family, the Winters, for everything and so contact between the only Winters who are left and the children is non-existent.
The family priest (Jose Quaglio) is in contact with the Winters, though, and conveys their wish to take Mark and Christine in as help with their boarding house. Grandma declines, but soon dies during mass in the sort of freak accident one gets into when one regularly psychically abuses one's blind grandson and lets him stumble into the direction of the back of a candle rich environment just to be nasty.
With grandmother dead and more priestly words of advice to just try living with the Winters for a bit, as well as equally priestly elucidations about a healing well that is supposed to cure illnesses like blindness in the direction of Mark, the children are willing to try it out.
Mark, who has already had strange visions in which he sees a black coated man with a cane (Yorgo Voyagis) before, now hardly has a moment without something weird happening to him anymore, be it having earthworms crawling out of the water faucets, more visions of the black coated man or extra special fun with dead people.
It seems like he and Christine have stumbled into the hands of an occult conspiracy with the goal of producing the son of Satan and helping him into experiencing a fast lane version of a "negative image" of the life of Jesus.
Ugo Liberatore's (and what an excellent name that is!) Nero Veneziano is a very weird riff on Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. Some people would call it a rip-off, but the Italian movie is way too peculiar and way too interested in its own (wrong-headed, twisted) ideas, in a way much too Catholic, to be seen as such. Some of these ideas could in fact be the basis for quite a clever and subtle film.
Obviously, Nero Veneziano is not that film. Instead it's a sleazy, strangely paced, dubiously acted completely weird exploitation movie that could only have been produced in Italy. It is quite brilliantly messed up and you really should see it if you are a friend of this sort of thing (I'm still giddy from watching it, myself), yet definitely a film to avoid if you are primarily interested in plot, logic, plot logic, characterization, sense or good taste.
Me, I like me some scenes of decaying Venice, Satanic conspiracies, baby throwing, the mental torture of the blind and other fun things.
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