Demon Witch Child (1975)

aka The Possessed

Original title: La endemoniada

Mr. Barnes (Ángel del Pozo) rules his Spanish town with a bit of an iron hand, it seems. When a baby disappears, he suggests (ahem) a group of wandering “gypsies” (I use this term because “Romani” seems to be a completely inappropriate description for what we see in the film) is at fault. As will turn out soon enough, he’s absolutely right, because these aren’t your typical travelling folk, but actually a wandering Satanic cult led by an old woman with a very distinctive face who calls herself Mother Gautère (Tota Alba). The bumbling and ineffective chief of police (Fernando Sancho) and his henchpeople manage to arrest the old gal, surprisingly enough, but during interrogation, she jumps out of a window, committing suicide before she can be injected with pentothal.

Of course, Mother Gautère’s second in command (Kali Hansa) swears vengeance, especially on Mr Barnes and his family. Rather quickly, Barnes’s daughter Susan (Marián Salgado) is possessed by the spirit of Mother Gautère herself, sacrificing babies, imitating voices and strangling men many times her weight. Only the local young priest, Father Juan (Julián Mateos) can help, but he is regularly distracted by some melodrama between him and the woman he left to turn to the priesthood, and her disappointed life as a prostitute.

I’ve repeatedly gone on record with my general dislike for William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. Its fears and theological arguments don’t work for this hard-headed atheist, and it is because it is as serious and well-made a film actually about its themes as it is that it also doesn’t work as a horror movie for me.

Fortunately, there’s a whole load of cheap, trashy and deeply unserious films inspired by/ripping off elements of Friedkin’s film I am able to enjoy. Amando “Blind Dead” de Ossorio’s Spanish example of the form, Demon Witch Child, certainly is cheep and trashy, as well as pulpy, sometimes hilariously mean-spirited, and a lot of fun for my by these virtues. I could have done without the business about the Father Juan’s prostitute troubles (alternatively, this element of the film could have simply been better written, but let’s not be unrealistic here), and the whole “travelling folk as baby murdering Satan worshippers” angle is rather distasteful, but otherwise, what’s not to like?

To whit: apart from the more usual possession business with floating, head rotating and spitting, possessed Susan is a bit more proactive than many of her peers. She regularly takes on the face of Mother Gautère and goes out strangling people, who are properly freaked out by the surprisingly creepy “old face on child’s body” make-up. She also likes to have her little jokes. So an implied after-murder castration (whose beginning even suggests a bit of necrophilia de Ossorio apparently decided to leave to Italian filmmakers), and gifting the nicely packaged, ahem, package to the victim’s fiancée is all in her program, as are voice imitation to confuse all kinds of matters and other general nastiness.

All of which is filmed in a manner rather typical of many de Ossorio films I’ve seen, where about half of the scenes look incredibly shoddily blocked and staged and edited with a hatchet, whereas the other half is full of Dutch angles, threatening camera movements and every other trick to make a scene creepy you can use when you don’t have much of a budget. Thankfully, the film’s general air of unhealthy imagination and its lurid energy are more than enough to help one through the rough patches, and enjoy the weird and inspired scenes of witch-faced children and Dracula-style wallcrawling.