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.

The Killer Wore Gloves (1974)

Original title: La muerte llama a las 10

Peggy Foster (Gillian Hills) hasn’t heard from her live-in boyfriend Michael for quite some time, which not only makes her rather nervous, what with him working as a war correspondent in Saigon, but also sees her money running out quickly. So she rents out the upper flat of the double flat she shares with Michael to one John Kirk Lawford (Bruno Corazzari, I think). Shortly after Lawford arrives, a phone call supposedly coming from Michael (though Peggy can’t seem to actually identify her own boyfriend from his voice, so make of this what you will) lures her to the outskirts of London.

There, a glove-wearing would-be killer attempts to shoot Peggy. Our heroine manages to flee, only to find somebody has jumped to his death from her terrace. She just assumes the corpse is Lawford, and then proceeds to pretend to the police she knows nobody and nothing, and where is this anyway? She also tells them nothing about the attempt on her life, because Peggy is obviously not going to do anything sensible during the course of the movie. While two very rude cops – who clearly and correctly believe that Peggy’s a lying liar who lies – are still trying to get any useful information out of her, another guy calling himself John Kirk Lawford arrives (this would be Ángel del Pozo, unless it’s the other way round) for his room. Things proceed in the same tone and style from here on out, with Peggy acting like an absolute idiot while bizarre characters like her crazy and sleazy neighbour Mr Lewis (Carlos Otero) say threatening and ambiguous stuff to her that barely makes sense, people are murdered, and a bag full of money appears.

Well, you really can’t accuse Juan Bosch’s Spanish-lead giallo The Killer Wore Gloves (which indeed the killer does) of making much sense at all, or most of the time of making any sense whatsoever, perfectly fitting into that part of the giallo genre that doesn’t even construct convoluted and hardly believable plots anymore but instead presents a random series of barely coherent scenes filmed with as much style and vigour as director and money can come up with.

The film makes so little sense – and obviously doesn’t care to - I found myself zoning out of its plot quite early on, instead admiring the cheap yet excellent 70s interior design, Marcello Giombini’s derivative yet great score, Peggy’s fashion-sense (though appreciating it with horror might be the better term here), and all the different ways Gillian Hills comes up with when it comes to looks of wide-eyed panic and confusion. The last reactions are of course perfectly appropriate for the film they are in, and reflect my feelings towards Peggy’s actions during the course of the movie so perfectly, I might be just ready to pretend the film is doing this on purpose, instead of being shoddily written.

I suppose, Peggy might be supposed to think she’s protecting Michael somehow from something or someone but since she has as little clue about the truths of matters around her as any of the film’s viewers, this makes as little sense as the eventual explanation of what’s going on. Not surprisingly, given the tone of the rest of this thing, said explanation doesn’t in fact explain much about the wherefore and why of the suspense scenes, the peculiar people, and the curious happening around our heroine. Like: who threw the cat at her? Well, the assistant director, one supposes, but that’s not exactly a great in-movie explanation. What, exactly were the bad guys thinking when they came up with their plan? Did they know everybody else would act idiotic or crazy or both? Was something in the water? Who actually murdered all these people? And so on, and so forth.

So, obviously, The Killer Wore Gloves isn’t exactly a film for anyone who wants their mysteries to make even the minor amount of sense one is used to in one’s giallos, but if you’re willing to just go with it, stare at the pretty people (okay, one or two pretty persons, really, because the rest of the cast isn’t always pretty to look at), bug your eyes at how little this hangs together as a story - in a thematic sense or however else - and enjoy some cheap yet often quite stylish (if less than original) moving pictures, you might have as fun of a time with this as I had.

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