The Demoniacs (1974)

If you are here for the rape, you have wasted your time. The scenes are a joke. Even worse, the supposed killing of the two girls (Lieva Lone, Patricia Hermenier). The acting was atrocious.Now, if you want to see Joëlle Coeur (Fly Me the French Way, Seven Women for Satan) fully naked, and engaging in sex with John Rico, that's a whole other story.The Captain (Rico) hardly has time to enjoy the aftereffects when he is visited by apparitions of the two girls. Maybe it was just the booze.The girls do eventually reappear only to escape and find an old castle guarded by, believe it or not, a clown. Not a court jester, but a clown. Strange.They go through the transformation to become demoniacs, and, I am glad to say, sex is part of the transformation. Yes, there is the usual mumble jumble ritual, but there is also orgasm.Don't expect a lot of gore in this film. It really doesn't make sense in a lot of scenes. You'll see what I mean. I think Rollin may have been trying to make an art film instead of a horror film.It is a shame that Lieva Lone and Patricia Hermenier did not stick around to do more films, but another chance to watch Joëlle Coeur is always worth the time.

Les Demoniaques, or Demoniacs as it is largely known under in English speaking country's, starts on a beach where a gang of four people, one known as the Captain (John Rico), his right hand man LeBosco (Willy Braque), Paul (Paul Bisciglia) & an attractive but deadly woman named Tina (Joelle Coeur) wave lanterns to attract ships which then get wrecked on the rocks & sink at which point they steal anything of any value, these gangs are known as 'wreckers'. This particular night things go well & they recover some loot, suddenly they see two young women (Lieva Lone & Patricia Hermenier) stagger ashore, obviously survivors from the shipwreck. LeBosco & Paul rape, beat & generally abuse them while the Captain & Tina have sex together. The gang leave the women for dead & wander off into the night, the Captain ends up at the local tavern where he begins to have spooky visions of the two women while the landlady (who happens to be psychic) Madame Louise (Louise Dhour) becomes suspicious. The two women manage to make it to the apparently cursed ruins of a Church where the devil resides in a crypt protected by a guy with a long beard & a woman dressed as a clown (Mireille Dargent), they release the devil who gives them the power to extract a terrible revenge on the gang of wreckers...This French Belgium co-production was written & directed by Jean Rollin who made quite a few of these arty surreal horror sex films of which I have not seen many, however I thought Les Demoniaques was an OK film if not exactly brilliant. The script tries to tell a decent story about supernatural revenge & it does a fair job at entertaining. The film moves along at a fair pace & never becomes too boring although the character development leaves a lot to be desired, no one in Les Demoniaques has any sort of personality beyond whether they are meant to be good or bad. The two shipwrecked women are good & are violated innocents while the wreckers are uniformly evil who never stop drinking, fighting & having sex. There is no depth or subtly here I'm afraid but then Rollin isn't renowned for his writing abilities is he? No, Rollin is far more interested in the visual side of a film which is not a good thing. Lots of things don't make any sort of sense as he tries to mix horror, art, exploitation, sex & supernatural elements with uneven results, I was also expecting a big 'pay-off' for the wreckers at the end which unfortunately never materialised, that alone made sitting through the thing rather unsatisfying.Director Rollin lays on the visual style with Les Demoniaques being a very textured film, I love the old wooden boats, the inside decor of the tavern, the stone work of the Church, the bright almost cartoonish costumes & the dangerous looking jagged rocks of the beach. Personally I think the arty surreal shots in Les Dominaques aren't that distracting, although the scenes in the Church with the clown, crypt keeper & some guy locked in a room who looks more gay than devil like are bizarre to say the least & destroys any credibility that the powerful & graphic opening establishes. There is far more nudity in Les Demoniaques than violence, in fact apart from some fights & a bit of blood there isn't much graphic horror here while the nudity & sex is plentiful including a couple of very graphic & exploitative sexual assaults which do nothing for me personally. You should also be aware that Les Demoniaques was filmed in French & I don't think an English language version exists so the sparse dialogue is subtitled throughout.Les Demoniaques must have been a really low budget affair, there are barely any actors in it, it has about three locations, no special effects to speak of & as a whole it could be described as minimalist. However the locations Rollin chooses are appropriate, from the Gothic Church ruins to a beach full of stranded shipwrecked boats. Obviously the photography is by far the most impressive aspect of the production although I suppose it's generally well made throughout. The acting is pretty poor from all involved especially the two shipwrecked women who are mute for the majority of the film yet still manage to be awful & irritating, oh & that Tina is a nice looking bird with or without clothes...Les Demoniaques is an OK Euro horror sex film from Rollin, if your a fan of his style of film-making then you'll probably love this, if not then you'll probably hate it. But what about me? Well, I'm stuck somewhere between the two, not my favourite film by any stretch of the imagination but I found enough here to entertain on a basic level. My advice would be to think carefully before you give it a go.

This is without a doubt one of the worst movies i have ever seen. It is even worse than the 70's Hindu movies where eagles carried babies and women are always blind and all people turn out to be brothers!! at least some of these Hindu movies had decent stories. Here it is even worse. People siting all around in a bar having sex and the only thing to change that is to fight with one another, a guy kills a girl without noticing, and when a friend gets mad at him for that he kills him too!! then swims about 30 meters like a pro and slips off a shipwreck 1 meter high and drowns without even hitting a rock or banging his head against anything !! and what's with the clowns, the cheap looking actor playing the wizard or whatever he is, the tide that is rising and the change in water level is very visible!! and the water rose about 10 meters!!. I watched that movie when i was surfing some french channels over the sat and stumbled across it, believe it or not, i was attracted to see the movie as i never thought i could see something that bad!!

This is not one Jean Rollin's greatest works, but it does have one shinning light, Joelle Coeur, the gorgeous female wrecker. Like all of Rollin's films (that I have seen) this one is full of all his artistic visions, but for some reason the film still seems slower in it's pace and is a little more difficult to get into. Like all Rollin's film it's worth watching, but in this instance, only for the gorgeous Joelle Coeur.