Il Demonio

Il Demonio (a.k.a. The Demon) (1963)

Runtime: 98 minutes

Directed by: Brunello Rondi

Starring: Daliah Lavi, Frank Wolff, Anna Maria Aveta, Tiziana Casetti, Dario Dolci

From: A few different French and Italian companies

This was more grim than expected. My not seeing a horror movie for an entire month happened out of happenstance. This error was corrected by viewing Il Demonio, which has been in my Shudder queue for months and the trigger was finally pulled last night.

Beforehand I knew it was about a sexually liberated free spirit loner named Purif in a small Italian village who is an outcast, especially so after she places a hex on her lover who refuses to dump his wife to be. What I got was that... along with a dead cat, sexual assaults (yes, more than one), the villagers proving themselves to be the monsters all along, poor Purif going through a horrible ordeal... and the realization that the infamous deleted scene from The Exorcist wasn't the first time that a female did “The Spider Walk” while apparently possessed.

Purif does have some erratic behavior at times so naturally the puritanical villagers presume that she must be a witch. The persecution she endured wasn't always an easy watch for me but YMMV. It was still a film that I should have pressed “play” on long ago as it was a searing look at prejudiced people who didn't like a free-spirited woman who probably had mental health struggles before those bad things happened to her, but that definitely manifested itself due to trauma & their solution was to try and break her.

It was an engrossing folk horror tale in a great setting with memorable characters but the lovely Daliah Lavi as Puri was the highlight. She charmed me to a tremendous degree just by sitting on a tree branch eating an apple watching those fool villagers below... but also expressed the agony and torture she suffered. Don't expect a feel-good tale here yet don't let that dissuade you from seeing this movie from Brunello Rondi, best known for writing or co-writing various works directed by Rossellini and Fellini.