Directed by Alberto De Martino
Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Alberto De Martino, and Vincenzo Mannino
Starring Carla Gravina, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, Alida Valli
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Language: Italian
Runtime: 112 minutes
Available on blu-ray from Kino Lorber, February 8

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

About halfway through The Antichrist I remember wondering why, exactly, the film was regarded so universally as a clone of The Exorcist, which had been released the previous year. An hour into the film I felt I had seen some influences from Friedkin’s classic, but not to the point of being “The Exorcist, Italian style” (as described by the back of this Blu-Ray sleeve). Then the film transitioned into its second half and everything started to fall into place. Green vomit, levitation, rude (and lewd) comments, even a fall down some stairs and a guy who dies from having his head turned the wrong way around.

There’s no way for me to be sure, but if you’ll allow me to speculate, I think this is what happened. The Antichrist started out as a giallo-infused horror film with family drama and occult themes, like The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972, dir. Emilio Miraglia) or Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972, dir. Lucio Fulci and written by Antichrist screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici). Though its recent gialli antecedents often used the occult as a misdirect, plenty of Italian horror in the ‘60s featured supernatural elements. After the wild success of The Exorcist, the quickest way to cash in would be to rework an existing script with a similar enough premise, and the less rewriting the better! So the first half of Antichrist remained largely untouched, while events and plot that mirror The Exorcist ended up in the second.

The distinct change in tone halfway through is a real shame, regardless of why it happened, because the first half is actually quite good. The story starts out as a family drama before taking a turn for the occult. Ippolita (Gravini) is the wheelchair-bound daughter of Massimo, an Italian prince (Ferrer). As a child, Ippolita lost the use of her legs in an auto accident which claimed the life of her mother. Now in her late teens/early twenties, she lives a secluded life in her family’s palace, seeking healing through religious icons and prayer. Her uncle, the Bishop Ascanio Oderisi (Kennedy), arranges for her to meet a paranormal psychologist, Dr. Sinibaldi (Umberto Orsini), who hopes to use hypnosis to cure Ippolita’s (apparently) psychosomatic paralysis.

This is where things start to get weird. In subsequent flashbacks (which felt like low-budget takes on Russell’s The Devils), Ippolita lives through the life of an ancestor accused of witchcraft: first her trial and then an orgy which culminates in her impregnation by a sinister goat-masked figure. The orgy sequence includes a few scenes of questionable taste, but for the most part, the film continues to be a lot of fun, full of bizarre juxtapositions and over-the-top visuals that fans of gialli and Italian horror might expect.

Speaking of visuals, this film looks gorgeous. It uses the heightened color palette popularized by Mario Bava to great effect, especially the reds, but it’s the way cinematographer Aristide Massaccesi (better known by his directorial pseudonym, Joe D’Amato) treats the film’s lavish interiors that really caught my eye. Of course, the palazzos where filming took place are amazing works of art in their own right and could do a lot of heavy lifting on their own. But the way they’re treated just adds so much to the moodiness and the mystery of the film. There are a lot of medium and wide shots, even when there are only two or three characters in a scene, that really let the audience take in the cavernous rooms. A side benefit of this is that close-ups, when they happen, are incredibly impactful.

Unfortunately, as with everything else, in the film’s second half its cinematography plays second fiddle to shoehorned-in Exorcist story beats. Antichrist is at its visual best when it allows De Martino and D’Amato to work within actual locations, and the Exorcist-style effects necessitated filming on a set. That’s not to say there’s nothing worth looking at. The filmmakers give us some incredible footage when they can, including a perfectly dramatic finale filmed on location at, of all places, the Roman Colosseum.

There are some intriguing tidbits of the film that might have been floating around in that second half, especially when the story’s original focus is on family secrets and generational trauma. All of the men in the family seem to have known about the witch in their past, and they’ve intentionally kept this from Ippolita. Dr. Sinibaldi unceremoniously exits before the finale, seeming to have nothing to do after awakening Ippolita’s link to her past. Ascanio, though a bishop, fails to exorcise the demon from Ippolita (because he is her uncle?), and the task must be taken up by two people who are not members of the family.

These (and other) loose threads are, frustratingly, never tied up, and the second half is not as fun or interesting as the first, but that didn’t go so far as to ruin the film for me. In fact, I loved it. I’m a huge fan of ‘70s Italian horror and watching The Antichrist was a wonderfully pleasant surprise. If you lean that way as well, this is absolutely a must-watch.