The Demoniacs (Rollin, 1974)
This review contains mild spoilers.
I admit I struggled with this one. Some of the Letterboxd reviews suggest that this movie is an attempt by Rollin to grapple with the exploitative nature of his movies. This is an interesting point, and I think between this and the parody roughie elements in Schoolgirl Hitchhikers, I have detected a certain discomfort on his part in dealing with a certain meaner strain of horror. But I don’t think this works narratively, as the movie never commits to a specific perspective. With the pirates, we only meet them right as they’re committing the rape, and only have descriptions of cartoonish villainy for background, so whatever guilt they feel after the fact, we never really feel complicit in their actions. The most lively of the pirates is a pervert played by Joelle Coeur, who flaunts her body and gets off vicariously on the others’ cruelty, yet whatever sexual pleasure she derives from their evil acts is observed with relative detachment, instead of something the movie invites us to share. In contrast, I think of the way something like I Spit On Your Grave has us spend time with its rapists before they commit the act. I don’t think that movie is aiming for as complex a set of feelings, but I think it helps the movie greatly on a dramatic level that we understand the kind of toxic mindset and group dynamic that defines these characters.
And with the victims, we’re obviously supposed to sympathize with them as the aggrieved party, but the movie never gives us much sense of them as actual characters. In part, it’s because Rollin defines them as mute and deprives them of dialogue. (I think this is a case where defining a character by their disability in a horror movie is a clear negative.) In part, it’s that the performances aren’t strong enough to breathe life into these characters. I think of Brigitte Lahaie and Cathy Stewart in The Night of the Hunted and Francoise Blanchard and Marina Pierro in The Living Dead Girl, and I don’t feel the same humanity coming through in the portrayals here. But I also think Rollin wants us to see them as symbols of victims instead of actual people, which I think also undermines the dramatic thrust of the movie. So their quest for revenge feels like a spectator sport, something we watch and root for, but we never feel we have skin in the game.
I chased this with Lost in New York, and I think of how much more surely that movie grounds the proceedings in a specific perspective, so that the sense of wonder that colours the movie is something we feel in our bones rather than observe passively. It really is a lovely little movie, and provided a nice ethereal contrast to the dourness of this one. Still, because this is a Rollin movie, we do get plenty of that classic Rollin style, particularly in the way the characters are framed against the wreckage and the ruins, dwarfed by the sense of desolation, giving their own despair a sense of inevitability. The most stylish stretch of the movie comes right at the end, where the brutality of the proceedings is juxtaposed with the anger of nature, as the tide rises and thunder booms on the soundtrack, while Coeur writhes maniacally in the sand as she watches. It’s undeniably a striking and forceful sequences, but it’s also one I found hard to get swept up in, as the movie never embraces the perspective of either the heroines or the villains.
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