Black Magic Rites (1973)

the audience applauded

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

If the box indicated non stop naked female sacrifice, who would believe it? Well, there is, from the opening credits to the closing title. In between such scenes there is the odd bit of vampirism, some Italian style Gothic horror, psychedelic moments with coloured lights and mini skirts and even time for comedic moments, not forgetting the non consensual threesome and other odd sexual antics. Total nonsense of course and seemingly two or more films stuck together judging by the jumps from misty castles to crystal clear soft core. But, who cares? It looks good most of the time, at no moment does everyone have their clothes on and the soundtrack although appalling is varied. Not much horror but some stunning images, some great faces, and lots of lovely Italian girls happy to show that they are lovely all over.

Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge nel Trecento (which translates into English as Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century apparently), or Black Magic Rites as it's more commonly known as along with other suggestive titles such as The Horrible Orgies of Count Dracula & The Reincarnation of Isabel, starts in the crypt of a large castle with a sacrificial offering to a Vampire/witch named Isabella (Rita Calderoni) 'the great mistress' who was burned alive in the fourteenth century. An unfortunate woman is tied to a stone slab & her heart is cut out by Isabella's husband who happens to be Count Dracula (Raoul Rossi) himself! But without any fangs. In a ritual of the twenty-fifth moon Isabella will be reincarnated, anyway another woman named Raquel is killed & her heart removed. Laureen (Rita Calderoni again) & Richard are engaged to be married & Laureens uncle Jack (Mickey Hargitay) has brought the castle for her, they are holding a big party & various guests fall victim to Isabella's reincarnation rites as she needs the heart & eyes of a virgin or something like that & that's as well as I can explain the 'story', if I've got something wrong don't bother letting me know as I don't care.This Italian production was written & directed by Renato Polselli (he directed under the pseudonym Ralph Brown) & quite frankly is one of the most incoherent, bizarre, strange, baffling & worthless films I've seen in a long time. The script probably made some sort of sense as the written word on a piece of paper but in the hands of Polselli, sorry Brown it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I'm not exaggerating when I say I seriously doubt anyone will be able to follow this thing & make any sort of sense out of it. People do things for no apparent reason, their motivations are baffling, the story is an absolute mess that's all over the place, the character's are virtually indefinable & it's hard to keep track of who's who, the dialogue is minimal & the subtitles lead me to believe it's very basic & Polselli tries his hand at a bit of comedy with a idiot bloke who has a threesome with two women complete with comedy soundtrack & a bit where he tries to remove a hair from his mouth, I'm not sure if the hair came form the women or his terrible moustache! There is also some weirdo hunchback guy named Greg(!) (Marcello Bonini Olas) & references to Count Dracula & Vampires as if things weren't strange enough already. I don't even think Riti, Magie Nere e Sergrete Orge nel Trecento should be called a 'film' & I'm sure most would agree that you need to be taking something to enjoy this, the filmmakers obviously did!Director Polselli certainly gives the film a unique look, it has very rich colours & a cool visual style throughout but bathing people & things in bright neon lights for no reason whatsoever just adds another layer of bizarreness to the proceedings. Anyway it's pretty nice to look at. The editing is atrocious as it cuts to random scenes, things & people that seem to have nothing to do with the current situation. Even simple scenes of two people talking become highly irritating as Polselli cuts, zooms & pans all over the place. The continuity is unbelievably bad, just check the scene out when the two women are chased through the village it switches between bright daytime & the dead of night seemingly at random! There's a bit when someone is buried & from the outside the coffin is a normal size but when the film cuts inside it's massive! There is plenty of naked flesh on show & a couple of ripped out hearts but nothing too explicit.Technically the film alternates between very good & extremely stylish to the most poorly made atrocity I've seen, there's a bit at the end with a 'snake pit' which has all of two rubber snakes in it! You can see the wire/string pulling them along! The awful rubber bats aren't any better either. The acting is, well not great but then look at what they had to work with. Basically nothing.Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge nel Trecento is an absolute mess of a film, it's confusing, muddled, incoherent & worst of all it provides virtually zero entertainment value. It's certainly unique & I doubt there are too many film out there like this but that in itself is not recommendation. It has a few nice visually stylistic moments in it, a few babes & a couple of ripped out hearts, apart from that it's worthless.

A group of people are having a party in a castle one of them (Mickey Hargitay) has just bought. The castle is haunted by the malignant presence of a witch who was burned 500 years earlier and who, not surprisingly, looks just like one of the guests (Rita Calderoni). Yet another rip-off of Mario Bava's "Black Sunday"?--of course, but this movie is much, much more than that. All the male guests are either reincarnations of the earlier historical figures or vampires who have been living for centuries waiting for the opportunity to reincarnate the witch, Isabel. The women meanwhile are all virgins because, not only are virgins necessary for the ceremony, but as one character eloquently puts it, "Vampires need blood uncontaminated by human semen." (This leads one dumb girl in a particularly hilarious scene to give up her virginity to her nymphomaniac friend and a fat, ugly guy with a severe facial twitch).Obviously, the main appeal of this movie is sex and nudity, but anyone watching it SOLELY for that purpose might be a little frustrated as this a Renato Polselli film, a man whose directorial style can best be described as completely deranged. While there are acres of flesh on display here, Polselli often seems more interested in the bizarro camera angles, the staccato editing sequences, and the pulse-pounding score than he is in lingering on the action like some of his hack contemporaries (or more modern-day "erotic" filmmakers) would have done. All the actors and actresses from Polselli's more famous film "Delerio Caldo" show up again here, and while the latter are even more naked than they were in "Delerio Caldo", some of them turn out to be pretty untalented as thespians(and Polselli doesn't have the good sense to kill them off quickly like he did in the other film). Meanwhile, the stronger actors like Hargitay, Calderoni, and Krysta Barrymore are pretty much wasted in the incomprehensible chaos the film quickly descends into.Regardless of whether you like this film or not, however, I GUARANTEE you'll never see anything else like it.

"Reincarnation of Isabel" is a great example of good Euro-trash. It triumphs over its obviously low budget through a combination of gore, unintentional humor, a great score, flashy camera work, and large amounts of gratuitous nudity. It is surprising that this movie has not received a cult status yet, being that it is better than many cult movies. Thanks must be given to Redemption (the company that put this out) for finding a print of this movie, which was long considered lost, and giving it its first domestic release ever.The "plot" is as follows: A woman named Isabel is burned at the stake when the Inquisition comes to her small village. Apparently they are not too far off, either, because she actually was a witch. Her husband and another local take her body and put it in the dungeon of a castle. Flip to present day: The husband and some of the locals who were on his side have been reincarnated (no explanation is given), and through some twist of fate know it. The husband then attempts to reincarnate Isabel with the hearts of young virgins in some satanic ritual. There is actually much more to the plot (something to do with vampires, and many unnecessary characters), but it all becomes a confused mess. This lack of plot can be forgiven, though, because the plot is not what the movie is trying for."Reincarnation of Isabel" is one of the most enjoyable Euro-trash movies, containing everything one has come to expect from this genre. Well, not quite everything. This movie unfortunately lacks in violence and gore. After the violent opening, the movie contains no more realistic effects (it does, however, contain some unrealistic effects. For example, a few "witches" are scratched with sticks, which is fine and dandy (they were topless, after all), but the effect was so cheap it was unintentionally humorous. It was achieved through the use of rubbing a blunt club with wet paint on the end against the skin of the two "witches."). The fake violence was not the only source of unintentional humor; the subtitles were actually much funnier. On the plus side, the acting was surprisingly good and solid, the music was decent, and the direction was pretty solid. It should also be noted that "Reincarnation..." gets better with every viewing. It should be viewed at least twice to get the wanted effect.Recommended for all fans of Eurohorror. My rating: 7 out of 10.