MOVE OF THE DAY: THE INCUBUS

Oh my God. I posted about this movie years ago. It's so fucking terrible, only slightly less terrible than the novel it's based on. Your comment about it being a trashy movie not wanting to be trashy is maybe more spot on than you know. The director, John Hough (Legend of Hell House), disowned the film because he claims that he was at war with the producers over what kind of film to make. They wanted a nudity-laden, exploitation, horror film, he wanted something "classier". Of course, when your film is about a demonic rapist with a two-foot long cock (something from the novel that they play down in the film), maybe you should look up the meaning of "contradiction".

By the by, Kerrie Keane is an abomination. I felt like anytime she did a scene with Cassavettes, and Hough called cut, Cassavettes probably outright slapped her in the face and stormed off to his trailer.

Indeed. I also felt bad for John Ireland. RED RIVER and ALL THE KING'S MEN probably felt even longer ago than they were while he was tooling around in this disaster.
 

It could have been worse, or maybe better depending on your point of view. In the novel, Cassavettes' character is an out of town guy who just so happens to be an expert on incubi and succubi; not even a demonologist per se, but an expert in that specific kind of demon. Also, to stop the rapes, the townsfolk decide to round up and secure all of the women in the high school gymnasium. Not even fucking around, that actually happens.

It's completely absurd, with more or less the same reveal, if not exactly the same ending (which is way more obvious in the novel). Oddly enough, the novel and the film have the same problem in that it sort of tiptoes around the subject matter as if it's afraid to offend. However, as I mentioned, the novel is a bit more explicit about the size of the creature's member being the thing that kills its victims and it's clearer than the film in regards to the creature's motivations in that it isn't actually trying to kill the women it rapes, but impregnate them and propagate the race.

I own both the novel and the DVD. They are sources of great, slightly guilt-tinged joy.

Wow. Part of me wishes the film had been a more faithful adaptation.