I’ve wanted to write something about this film for a while now as a long time ago I created a thread spotlighting the novel upon which the film is based, calling it the very worst book I’ve ever read – I’ve since suffered through the original Death Dealer novel penned by James Silke, so Incubus dropped to the still very prominent No. 2 position.
Naturally I was a tiny bit reticent to visit the film version, but even before I read the book it was a title that always clawed at the back of my mind, beckoning me to cough up the chump change to seek it out despite it’s dubious reputation amongst even the most generous and forgiving genre fans. Enjoying director John Hough’s previous efforts, Twins of Evil and The Legend of Hell House as well as being interested in anything that would allow me to use John Cassevetes and huge monster cock in the same sentence, after years of procrastination, I finally gave in.
What we’ve got here isn’t total shit as some would have you believe – and as the novel most certainly is -, but a story tortured by the indecisiveness of a filmmaker who seems intent on ice-skating uphill and by a cast who, for the most part, shouldn’t be allowed to do Dinner Theater, let alone feature films.
Basic setup is this; the women of the small, provincial town of Galen are being assaulted by a brutal and grossly endowed rapist that leaves their bodies and minds traumatized, if he just so happens to leave them alive at all. As the rapes persist and a collection of outré evidence begins to mount, Dr. Sam Cordell (Cassavetes) begins to suspect that the enigmatic culprit is something other than human.
The rapes also happen to coincide with the vivid nightmares of teenager, Tim Galen, images of an Inquisition torture session involving a young woman, haunt Tim and when the rapes/murders begin, he fears that he may have something to do with it.
The film is ostensibly a mystery, as the idea that the assailant is some kind of shapeshifter is introduced and Tim just so happens to have a bull’s eye painted right on his forehead – of course that bull’s eye is decorated with red herrings, so…
While certain elements from the novel are wisely excised in Hough’s film, (near the end of the novel Ray Russell concocted a tremendously stupid scene where all of the townswomen of Galen hole up in a school gym to protect themselves from the lascivious wrath of the demonic Johnny Wadd) both it and the source material share the fatal flaw of being entirely too coy about the subject matter and having unwieldy exposition – the novel is way worse in this respect, as the protagonist was a visiting college professor or somesuch who just happened to be a demonologist and expert on Incubi and Succubi.
The very hook for anyone looking to read the book or watch the film is that it’s about a demon with a huge cock – able to ejaculate in pints no less, putting Peter North to shame - that goes about having it’s way with townies. Now, to be reserved about this kind of shit is to flirt with disaster and come off looking silly and unconfident in the material, which is what Incubus does.
Russell clearly wanted to write about something “vulgar” without being vulgar and sacrificing commercial appeal, John Hough, by his own words in a Fangoria interview, butted heads with the film’s producer because he wasn’t interested in making the balls out exploitation film that they hired him for.
The result, even with several well-handled scenes of tension and terror – which I expected of Hough -, is uneven at best.
John Cassevetes and Kerrie Keane deliver the only “notable” performances in the film if only for the fact that they represent a sort of Yin & Yang flipside to two vastly different performers.
Cassevetes’ performance (trying his best not to look as if he wants to run off the set screaming) being that sort of greasy, cheese slathered burger you know you shouldn’t be eating but just can’t help it, and Keane’s performance, being the end result of that burger that you have to face at 2:13am, after you get the distinct feeling of greased weasels wrestling in your colon. I’m serious, Keane’s delivery of the line: “I don’t like to be berated by Hank!” will have an effect on you akin to hearing the “brown note”.
It would all be worth it if there’s lost footage somewhere of Cassavetes punching her in the jaw out of sheer thespian rage. In one scene, John Cassavetes’ grizzled doctor insensitively attempts to chide a traumatized victim whose uterus has just received the Gallagher-on-watermelon treatment, out of silence, with the line: “Come on tough guy, come on!”
I like to the think that her internal monologue went something like, “Pardon me, doctor, but it’s my vagina that looks like Kosovo and I’m probably incontinent as well, I’ve more than earned every single bit of mental trauma I’m displaying right now and I really don’t need your bullshit, so kindly…back the fuck off.”
The twist that originated in the novel stays intact for the film, but whereas the resolution in the book was pretty final, it’s slightly ambiguous here. The novel is terrible about keeping said twist under wraps, as I figured it out less than halfway through, even before the ridiculous scene in the school gym, where despite the women being locked up together and reasonably guarded, one of them still manages to get raped to death. Hmm, lets see, can you guess the twist? The concept behind the twist, as setup by the film is related in a scene with Cordell & Co. by doing what people do in bad movies when they want to let the audience in on something, they get together and read huge, dusty, illustrated books that tell them exactly what they’re looking for.
In this scene, the character that turns out to be the titular antagonist, apparently oblivious to their status as demon pornstar extraordinaire, is actually the one that reads the passage that drops the impeding twist right in the laps of the audience, giving them the chance to step off the rug before it gets pulled from under them.
It would be kind of interesting if it wasn’t so badly fumbled in either medium, but alas, what you get is what you get.
This actually turned out to be more of reader review than I intended it to be, but I thought it’s be nice to drop a few lines in the Creature Corner about a horror film that doesn’t include zombies or undead serial killers, and a film that’s just rarely discussed in general. Incubus isn’t an underrated classic, but it is a unique failure; a film that carried two talents who had seen better days and a project that could have turned out better, or least more memorable, had the correct amount of synergy been allowed to happen.
Naturally I was a tiny bit reticent to visit the film version, but even before I read the book it was a title that always clawed at the back of my mind, beckoning me to cough up the chump change to seek it out despite it’s dubious reputation amongst even the most generous and forgiving genre fans. Enjoying director John Hough’s previous efforts, Twins of Evil and The Legend of Hell House as well as being interested in anything that would allow me to use John Cassevetes and huge monster cock in the same sentence, after years of procrastination, I finally gave in.
What we’ve got here isn’t total shit as some would have you believe – and as the novel most certainly is -, but a story tortured by the indecisiveness of a filmmaker who seems intent on ice-skating uphill and by a cast who, for the most part, shouldn’t be allowed to do Dinner Theater, let alone feature films.
Basic setup is this; the women of the small, provincial town of Galen are being assaulted by a brutal and grossly endowed rapist that leaves their bodies and minds traumatized, if he just so happens to leave them alive at all. As the rapes persist and a collection of outré evidence begins to mount, Dr. Sam Cordell (Cassavetes) begins to suspect that the enigmatic culprit is something other than human.
The rapes also happen to coincide with the vivid nightmares of teenager, Tim Galen, images of an Inquisition torture session involving a young woman, haunt Tim and when the rapes/murders begin, he fears that he may have something to do with it.
The film is ostensibly a mystery, as the idea that the assailant is some kind of shapeshifter is introduced and Tim just so happens to have a bull’s eye painted right on his forehead – of course that bull’s eye is decorated with red herrings, so…
While certain elements from the novel are wisely excised in Hough’s film, (near the end of the novel Ray Russell concocted a tremendously stupid scene where all of the townswomen of Galen hole up in a school gym to protect themselves from the lascivious wrath of the demonic Johnny Wadd) both it and the source material share the fatal flaw of being entirely too coy about the subject matter and having unwieldy exposition – the novel is way worse in this respect, as the protagonist was a visiting college professor or somesuch who just happened to be a demonologist and expert on Incubi and Succubi.
The very hook for anyone looking to read the book or watch the film is that it’s about a demon with a huge cock – able to ejaculate in pints no less, putting Peter North to shame - that goes about having it’s way with townies. Now, to be reserved about this kind of shit is to flirt with disaster and come off looking silly and unconfident in the material, which is what Incubus does.
Russell clearly wanted to write about something “vulgar” without being vulgar and sacrificing commercial appeal, John Hough, by his own words in a Fangoria interview, butted heads with the film’s producer because he wasn’t interested in making the balls out exploitation film that they hired him for.
The result, even with several well-handled scenes of tension and terror – which I expected of Hough -, is uneven at best.
John Cassevetes and Kerrie Keane deliver the only “notable” performances in the film if only for the fact that they represent a sort of Yin & Yang flipside to two vastly different performers.
Cassevetes’ performance (trying his best not to look as if he wants to run off the set screaming) being that sort of greasy, cheese slathered burger you know you shouldn’t be eating but just can’t help it, and Keane’s performance, being the end result of that burger that you have to face at 2:13am, after you get the distinct feeling of greased weasels wrestling in your colon. I’m serious, Keane’s delivery of the line: “I don’t like to be berated by Hank!” will have an effect on you akin to hearing the “brown note”.
It would all be worth it if there’s lost footage somewhere of Cassavetes punching her in the jaw out of sheer thespian rage. In one scene, John Cassavetes’ grizzled doctor insensitively attempts to chide a traumatized victim whose uterus has just received the Gallagher-on-watermelon treatment, out of silence, with the line: “Come on tough guy, come on!”
I like to the think that her internal monologue went something like, “Pardon me, doctor, but it’s my vagina that looks like Kosovo and I’m probably incontinent as well, I’ve more than earned every single bit of mental trauma I’m displaying right now and I really don’t need your bullshit, so kindly…back the fuck off.”
The twist that originated in the novel stays intact for the film, but whereas the resolution in the book was pretty final, it’s slightly ambiguous here. The novel is terrible about keeping said twist under wraps, as I figured it out less than halfway through, even before the ridiculous scene in the school gym, where despite the women being locked up together and reasonably guarded, one of them still manages to get raped to death. Hmm, lets see, can you guess the twist? The concept behind the twist, as setup by the film is related in a scene with Cordell & Co. by doing what people do in bad movies when they want to let the audience in on something, they get together and read huge, dusty, illustrated books that tell them exactly what they’re looking for.
In this scene, the character that turns out to be the titular antagonist, apparently oblivious to their status as demon pornstar extraordinaire, is actually the one that reads the passage that drops the impeding twist right in the laps of the audience, giving them the chance to step off the rug before it gets pulled from under them.
It would be kind of interesting if it wasn’t so badly fumbled in either medium, but alas, what you get is what you get.
This actually turned out to be more of reader review than I intended it to be, but I thought it’s be nice to drop a few lines in the Creature Corner about a horror film that doesn’t include zombies or undead serial killers, and a film that’s just rarely discussed in general. Incubus isn’t an underrated classic, but it is a unique failure; a film that carried two talents who had seen better days and a project that could have turned out better, or least more memorable, had the correct amount of synergy been allowed to happen.
