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Night of the Devils
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Raro Video UK Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (5th October 2023). |
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The Film
 En route to a lumber yard in Zehdenick to make a deal, businessman Nicola (Dracula Blows His Cool's Gianni Garko) runs his car off the road while trying to avoid hitting a gypsy woman (A Fistful of Dynamite's Maria Monti) who mysteriously vanishes. On foot, Nicola eventually happens upon the home of the Ciuvalek family, seemingly the only people still living in a burnt-out village whose population were scared off by local superstitions. Patriarch Gorca (One on Top of the Other's William Vanders) - who has just buried his brother - offers Nicola the shelter in his home until eldest son Jovan (Assassination's Roberto Maldera) can fix his car. As night sets in, Nicola notices that the family bar the doors and windows, and refuse to acknowledge what he perceives to be someone outside the door, but is sufficiently captivated by Gorca's daughter Sdenka (Scream of the Demon Lover's Agostina Belli) to ask too many questions. The next day, a cryptic Gorca sets off into the woods with a wooden stake and Jovan tells him to not bother returning if he does not get back by six o'clock. Irina (The Cat O' Nine Tails' Cinzia de Carolis), daughter of Gorca's dead brother and his buxom wife Elena (The Spirit of the Beehive's Teresa Gimpera), tells Nicola about a bloodthirsty witch who lives in the woods who attacks at night; and Gorca's other son Vlado (Feast of Satan's Luis Suárez) let slip some family secrets. Nicola laughs off the superstition until six approaches and the family apprehensively awaits Gorca's return… with Jovan sharpening another stake. Night of the Devils was adapted from Alexei Tolstoy's French-language story "The Family of the Vourdalak", which was also the source for Mario Bava's "The Wurdalak" segment of his anthology Black Sabbath. Although this feature-length version feels more than a little drawn-out and compares poorly to Bava's masterful short, there is still much for the horror fan to savor. Whereas the vourdalak's of the Bava film only drink the blood of those they love, here it is stated that they transform others because they crave company, leaving unsaid the nature of the relationship between Gorca's brother and the gypsy woman (as well as her non-verbal behavior while digging up the grave and removing objects dear to the victim buried with him). Whereas director Giorgio Ferroni's previous gothic horror entry Mill of the Stone Women was drenched in Bava-esque Technicolor cinematography, the Spanish/Italian co-produced Night of the Devils has a bit more of the rustic, mossy feel of Spanish horror films of the period (cinematographer Manuel Berenguer also shot Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's The House That Screamed). Ferroni's vampires also seem to have more in common with those seen in Amando de Ossorio's Night of the Sorcerers, and León Klimovsky's Night of the Walking Dead or The Vampires' Night Orgy. On the other hand, Giorgio Gaslini's lyrical score leans back towards the Italianate – with a little help from vocalist Edda Dell'Orso – as does the film's gore courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi (E.T. The Extra Terrestrial) in the second half, the protagonist's delirious visions in the opening of a woman's face blasted apart, a heart pulled out of a chest cavity, a worm-eaten skull, and skull-masked cultists pawing nude women are not a preview of things to come (in fact, the effects bits look more like test footage pressed into service to liven up the first act). Garko was better known for spaghetti westerns (notable the Sartana series) and Gimpera's career shifted back and forth between arthouse and exploitation (and the very amusing hybrid The Exquisite Cadader by The Blood-Spattered Bride's Vicente Aranda), but Umberto Raho - who plays a psychiatrist - was a very familiar presence in just about every sub-genre of Italian exploitation (Raho also appeared with Maldera in The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave). 
Video
Unreleased theatrically in the United States or the United Kingdom – in spite of an entry at the BBFC (more on that later), Night of the Devils could only be sought out by horror fans as a Japanese-subtitled VHS (with blurring of some frontal nudity during the aformentioned test footage) that was cropped and squeezed to 1.85:1 or a poorer-looking but uncensored Dutch-subtitled VHS. A non-anamorphic Spanish DVD from 2009 was not English-friendly and censored as per Franco-era censorship standards; however, Raro came to the rescue by giving the film a new transfer for their 2012 2012 American Blu-ray and Italian DVD. This master is the same one that has more recently been used for Le chat qui fume's 2016 Blu-ray as well as the Radiance Films-curated Raro Video UK Blu-ray under review here. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen image is comparable to the earlier Raro release. A higher bitrate and file size improve on a picture that looks a tad soft given the older scan and the original Techniscope lensing with the image exposed two perforations of a four perforation 35mm frame and extending into the soundtrack area, allowing for twice as much footage to be shot per roll of film (and with spherical lenses that needed less light than anamorphic ones of the time) with trade-off being that the 2-perf image would then have to be blown-up to 4-perf and anamorphically squeezed to be compatible with Cinemascope/Panavision projection lenses. Reds are bold and blacks range from inky to slightly diluted and noisy – there are definitely some day-for-night shots that look grayer than blue – while reds really pop as one of the few saturated colors against a mostly mossy green, woody brown, gray, and black color scheme (there may have also been some slight tweaks to the grade since it seems a shade darker). The resolution is enough to expose the rough edges of Rambaldi's effects which were never really convincing even in the murkiest video transfer but here allow for an assessment of the materials at his disposal.  English and Italian version options on the main menu allow for the display of either English or Italian title sequences via seamless branching whereas the American Blu-ray only featured the Italian title sequence.
Audio
The English or Italian version playback option also selects either an English or Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track – the actors are all dubbed by other people either way – and optional English subtitles for the Italian version. The audio options as well as the English or English SDH subtitles can be switched on-the-fly via remote control, allowing one to watch the film with one dub and the subtitles from the other for comparison. The audio tracks are of the same quality as the U.S. release, with some warble during the music and a bit more hiss on the English track (possibly sourced from VHS). 
Extras
Exclusive to this release is an audio commentary by film historians Alan Jones and Kim Newman who note the existence of an X-certificate entry in the BBFC database but have no recollection of a release during the period when they were scouring the grungiest of UK theaters in search of Eurocult thrills and surmise that it might not have been released; or, if it had, it would have lost quite a lot of material that would pass today including "blood on breasts", violent scenes involving children, and the entire sequence of Nicola's supposed delusions of Rambaldi effects test footage that would have been easy to excise. They also discuss the ways that it both reaches back to gothics of the previous decade – along with a handful of Italian and Spanish seventies films like Scream of the Demon Lover – while also showing the influence of Night of the Living Dead as well as an "existential" strain of seventies vampire and zombie movies involving mentally-unbalanced protagonists like Messiah of Evil and Let's Scare Jessica to Death influenced by the earlier Carnival of Souls. In comparing the Bava and Ferroni adaptations, they note the latter's greater fidelity in some instances to the Tolstoi story and assert that the gypsy woman is actually more of a tragic figure than a monster. They also suggest that the film might not have been well-received with the decision not to cast a name horror persona in the role of Gorca and offer frank assessment of Rambaldi's effects work.  Ported from the French release are a quartet of interviews conducted by Freak-o-rama starting with "The Devils Among Us" (22:48) in which actor Garko asserts that that was the working title of the film. In addition to anecdotes about working with Ferroni (who was deaf), Belli, Maldera, and Gimpera – as well as confirming that the gore shots early on in the film were added later – he offers up an analysis of his character and performance. In "The Angel and the Devils" (24:48), actress Belli recalls working in an office when she and a colleague answered an ad to appear as extras in a nightclub sequence in The Violent Four when director Carlo Lizzani noticed her resemblance to the gang's real-life kidnapping victim and cast her in the role, after which he hooked her up with an agent. She gives an overview of some of her favorite roles. In discussing Night of the Devils she asserts that horror is not her favorite genre before revealing her deep interest in zombies. In "The Child of Darkness" (13:02), actress Carolis recalls acting being more like a game when she was a child, being cast in Argento's The Cat O' Nine Tails, and becoming a voice actor very early on in her career. Of the film, she recalls being directed by Ferroni, doing the biting scene with Gimpera, and has more memories of camera operator Nino Celeste (The Dirty Seven) more than Berenguer (possibly explained below). "Celestial Light" (17:43) is an interview with operator Celeste who recalls moving from documentaries to features under cinematographer Giulio Albonico (Puzzle) and quitting a contract to work on a documentary with Alain Delon when director Giuliano Carnimeo offered to bump him up to cinematographer with an increase in pay. Of the film, he recalls being imposed on the production by the producers and Ferroni trying to get rid of him until he saw the dailies, and learning lighting tricks from Berenguer before taking over for him when he had to return to Spain for family issues. Although the menu identifies it as the French Blu-ray extra Fear and Jazz, the interview with composer Giorgio Gaslini (32:14) is actually the one shot back in 2012 for the American Blu-ray. One might wish they had used the French one, since the interested viewer must contend with a testy offscreen interviewer who tells Gaslini "not to overlap" when attempting to answer questions about the film's score and its themes while also discussing his colleagues who also came from jazz to film scoring, Also ported from the American Blu-ray is the interview with film historian Chris Alexander (5:41) – who also authored a booklet for the American edition – who puts the Spanish/Italian film in the context of earlier Italian gothics rather than its seventies thriller contemporaries. 
Packaging
Not provide for review are the reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original posters or the 3,000-copy first pressing limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Rachael Nisbet and archival writing by Chris Alexander (the text of the aforementioned Raro Video U.S.A. Blu-ray).
Overall
Although Night of the Devils does not always compare favorably to Mario Bava's earlier anthology short adaptation stylistically, it offers a different spin on the source story with a modern "unreliable narrator" approach as well as a good helping of nudity and Carlo Rambaldi gore.
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