Italian cinema may be well known for jumping on bandwagons – indeed, without Italian cinema many bandwagons would have stopped rolling well before the one mile mark – but we mustn’t forget that there’s also much more to Spanish exploitation cinema than sun, sea and food-poisoning. Shortarsed brick-shithouse Paul Naschy (the more common incarnation of Jacinto Molina, who also co-wrote this blasphemy!) appears here in Exorcism – not exactly a full-on rip-off of The Exorcist, but fuck me, it’s close enough! Here, a young idle-rich girl involved in Satanism finds herself, not surprisingly, possessed by her foulmouthed father and everyone’s favourite pocket-sized Atlas Naschy plays the diminutive priest Adrian Dunning, asked by the family to exorcise her. And that’s it. Period.
If you’re not already a fan of Naschy, this probably won’t convert you – then again, very few of his films would convert your average cinema-goer. The eventless story ambles along with its head in the clouds from start to finish, it’s unconvincingly unbelievable characters are just not crazy enough to blow your mind, and like many of Naschy’s flicks, the movie ends suddenly when the last few drops of narrative have dripped from this extremely weak tale. I suppose that that’s a risk you’ve gotta take when you’re doing movies on the cheap. And boy, is this cheap! Special effects are non-existent, with most of the action taking place in pitch darkness and, as nearly all the (piss-poor) actors have unkempt beards and untidy long hair, it’s a fucking good bet that most of them have been forced into Exorcism by their own chronic skintness. Indeed, Naschy himself looks like some alky who’s been riding the rails for the last seven or eight years.
So this is no Naschy classic, and won’t end-up up there with Hunchback Of The Morgue or Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll (OK, so that ain't a classic but we're talking Naschy here!), but hardcore fans of the barrel-chested furball will no doubt enjoy it. In fact, it’s a real pity that so many of Naschy’s flicks end up like this, because he’s one of the few horror actors who actually believe in what they’re doing (even if his own claims to being the Spanish Lon Chaney is a little exaggerated). And anyway, if you like movies with dialogue like, “You haven’t come here to talk about streaking,” then you’ll at least gain a little enjoyment from it. I did. A bit.
