Strange and demonic. The devil raises more than his evil head. A beautiful art student (Stella Carnacina) eyes an ancient sculpture and her soul is possessed by Satan (Ivan Rassimov). The life-like sculpture comes to life and rapes the young woman causing her to lose control of her sexual thoughts and actions. Her body becomes a battlefield as an exorcism adds fuel to the old battle of good versus evil. Not everyone's cup of tea; interest is haphazard. A graphic rated R early 1970's style.Directed by Mario Gariazzo. The cast also features: Luigi Pistilli, Lucretia Love, Chris Avram, Piero Gerlini, Gianrico Tondinelli and Gabriele Tinti.

With the annuel IMDb Horror board's "October Challenge" coming up in 2 months time I mentioned to a fellow IMDb'er that I was planning to spend a good amount of the challenge taking a look at films from the Roughie and "Adult"-Horror genres.A month later:Opening a parcel that had arrived earlier in the day,I was shocked to discover that a fellow IMDb'er had kindly sent me a selection of Roughie and Adult-Horror titles to help me on my new quest of taking a look at the two genres.Taking a look at the titles which had been sent,I found myself constantly getting drawn to a film which sounded like an extremely sleazy riff on the Horror movie The Exorcist,which led to me excitingly getting ready to witness this erotic exorcism take place.The plot:After completing her final art exam,student Danila decides to go with her boyfriend to a church that they are currently helping to restore.Looking around the church, (which has been left to rot for 100's of years due to "obscene" acts which took place upon its premises)Danila finds herself getting drawn towards two life size statues of Jesus.Being unable to take her eyes off the statues,Danila gets the head of the restoration to give her permission to take one of the statues home with her for extra studying.Later that night:Attending an end of term party being held at her parents house,Danila is greeted by the sight of her mum playing around with a secret lover.Running away from the horrible sight,Danila rushes to her apartment so that she can put the awful sights behind her,and instead focus on the statue.As she begins to take a closer look at the statue,Danila soon discovers that the statue may not be as "solid" as it originally appeared.View on the film:With my original expectations being that the film would solely offer a fresh bit of slzzezy skin and some good dashing's of gore,I was instead pleasantly caught by surprise, thanks to co-writer/ (along with Ted Rusoff and Ambrogio Molteni) director Mario Gariazzo taking the movie in an unexpected,atmospheric direction.Limiting the amount of flesh shown in the movie to about 3 minutes of the total running time,and also backed by an icy Space-Rock score from Marcello Giombini,Gariazzo takes the first half of the film in a wonderful Supernatural Horror direction,with Gariazzo revealing that the objects/statues which Danila (played by a ravishing Stella Carnacina) is enchanted by,are far different than the "innocent" shape that they appear in.Sadly after building up a surprisingly chilly atmosphere for the first half of the movie,Gariazzo and the writer's completely remove the distinctive Supernatural Horror aspects from the film,and replace them with a forced-in exorcism angle which feels disconnected to the previous events that took place in the movie,which leads to the second half of this exorcism sadly not being as tantalisingly compelling as the possive first half.

Absolutely dreadful US title for this fine piece of Euro exploitation cinema, L'Ossessa. Directed by Mario Gariazzo who wrote or directed many such Italian movies including Play Motel, Sister Emanuelle and Vacanze per un Massacro, this is obviously an Exorcist rip-off but done with great panache. Stella Carnacina, as the possessed one, does not make a false move, as she rants, seduces, screams and spews throughout. She is on the screen most of the time and always looks menacing or appealing. There is much violence and sexual activity but also much background church activity that is most authentically portrayed and lends much power to the possession scenes. It is also these scenes of religious activity quietly (or not so quietly) being mocked that must upset a lot of people. In the US, apparently, the TV personality, Elvira, used to make much fun of the film and there are prints with her many intrusions. It is easy to see why because there do seem comic moments but it seems to me these come after one or another tremendous bout of energetic raving from young Stella and whilst they may have seemed appropriate in the original script, the way the possession scenes have been shot, they seem inadequate. When we have just watched the most astonishing and vigorous scenes of blasphemy, for the doctor or relative to reflect 'she seems a little worse' or 'I think it must be psychological' seem far from suitable and should have been ratcheted up when it was clear the activity was going to be so sensational. For those who think they may not enjoy this, they are probably right but for those who think they might - YOU WILL!

Out of the handful of alternative titles in English, "The Sexorcist" is definitely the most appropriate one, since this is basically just a shameless rip off of William Friedkin's classic horror film in which they replaced 13-year-old Linda Blair with the 19-year-old Stella Carnacina only so that she could gratuitously show her ravishing naked body. I'm not sure what exactly Satan tries to accomplish here, but he exclusively seems to possess the young girl to play sexual tricks on her! Poor Danila masturbates around the clock and tries to seduce priests and even her own father into having sex with her. The young girl is introduced as a smart and ambitious theology-student with an odd-looking boyfriend (driving a stupid yellow car) and loving, albeit adulterous parents. When she takes a peculiar crucifix home to renovate, the ancient relic comes to life and no less than Satan himself (played by Ivan Rassimov of "Jungle Holocaust" and "Planet of the Vampires") starts to torment her. The overlong masturbation sessions and some bizarre nightmare sequences cover about three quarters of the movie, and then finally director Mario Garriazzo begins with the actual exorcism. That final segment is even more embarrassing and amateurish! The priests don't really do anything apart from saying some vague prayers but, somehow, Danila seems cured all of a sudden. There isn't much gore, the dialogues are horrible and the producers seem to compensate every little flaw by adding more sleaze! This is one of the strangest Italian exploitation efforts of the seventies (why the hell are they referring to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"?), but definitely not one of the best. If you fancy clones of "The Exorcist", I recommend "Demon Witch Child", "Beyond the Door" and "The Antichrist".