Satan's Wife (1979)* 1/2 (out of 4) If it's from Italy and features "Satan" or "devil" in the title then you know it must be a rip-off of THE EXORCIST or ROSEMARY'S BABY but here we're in for a treat as this one rips both of those classics. A mother (Anne Heywood) begins to notice something wrong with her teen daughter (Lara Wendel) and sure enough Lucifer (Ezio Miani) is after the young one. Turns out that mommy and two of her friends made a deal with the evil red one years earlier and now he's taking it out on their children but a priest (John Phillip Law) agrees to try and defeat him. I'm really not sure what the point of this film was as it goes off in several directions and in the end it never really seems to know what it wants to do. Apparently this thing sat on the shelf for two years before getting released and you'll see why when you sit through it. The biggest problem is that the film starts off with your typical possession stuff but it does very little with it. There's non-stop nudity to add into the sleaze factor but there's very little else in terms of entertainment. The possession stuff is all mild, any back story is boring and it doesn't help that the film jumps around from one character to another. The cast will feature some familiar faces including previous Oscar-nominees Ian Bannen, Valentina Cortese and Frank Finlay. Wendel will probably be best remembered for a memorable death scene in Argento's TENEBRE but her performance here is pretty weak. The incredibly bad dialogue doesn't help matters nor does her nude scenes and if the DOB on the IMDb is correct then many will want to avoid this film at all costs. Heywood doesn't do any better as she's all over the place and looks confused at what she should do in a film like this. Cult favorite John Phillip Law doesn't get that good of a role either so he's wasted as well. THE EXORCIST-rip should be a genre onto its own as we have dozens and dozens of films that would fall into it but this one here is certainly one of the lesser entries. The film does start off with a near musical number that will have your eyes coming through your skull but things go downhill from there. There's enough nudity that might make Euro-sleaze folks tune in but it's not enough to keep the film moving.

Many 1970's Italian horror films tried to rip-off Hollywood hits "Rosemary's Baby", "The Exorcist", or "The Omen". Well this one tries to rip-off all three at the same time, and the result is a completely incomprehensible mish-mash. As near as I could follow, the film is about a coven of middle-aged female Satanists who begin to have buyer's remorse over the deal they made with the Dark Prince after he targets their nubile teenage daughters(perhaps this is supposed to be a metaphor for former 60's "flower children" reconsidering what the social changes of that era had wrought by the late 70's?). Three of the women band together to fight back against their infernal master with disastrous results.This movie has a surprisingly all-star European cast, but only Anne Heywood is in the film for any length of time. Marisa Mell appears suddenly in the middle of the film and disappears so fast you'd think she was just a mirage. John Phillip-Law is pretty much wasted in the role of a defrocked priest, and Irene Papas' character is similarly superfluous. Several other supporting actresses/perennial pieces of tail like Carmen Russo and Dirce Funari show up too in non-speaking (and non-clothes-wearing) roles.Gratuitous nudity seems to be the main raison d'etre of this one. It ends with a bizarre naked catfight between the decidedly middle-aged Anne Heywood and her obviously teenaged daughter (Lara Wendel). Aside from fulfilling some people's strange sex fantasies though, I have no idea what the point of this particular scene is. The ending does do "The Omen" one better though with the anti-Christ advancing on the Vatican City in a metered taxi-cab. Whatever it is, it definitely isn't boring.

Spoilers ahead.This abysmal film introduces us to a group of satanist women, all of whom seem to want their daughters to grow up normal. I guess becoming brides of Beelzebub didn't thrill them as much as they'd hoped. The focus is on one woman, Carlotta, played by Anne Heywood, and her 13 year-old daughter Daria, played by Lara Wendel. As the movie progresses, Daria shows a growing interest in the occult and begins to demonstrate her burgeoning magical powers. Carlotta (remember, a bride of Satan no less) freaks out and seeks ways to prevent her daughter from becoming an evil witch.It soon becomes apparent that this is nothing more than the tale of a mother trying to deal with a bratty daughter on the road to womanhood. The supernatural stuff is just tacked on. Daria is more or less like any obnoxious teenager seeking independence from a parent. She's rude. She challenges authority. She thinks she knows everything. Sound familiar?Carlotta goes through various painful (for the viewer) efforts to rid her daughter of the devil, including an exorcism where Lara Wendel appears nude. Wendel was actually 13 or 14 when the film was made and was one of the notorious nude teen stars of the '70s. Not the kind of thing you'd see in an American flick, but an Italian one is something different.The growing tension between Carlotta and Daria comes to a head when Daria finds her mother standing inside a mystic symbol painted on the floor, nude except for a cape. Daria brags that she is now stronger than her mother and calmly begins disrobing to prepare for the skin-on-skin showdown.Well, this is probably not the only movie where a girl of 13 or so and a woman in her 40s appeared nude together (Anne Heywood was 47 when this film was released, and looked fabulous), but it may be the only one to feature a nude catfight between them.Ah, but movie catfights are almost always awful, and this rule goes quintuple for occult films where a clash of magical strength is part of the bargain. I mean, the potential for maybe the greatest movie catfight of all time was right here. Lara Wendel may have been only 13 or 14, but she was as tall as Anne Heywood and her body was slim but very well-developed. A young knockout, to say the least, so with two beautiful actresses playing mother and daughter how can you go wrong?Well, to start with, you can shoot it mostly in the dark (actually, Anne Heywood's nude scene is mostly darkened, so you don't really see much). Then you can have the only positive physical attack be repulsed by pure magic. Who wants to see that? A catfight should have slapping, hair pulling, punching, scratching, kicking, rolling around. The writer can decree that their magics are equally powerful until the end, when the loser can no longer counter the magic of the winner, and you can have a supernatural coup de grace. Simple. I won't say how they did it in RING OF DARKNESS, but I will say that it's hard to imagine a lamer conclusion. And in this mother/daughter nude catfight, nothing of interest occurs. In fact, it's a stretch to even call it a catfight.So they had a chance to deliver a truly amazing brawl and instead produced a non-fight. The viewer is thus cheated of the conclusion the whole movie built up to, therefore the movie is odious and awful. The only other points of interest are the nude scenes. Anne Heywood's was darkened, Lara Wendel's were more numerous and had better lighting. 3 stars out of 10.

Warning,contains spoilers!This is one of the best Italian sleaze films I've seen.The plot has a teenage girl who is interested of occultism and has supernatural powers.Her mother is a member of satanist group and is afraid what influences it'll have on the girl.No need to worry, the girl knows just what to do and there's no return,she belongs to Satan..During the film odd things happen in typical italo way,there's not too much logic,but that's only good thing.It's amazing how entertaining these films are.. On the final battle we see her and her mother fighting each other (nude off course) and doing some mysterious rituals,you might guess who wins... The films final pictures leaves your mouth open and wandering why can't there be more films like this?There's superb music through the whole film and the actors are quite good,better than usual in these type of films.Specially Anne Heywood looks and acts good.It also has some unusual camera angles and stuff like that, so it's not boring at all.My rating is 10.Hopefully someone releases this on dvd.