Mark of the Devil (1970)
Review by the Fiend of Grue
Before the latest horror craze of torture movies like the Saw and Hostel franchises, there was the 1970 exploitation flick Mark Of The Devil, which isn‘t a torture film per se, but does have enough in it to almost merit it as a precursor to those two Hollywood blockbusters. The DVD cover touts it as “POSTIVELY THE MOST HORRIFYING FILM EVER MADE!” and “This is the one that historians and gorehounds alike still speak of with shock and awe, the movie that is so extreme that audiences were given free barf bags!” ( in which they really were!) There are quite a few scenes of torture that were effective for the story and might really offend or gross out some people, but I guess all of the extreme cinema that I have seen has just jaded me because I didn’t think it was as graphic as the cover wanted me to believe.
Mark Of The Devil tells the story of witch hunting carried out by the Catholic church, at the height of the practice, in England. The movie starts with showing a man being humiliated in front of the whole town for “committing sacrilege four times against our Lord”. First, he is stripped naked, then has four of his fingers lopped off and finally is covered in syrup and doused with feathers. Next we see two women set on fire, being burned alive for the practice of witchcraft. While they scream in agony, they proclaim their innocence and tell the crowd that they will burn in hell for wrongly convicting them. After the public killings we are introduced to the vile and nasty character of Albino (Reggie Nalder), a mean and very ugly cantankerous old man whom we see talking with one of his cronies about how he had falsified the documents against the women they had just burned alive.
Albino sets his sights on the voluptuous Vanessa (Olivera Vuco). After she turns down his advances, Albino attempts to rape her until she gets a hold of a knife and slashes his face open. To get back at her, he accuses her of witchcraft to the town leaders, demanding that she be put to death. Distraught, Vanessa vehemently denies the charges against her and the charming Christain (a very young Udo Kier) invites her to stay the night at the Lord Cumberland’s castle. During the evening the two of them grow close through conversation in which Christain has no doubt that Vanessa isn’t really a witch at all. The next day while still fuming over being turned down, Albino puts out a formal indictment against Vanessa. Lord Cumberland has returned from a trip and hears the indictment against her, another woman and a wealthy man – who says the church only wants to kill him to get his fortunes – and accepts all three and has them imprisoned. Christian comes to the defense of Vanessa, telling Lord Cumberland that she is no witch, but Cumberland is having none of it and tells Christian to refrain from the temptations of the flesh.
After Lord Cumberland finds out about a ten year old boy being stabbed to death while he was out of town and under Albino’s watch, he relieves him of his witch hunting duties. Out of desperation, Albino admits he likes to torture women and enjoys the money just like Lord Cumberland does. He says that if he’s relieved of his duties, he’ll tell the whole village of what goes on behind the scenes and tell the public that Cumberland is impotent……big mistake. Lord Cumberland attacks Albino and strangles him to death. When he turns around he sees his apprentice, Christian, staring at in him in disbelief after just witnessing the whole thing. Being the only one of the whole lot with pure intentions, Christian is devastated by seeing the evil of Lord Cumberland that was otherwise up until this point, unseen. Christian starts to question the entire establishment because of Lord Cumberland’s actions and it eventually it all comes to a head. The town gets tired of Lord Cumberland killing innocent people and attempt to hunt him down with Christian leading the charge all culminating in a satisfying and unexpected ending of chaos.
This was a good movie that touches on a subject that not a lot of movies go into – witch hunting . There is obviously a heavy anti-religious sentiment throughout the entire movie. Not only does the film go out of it’s way to visually show you the horrible and mortal consequences of the hypocrisy of the church and what goes on that you don‘t see, but it also conveys this message throughout the dialogue. During a gruesome tongue removing torture scene, Lord Cumberland looks at Christian and bluntly states, “ We must never weaken in performing God’s work.” Then during dinner we hear someone at a table say “ I enjoy a good witch burning every once in awhile…it’s better than a boring sermon.” There are many more lines like this in the movie that point out just how wicked these seemingly holy people are.
The production and sets are fairly decent, but the dialogue is off most of the movie, not unlike a lot of low budget movies of this era. While it’s not extremely gory, it does still pack a punch even today and I’m sure in 1970 this movie certainly offended quite a few people especially when it shows the church leaders enjoying torturing people, while getting drunk, to get false confessions out of them. The violence does stay prevalent throughout the 96 minute running time but is there to drive home the point of the movie, which is not how evil witches and witchcraft is, but how hypocritical and twisted the people who tormented and killed them were.
Popularity: 3% [?]
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