Typical for the period horror film, Night of the Damned features a castle, a curse, some nudity, and a few murders (mostly off screen). A reporter visits a sick friend who believes himself cursed. Relatives of the friend are being inexplicably bumped off under strange circumstances. Is this a supernatural phenomenon or the result of an all too human inheritance plot? The film goes down easy enough but is not overly memorable. The color cinematography is warm but there is little atmosphere. The trippy climax is enjoyable but the film could have used more psychedelia. Bottom line: die hard fans of Euro-horror might want to give Night of The Damned a look. Don't expect The Reincarnation of Isabel/Black Magic Rites - a much wilder ride.
8 Reviews
Trashy/Fun/Boobs Big Mansion Malarkey!
Bezenby27 September 2017
Warning: Spoilers
We start off with amateur sleuth Jean (or something) settling down for a cigarette and some wine while his woman cleans the house when he receives a letter from one of his long lost friends: a certain Guillaume de Saint Lambert. At first it sounds like Guillaume has consumed large amounts of LSD before writing the letter, but then Jean uncovers some ridiculously complex clue: "If we take the first letter from each word it refers to the works of Buadilliare, and the date is wrong so if we add that together
" These days that letter would have been thrown in the recycling while we all slope off to check if anyone has liked a picture we uploaded of a shoe.
Clue uncovered, the duo head off for the standard creepy old castle! Yeah! It's Gothic horror time again, but this film is set in the seventies, so how are we going to get that 'gothic' feel? Easy! Guillaume de Saint Lambert has gone insane and thinks he's living three hundred years in the past and has gotten rid of anything electrical, but kept those old suits of armour, all the cobwebs, and of course, many,many candles.
At least that's what his creepy wife whose definitely not a witch tells Jean when he arrives. Saint Lambert tells a different story, saying he's uncovered the truth and there's a curse on the family and he's a bit tired so he'll tell the rest of that story tomorrow morning before selfishly dying without revealing his wife is a witch. Meanwhile Jean's wife is getting obsessed with a picture in their guest room that depicts a witch being burned. Now and again some real flames start appearing and freaking her out – sometimes on the picture, and one time in the glass of booze she was drinking – I think that might be the local grappa, love.
Turns out the witch is killing off all the Saint Lamberts, including his female cousins, whom she has brought to her naked of course by other naked women so she can claw at their boobs and then dump their bodies elsewhere. There's also a zombie involved and a bit of Sapphic love involving Jean's missus while he's off trying to solve the mystery of how to kill off an immortal witch (she actually tells him how, psychically, I think, which was rather unwise).
You all know from watching Hammer Horror films that when some immortal creature is defeated they then go through a quick stop-motion aging process before turning into a skeleton, but here the witch goes through the hilarious aging process, then explodes! Then something else explodes that the budget couldn't show so we just get Jean looking at it! If you like bad movies this one is worth seeking out, or not, as I've just told you the whole plot.
Clue uncovered, the duo head off for the standard creepy old castle! Yeah! It's Gothic horror time again, but this film is set in the seventies, so how are we going to get that 'gothic' feel? Easy! Guillaume de Saint Lambert has gone insane and thinks he's living three hundred years in the past and has gotten rid of anything electrical, but kept those old suits of armour, all the cobwebs, and of course, many,many candles.
At least that's what his creepy wife whose definitely not a witch tells Jean when he arrives. Saint Lambert tells a different story, saying he's uncovered the truth and there's a curse on the family and he's a bit tired so he'll tell the rest of that story tomorrow morning before selfishly dying without revealing his wife is a witch. Meanwhile Jean's wife is getting obsessed with a picture in their guest room that depicts a witch being burned. Now and again some real flames start appearing and freaking her out – sometimes on the picture, and one time in the glass of booze she was drinking – I think that might be the local grappa, love.
Turns out the witch is killing off all the Saint Lamberts, including his female cousins, whom she has brought to her naked of course by other naked women so she can claw at their boobs and then dump their bodies elsewhere. There's also a zombie involved and a bit of Sapphic love involving Jean's missus while he's off trying to solve the mystery of how to kill off an immortal witch (she actually tells him how, psychically, I think, which was rather unwise).
You all know from watching Hammer Horror films that when some immortal creature is defeated they then go through a quick stop-motion aging process before turning into a skeleton, but here the witch goes through the hilarious aging process, then explodes! Then something else explodes that the budget couldn't show so we just get Jean looking at it! If you like bad movies this one is worth seeking out, or not, as I've just told you the whole plot.
Enjoyable juvenile nonsense
melvelvit-130 November 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Famed journalist Jean Duprey (Pierre Brice) and his wife receive a letter from an old friend, Prince Guilluame St. Lambert, imploring them to come to his castle at once. The Prince fears he's dying from a curse placed on his family three centuries before but his beautiful young wife, Rita (Angela De Leo) is convinced he's merely losing his mind. St. Lambert tells Duprey he's found out something horrible in the library and when the journalist investigates, he discovers one of his friend's ancestors had a beautiful young woman burned at the stake back in 1650 and insanity and death have plagued every generation since. The terrified Prince dies in his sleep and is interred in the family crypt but soon after, the body of a young woman is found near the castle drained of blood. The police ask Duprey to stay on and help solve the crime as his wife, who's been begging to leave, falls under a strange spell...
Despite the low budget, there's some good Gothic atmosphere with the gloomy, candelabra-lit castle providing a perfect setting with plenty of armor in the hallways and windstorms that billow the draperies all night. It's revealed early on that the Prince's haughty wife, Rita (a big-haired Cynthia "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" Myers clone), is the witch and she sacrifices her victims during Satanic rituals by raking her nails down their breasts. There's no graphic gore but a bit of nudity and lesbian overtones help compensate and, at the end of the day, NIGHT is enjoyable, juvenile nonsense that doesn't overstay its welcome. Undiscriminating Italian Horror hounds will probably appreciate the effort put forth provided they don't expect too much.
Despite the low budget, there's some good Gothic atmosphere with the gloomy, candelabra-lit castle providing a perfect setting with plenty of armor in the hallways and windstorms that billow the draperies all night. It's revealed early on that the Prince's haughty wife, Rita (a big-haired Cynthia "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" Myers clone), is the witch and she sacrifices her victims during Satanic rituals by raking her nails down their breasts. There's no graphic gore but a bit of nudity and lesbian overtones help compensate and, at the end of the day, NIGHT is enjoyable, juvenile nonsense that doesn't overstay its welcome. Undiscriminating Italian Horror hounds will probably appreciate the effort put forth provided they don't expect too much.
Not so much "Horror" as "Borer".......
ccmiller149223 April 2006
Having been a long term fan of Pierre Brice originating from "The Mill of the Stone Women", I went to great lengths to get a copy of this film, finally procuring a French print entitled "Les Nuites Sexuelles" which is more appropriate. Despite an intriguing and promising plot the film is merely an excuse for interminable nude and unerotic lesbian sex scenes between the various starlets cast in it. Brice appears only briefly and has not nearly enough to do in the film to come anywhere near saving it. This is not a horror film so much as a borer film...one would wind up damning oneself on any night when 90 minutes was wasted watching it. Cutting by 70 minutes or more would be a definite improvement. To be avoided at all costs.
Boring Italian gothic horror.
BA_Harrison3 July 2021
Jean Duprey (Pierre Brice), the hero of Night of the Damned, is a renowned sleuth who helps the police with particularly difficult cases - he's like a '70s Euro-Sherlock Holmes, except being Italian, he has a tasty wife, Danielle (Patrizia Viotti), instead of a loyal male companion.
When Jean receives a puzzling letter from his old friend Prince Guillaume de Saint Lambert (Mario Carra), the detective and his wife decide to pay a visit to Guillaume's castle, where they meet the prince's creepy wife Rita (Angela De Leo) and become embroiled in a centuries old mystery involving a witch's curse (no prizes for correctly connecting the dots).
The scene is set for lots of atmospheric gothic horror with cobwebby, candlelit corridors, dark, dank dungeons, and creaky, crumbly crypts, but sadly director Filippo Walter Ratti conjures up very little in the way of tension or scares, the majority of his film being a slow, uneventful, dreary mess that not even some gratuitous nudity and light lesbianism can make bearable. The film also features several murders (of naked women, of course) but there is no gore to speak of- just a few scratch marks on the victims' breasts.
2.5/10, rounded down to 2 for Danielle's annoying hysterical screaming.
When Jean receives a puzzling letter from his old friend Prince Guillaume de Saint Lambert (Mario Carra), the detective and his wife decide to pay a visit to Guillaume's castle, where they meet the prince's creepy wife Rita (Angela De Leo) and become embroiled in a centuries old mystery involving a witch's curse (no prizes for correctly connecting the dots).
The scene is set for lots of atmospheric gothic horror with cobwebby, candlelit corridors, dark, dank dungeons, and creaky, crumbly crypts, but sadly director Filippo Walter Ratti conjures up very little in the way of tension or scares, the majority of his film being a slow, uneventful, dreary mess that not even some gratuitous nudity and light lesbianism can make bearable. The film also features several murders (of naked women, of course) but there is no gore to speak of- just a few scratch marks on the victims' breasts.
2.5/10, rounded down to 2 for Danielle's annoying hysterical screaming.
Stay with it
BandSAboutMovies1 February 2020
Warning: Spoilers
This is Filippo Walter Ratti's last movie, but man, just from the opening, where a couple hides and strange faces show up amongst flames while a woman screams a James Bond-like song? This makes me want to stay up even later than 3:14 AM, which I figure is probably the best time to watch Satan-themed Italian horror movies.
When this was released in France as Les Nuits Sexuelles, it had plenty more sex and skin. Just a warning, if you find that version.
Jean (Pierre Brice, who played Winnetou in a series of spaghetti westerns) and Danielle Duprey (Patrizia Viotti, Amuck) love solving mysteries. Well, they get one right away, as Jean get a letter from Guillaume de Saint Lambert that arrives in the form of a riddle that references the book Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. This leads them to the prince's castle, where Jean's old friend is dying from a disease that impacts everyone in his family over the age of thirty-five. It's lasted for three generations and the doctors can't help him.
Then there's a painting of a man dying at the stake and Danielle starts dreaming about it. And oh yeah - it turns out that the prince's wife is a witch that his family had burned at the stake. It's not worth falling in love in an Italian gothic horror romance.
I was wondering - how can a movie called Night Of The Sexual Demons be this slow? Then I saw a review that said to try and hang on past the first thirty minutes. And then I thought, well, this does have a pretty great poster, so I held on for a little more. Luckily, I was rewarded with exactly the kind of movie I was hoping for, complete with a killer that has razor-sharp claws that he or she uses to eviscerate nude victims, as well as an attempted sacrifice. Thank, well, whomever in the nine circles who made that finally happen.
When this was released in France as Les Nuits Sexuelles, it had plenty more sex and skin. Just a warning, if you find that version.
Jean (Pierre Brice, who played Winnetou in a series of spaghetti westerns) and Danielle Duprey (Patrizia Viotti, Amuck) love solving mysteries. Well, they get one right away, as Jean get a letter from Guillaume de Saint Lambert that arrives in the form of a riddle that references the book Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. This leads them to the prince's castle, where Jean's old friend is dying from a disease that impacts everyone in his family over the age of thirty-five. It's lasted for three generations and the doctors can't help him.
Then there's a painting of a man dying at the stake and Danielle starts dreaming about it. And oh yeah - it turns out that the prince's wife is a witch that his family had burned at the stake. It's not worth falling in love in an Italian gothic horror romance.
I was wondering - how can a movie called Night Of The Sexual Demons be this slow? Then I saw a review that said to try and hang on past the first thirty minutes. And then I thought, well, this does have a pretty great poster, so I held on for a little more. Luckily, I was rewarded with exactly the kind of movie I was hoping for, complete with a killer that has razor-sharp claws that he or she uses to eviscerate nude victims, as well as an attempted sacrifice. Thank, well, whomever in the nine circles who made that finally happen.
Naked witchery.
HumanoidOfFlesh25 April 2010
Amateur detective Jean Dupris(Pierre Brice)is summoned to the home of his friend Gil.Not long after Dupris and his wife(Patrizia Viotti) arrive Gil dies in his sleep.Gil's companion turns out to be a witch who kidnaps women,engages them in sex orgies and then kills them when she's through.Dupris decides to hang around and help solve these range murders.Unfortunately he doesn't notice that his wife has fallen under the control of the lesbian witch,who enjoys scratching female breasts."Night of the Damned" is a pretty sleazy Italian Gothic horror with beautiful women and a good amount of nudity.The action is pretty slow and there is not much suspense,but if you are into Italian horror give this one a chance.7 out of 10.
Superb Gothic movie
dddvvv12 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
The other comment here could not be serious. This title deserves all the attention a cult movie should. It has all the elements proper to the genre it represents. A witch, a castle, a malediction, an 'investigator of the occult', some morbid sexual themes, a rich and grainy photography focused on warm and thick colors like red and orange so that it resemble that of another great movie: 1962's Riccardo Freda's masterpiece "L'orribile segreto del dottor Hichcock". The plot could not be so original but this is not the main thing to appreciate in a product like this. Remember: it was filmed in 1971 on a low budget. If you're into Jess Franco or Mario Bava don't hesitate to search for this movie, it will worth the time and money. To me it's an 8/10.
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