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April 01, 2007

Nude for Satan

A guest post from Jason Harris for the White Elephant Blogathon

By Guest

A title like "Nude for Satan" builds up certain expectations in the mind of whoever hears it. I immediately thought of the saucier scenes in "Devil's Advocate" and "Interview with the Vampire." But the idea of being nude for Satan is so silly that I knew I was in for something very different. I have always had a taste for bad movies, and just hearing the title was whetting my appetite. Having had my fill, I know that the entire concept of the film is pretty well summed up in the title.

There is a generous amount of nudity in this unrated Italian horror film from 1973. The opening credits are shown with a still frame of a VW Bug as a background, which is silly considering that there is a three minute scene before the credits of the female leading actor running naked through the woods. Perhaps the director thought that the nudity would have distracted from the credits, or vice versa. The plot is a horror movie staple, where a doctor is driving through the country because of an "emergency". He crashes his car and meets Miss Susan LoveInterest. He goes to find help in the mysterious castle on the hill. Hilarity ensues. The nudity picks up again when Susan meets the master of the castle. He uses the magic of editing to strip her of clothing. She covers herself, embarassed, and when he re-edits her clothes onto her, she goes back to the conversation, unphased. Soon enough, the nudity becomes very pervasive and stops feeling gratuitous, and just seems like a natural and essential part of the movie. I'd like to be optimistic and think that this was one of the goals of the film.

I was disappointed that Satan never appears. There's witchcraft, torture, sex, and talk of "Astaroth", but never any mention of Satan. Most of the dialogue centers around nonsensical descriptions of the mysteries of time. Apparently this castle is a place where "time no longer has any meaning. You have become prisoners of yourselves." The plot gets really mixed up, with some bad symbolism about duality and perception. There's only five actors with speaking parts in the film. Four naked people show up towards the end, but they never speak or are spoken to. The characters and plot were obviously not the focus of the production.

The general cheesiness and campiness of "Nude for Satan" makes it watchable only for people who can appreciate a genuinely bad movie. However, I'm sure that film students could find value in seeing a few decently original ideas done badly. In several scenes, the camera is tilted side to side, in an attempt to disorient the viewer. However, the movement is very rough, so the effect feels unnatural. There is a prism effect done to invoke a feeling of hallucination, but you can clearly see a hand place the prism in front of the camera. The most highly conceptual device used in the film is the confusing editing. Scenes will abruptly end, lighting will change, characters appear and disappear, and there is no sense of time. It is difficult to tell how much of this is intentional.

Given all of it's shortcomings, this is still a fun movie to watch. It's a good thing to have going in the background when your focus is on something else. There's plenty of hilariously silly scenes, including a European General character laughing maniacally into the camera, haunted-house style, and probably the worst giant spider prop I've ever seen. "Nude for Satan" can't really be rated alongside normal movies, but on the scale of enjoyable bad movies, it's better than "Manos" but not as fun as "Repo Man". The "Nude for Satan" drinking game: drink whenever a pair of breasts is revealed.

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