Andorra: Devil's Kiss (1976)
I have a cold. Being a man, that makes it a very serious illness, and I’m therefore feeling incredibly sorry for myself.
I mention this not for sympathy, but because I spent much of the running time of The Devil’s Kiss wondering what the fuck was really happening. I couldn’t be sure if that was because I was feverish, because I wasn’t paying attention or because the film was absolutely batshit crazy.
(The film itself is a Spanish/French/Andorra co-production. Given how few films have been made by Andorra, and that this was actually available, The Devil’s Kiss was pretty much my only option. When I saw that it was horror I was delighted. That was before I saw the film.)
I have a vague idea that something happened in the seventies that is reflected in the films of the time. There’s a genuine nastiness to ‘70s horror that isn’t present in any other decade before it. It’s not that the violence is stronger (although it is), or the gore more visceral (although it definitely is) but that there’s a really unsentimental brutality to the horror. Bad things have always happened in horror – that’s the point of the genre – but there’s a nihilism to ‘70s horror that’s unrelentingly bleak. I suspect it’s as a reaction to the generational trauma of WWII and the complete loss of innocence following the death of JFK, followed by the reaction to Watergate.
Some of the best horror of the ‘70s reflects all of those things and does so with an unflinching depiction of the inevitability of death.
But not here.
This is not a horror film rooted in those traumatic manifestations of existential fear. This is a horror film existing solely as a groovy ‘60s exploitation flick made ten years too late. This takes the essence of Hammer Films, the style of giallo and a very generous dollop of Mary Shelley and offers a Euro bargain version of Frankenstein.
We open at a fashion show in a castle. I have no idea why. No explanation is given, it’s just something that’s happening. Obviously as part of a fashion show you need a séance, so there’s one of those too. The Duke is very taken with the medium and invites her to stay in the castle so that she can conduct experiments with her friend who is a mad scientist. (I’m not making this up, this is literally the plot.) What the Duke doesn’t know is that the medium is actually a former Countess whose husband was driven to suicide (in very pretty blue-tinted flashbacks) and she is out for revenge. Probably. It’s not actually made very clear, just as it’s not made very clear what her plan involves. We know her friend the mad scientist is a mad scientist, and we know he has a bad heart. I think he’s trying to find a way to fix it. Why he’s working on reanimating corpses in order to do so is another matter completely.
Yes, it’s that kind of film.
Most heart surgeons doing research tend to work with, well, hearts. They don’t go around reanimating corpses with Satanic manuscripts. But this surgeon is mad, his girlfriend is mad, their pet hunchback assistant is mad and their creations are positively livid. We know this because they go on murderous rampages which seem accidental. After the Baron is killed and his castle inherited by his hepcat nephew (the photographer from the fashion show) the plot just sort of…carries on. The Countess and her lover continue their peculiar work, the monsters continue to wander around aimlessly (much like the plot) and finally the doctor dies and the creatures kill the Countess.
None of this makes the slightest bit of sense.
I can cope with horror that doesn’t make sense, but it needs to feel like it makes sense to someone. That’s not the case here. Here things happen because they made sense a hundred and fifty years ago to the woman who came up with the plot. Frankenstein had been out of copyright for quite some time, so why the writers here felt the need to rip Shelley off in secret is beyond me. She wasn’t going to sue. Just run with it. But, no, they feel the need to pretend it’s not a Frankenstein film but is Satanic instead. Satanism was bigger in the ‘70s than it is now, so presumably this was an attempt at being topical. Given how dated every other aspect of the film was (the ‘70s don’t seem to have arrived in Andorra yet and we’re clearly still dressed for the ‘60s) it seems unnecessary to try to make any aspect of this seem contemporary.
It is, in short, a horrible, horrible mess, a fusion (much like the reanimated corpses) of various elements that don’t do go well together and don’t really work properly because they’re not really alive. It’s an abomination that shouldn’t have happened.
Most damningly, it’s not even funny. It’s just bad.
Disc: DVD (Region 2, UK)
Source: eBay
Availability: Still widely available; the USA has a 4k restored (it needs it) Blu-ray from Redemption Films. Region 2/B has various releases, though very few have the original Spanish audio. If you track it down you'll probably regret it, though.