The Antichrist Movie 1974

By admin on Feb 27, 2013 with Comments 0

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Carla Gravina as Ippolita Oderisi in The Antichrist Movie 1974

The Antichrist Movie 1974: Description

The Antichrist (aka L’anticristo) is a 1974 Italian Horror film directed by Alberto De Martino. This film is known to be an Exorcist rip-off. Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, and Carla Gravina star.

The Antichrist Movie 1974: Summary

The Antichrist is about a young wheelchair bound woman in her 20’s, Ippolita Oderisi (Carla Gravina), who is paralyzed from a childhood accident. Ippolita also has some psychic ability. Due to her paralysis and a strange scene she witnesses at a religious festival in which a man was possessed and jumped to his death, she begins to act strangely.

Her father Massimo Oderisi (Mel Ferrer) begins seeing this other woman named Greta (Anita Strindberg) Ippolitaita sees it as a sign that god has abandoned her and she starts putting her faith in Satan. She brings up her troubles to her uncle, Bishop Ascanio Oderisi (Arthur Kennedy). He notices the strange behavior from Ippolita and says she needs to be watched closely. She attempts to get her paralysis healed.

A psychiatrist named Dr. Marcello Sinibaldi (Umberto Orsini) convinces her to try some experimental hypnosis; because he feels her paralysis is tied to something mental. So after a big party the doctor attempts to heal her paralysis through hypnotism, but instead she ends up unlocking memories of a previous life where she was a heretic and was burned to death at the stake for Satanism. Soon after Ippolita is possessed by the Devil and she starts spouting blasphemy, seducing local men, murdering people. Eventually the only solution to cure her madness is to undergo an exorcism that is performed by Father Mittner (George Coulouris).

The Antichrist Movie 1974: The Review

The Antichrist although a good quality film, it isn’t very original since it essentially is an Exorcist rip-off. The director Alberto De Martino himself actually ripped off several American and England made movies. The film goes to great lengths to shock the viewer with nudity, explicit sex scenes, very foul mouth laced blasphemy dialogue, ridiculous scenes such as a woman performing oral anal sex on a goat during the orgy sequence, and a poor decapitated toad being eaten by Ippolita during a satanic ritual.

The other shocking scene in The Antichrist is the seduction and murder of a German exchange student by Ippolita, which is as shocking as the murder of the schoolboy in the film “The Lair of the White Worm”. Ippolita ends up breaking the poor teenager’s neck. During the possessed scenes the foaming at the mouth and green bile that comes out of Ippolita’s mouth is very gross. The green bile or slime actually looks kind of similar to the stuff that was used on the Nickelodeon show from the 80’s called “Double Dare”.

My uncut version DVD of The Antichrist from Anchor Bay is 112 minutes long. The special effects are quite laughable and cheap looking. The makeup job done on Ippolita to show the effects of her being possessed is well done however. The Antichrist is originally in Italian, but my Anchor Bay distributed DVD only has it in English. The first 8 minutes however, the dialogue is in Italian during the religious festival.

The creepy musical score by Ennio Morricone is very good. The Antichrist is better than other Exorcist rip-offs. It is underrated and not seen by many people. The Antichrist pretty much is just a sleazier version of The Exorcist. I rank it up there with The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. It is entertaining and you shouldn’t get bored if you are into this type of Horror Films.