Les amantes del Diablo (1971)

A very minor Spanish-Italian horror picture. Heroine Hilda Salas (Krista Nell, of The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance) is upset when her sister (Veronica Lujan, of Fury of the Wolf Man) returns from a seaside holiday as a gray-haired mad hag who is promptly abducted from the asylum by a sinister figure. Playing amateur sleuth, Hilda takes the same holiday, cuing bikini and waterskiing footage, and is drawn towards the evil-bearded Dr Tills Nescu (Espartaco Santoni, of Lisa and the Devil and Blood Ceremony). Nescu – who lives on a yacht with his devoted secretary (Teresa Gimpera – Hannah of Hannah, Queen of the Vampires, also in Spirit of the Beehive) and a short mute servant - is going speedily through women since they often get removed to his mansion for Satanic rituals which turn their hair gray. It's a question never really resolved as to whether the villain has proper magical powers, though he uses the force of his will to make a psychedelic singer lose his voice in the middle of a nightclub act. A left-field last act development features flashbacks to an unhappy childhood of witnessing his mother's s&m sessions, which supposedly 'explain' his current treatment of women. It takes quite a while to get anywhere, with a lot of padding, and there's not much at the end of the road either. Directed by José Maria Elorrieta.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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