Nude for Satan – DVD Review

Maybe it’s just me, but if I was Satan (and I’m not, in case there was any confusion) I think I’d have better things to do with my time than worrying whether or not two people get it on.

Nude for Satan starts out the way any self-respecting movie should: with a beautiful, naked woman running through the woods. But I kid Nude for Satan. Strangely enough, after the first scene, the audience is treated to five minutes of staring at the hood of a VW Beatle while the credits roll past. The owner of the Bug is Dr. William Benson, who is traveling down a dark, mostly deserted country road for…some reason. He almost crashes into another car stalled in the middle of the road. The driver of the stalled car is Evelyn (although I’m not sure how he knows her name considering she’s unconscious), played by the beautiful Rita Calderoni. There’s not much Dr. Benson can do for Evelyn, so he walks down the road to a nearby castle so he can presumably phone for help.

The weirdness begins almost immediately. Dr. Benson runs into some creepy gate keeper who disappears immediately after they exchange an eye glazing dialogue. Then he goes into the castle, which is covered in approximately a hundred and fifty years worth of dust and spider webs. The odds of him finding a telephone aren’t very good, but Dr. Benson goes on anyway, opening doors and finding laughing corpses with knives sticking out of their necks and random people snogging like crazed hamsters. Around this time Dr. Benson decides he may not find that phone (or whatever he’s searching for). He starts to leave, but then runs into Susan—a woman who looks just like Evelyn except that her hair is curled and she’s dressed like a southern belle. Susan is very happy to see Dr. Benson, although she thinks his name is Peter, and leads him further into the castle. Dr. Benson follows because, well, he’s a guy.

Cut to the next day and Evelyn wakes up. She wanders to the castle, and there must have been some serious renovations during the night, because it looks much nicer now. At the castle Evelyn meets a mysterious man wearing a tuxedo and a cape. This man may or may not be Satan—like most things in this movie it’s hard to tell—but for brevity’s sake I’ll keep calling him Satan. Anyway, Satan immediately mentally undresses Evelyn, which we get to see, and invites her to stay. Evelyn accepts and goes to take a shower. Once she finishes showering a woman hands her a towel and then kisses her, treating us to the first lesbian scene of the movie.

Evelyn then wanders the castle grounds dressed in nothing but a towel and runs into Dr. Benson’s doppelganger, Peter. Somehow Evelyn recognizes that he looks just like Dr. Benson even though she was unconscious when she met the real doctor, and unfortunately for Peter, she’s not as receptive to his advances as Benson was to Susan’s.

I could go on summarizing the plot, but really after this point it becomes a random abutment of scenes and strange monologues about different dimensions, frozen time, and the dark side of humanity. There are plenty of nude scenes and an extended lesbian love scene between Evelyn and the nameless girl who handed her a towel, but there are also many scenes where Evelyn is terrorized, including a moment when she witnesses her lesbian lover being whipped by a very ugly, very disturbing man with rotting teeth, dressed like he was from sixteenth century France, which were rather difficult to watch.

Redemption Studios touts this as a masterpiece of sleaze, and I can’t disagree. However, it’s hard to say if that’s necessarily a good thing or not. Rita Calderoni is a stunningly beautiful woman, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy seeing her nude. But the pleasure of seeing her nude is undercut for me by the scenes where she’s terrorized and/or victimized. At best it kills any sense of eroticism, and at worst it makes you feel guilty for enjoying any part of it.

And if that wasn’t enough, the movie is just plain incomprehensible. The director pretty much throws scenes and images onto the screen like a kid throwing junk against the wall to see what sticks. In terms of plot and story this movie fails completely.

Some may say that I’m being unfair in my assessment. That this movie sets out to be nothing more than a showcase for boobs and I should enjoy it for what it is. After all, on its cover the DVD quotes a reviewer as saying “You got nudity. You got Satan. What more do you want?” And more than likely fans of this genre will agree. In fact, I would agree if I had enjoyed watching the movie—but I didn’t. The only part I enjoyed was seeing Rita Calderoni nude, but that joy was tainted by watching her being terrorized through most of the movie. A fun movie can get away with problems with acting, plotting, and directing, but this wasn’t fun for me.

It’s difficult to be objective about a movie like this. Fans of exploitation movies will probably enjoy this, but obviously I had some problems. If you agree with the sentiment “You got nudity. You got Satan. What more than you want?” then check this out. Otherwise I’d pass.

It probably doesn’t help matters that the transfer for this DVD is subpar. The video is presented in 1.66:1 Widescreen aspect ratio, and while I could see the scenes the video had a grainy quality. The audio fares even worse. Dubbed in Dolby stereo, the audio tracks sound flat and lifeless, like a tape that’s been played to the point of breaking.

Just a quick note about the extras: the list on the back of the DVD is not accurate. It looks like the list was mistakenly taken from a Jean Rollin film. Instead we have:

Original Trailer (running time: 3:57)

Redemption Trailers
Killer’s Moon reviewed here by Danny Cox:
Nature Morte
Virgin Witch, which I reviewed
Satanic Sluts reviewed by Danny Cox

While I’m scoring this movie pretty harshly, keep in mind that that’s based on my own reaction. Fans of this type of movie will probably find a lot to like here, but if anything I’ve mentioned makes you hesitant, I’d recommend avoiding it and instead rent The Bikini Carwash Company or something else a little more lighthearted and fun.

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Redemption Films presents Nude for Satan. Directed by Luigi Batzella. Starring Rita Calderoni, James Harris, Renato Lupi, Iolanda Mascitti, Luigi Antonio Guerra, Barbara Lay, Augusto Boscardini, and Alfredo Pasti. Written by Luigi Batzella. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated NR. Released on DVD: August 26, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.