I feel like A Candle for the Devil (aka It
Happened at Nightmare Inn) from Spanish filmmaker Eugenio Martin,
director of the astounding Horror Express (1972) and the rare gem Aquella
casa en las afueras (1980), was that demented shocker I was always looking
for when I was channel surfing as a kid looking to satiate my thirst for
something twisted with big bloody kitchen knives and bloody nightgowns. It’s
also an intelligent and thought-provoking film with enough memorable moments to
prevent anyone who watches it from entirely forgetting about it. I had only
seen it twice, in its cut and uncut version, but for years it had been stored
in my memory as a truly special Spanish horror film that I knew I would revisit
someday to write about.
After I first watched it, I remember feeling cheated out of the definitive experience of A Candle for the Devil after finding out the version I watched titled It Happened at Nightmare Inn from a bargain DVD box set was heavily cut, omitting the graphic violence and nudity. I still thought it was a pretty sweet film even in its censored form, but of course that’s not the version I wanted for my collection, and so I later ordered off for a DVD-R containing the uncut A Candle for the Devil, with Esperanza Roy’s (from Return of the Evil Dead (1973)) nude scenes thankfully intact. The film has since been released on Blu-ray in 2015 by Scorpion Releasing.
