Arcana (1972)

“That’s twentieth-century progress for you; we can put a man on the moon, but we can’t find a few simple ingredients to do a magic trick.” – Captain Manzini  

If magic is real, then it isn’t obvious. It will probably never lend itself to definitive proof but rather reserve itself more for personal interpretation that depends on the hopes, beliefs, and dreams of the individual. Be it paranormal or psychological, magic spells can provide a lot of symbolic meaning, clarity, and guidance for the caster. 

Giulio Questi’s inventive, esoteric, enchanted sorcery of a film, Arcana, is an unforgettable experience that I like to think is a magic spell itself. The effects of that spell really start to hit at about the one hour and fourteen-minute mark (when that hypnotic violin theme kicks in) and we get a peculiar standout segment in the film that is unlike anything else. The film also does a good job at capturing the appeal and mystique of tarot in both the divination reading scenes and in the unfolding of its mystifying plot. 

Sex of the Devil / Il sesso del diavolo - Trittico (1971)

How could any Eurocult horror fan resist being attracted to a movie with a poster like this and a title like Sex of the Devil? Whether or not the movie delivers what it promises on the cover is another matter, but when beholding such an epic, suggestively satanic, occult, and erotic poster like this one (centering on what I thought looked a little like a possessed Mia farrow), a spectacular fantasy of a movie is birthed in the mind of the observer, one that is often very different from the movie in reality, for better or worse. I admit to initially being attracted and baited in to this film based solely on this poster. Sex of the Devil not surprisingly turned out to be something other than I had imagined, and if it weren’t for that advertisement I may have never found it. So basically, the movie poster did its job, and I slowly fell in love with another movie.

Despite not being what I expected and bearing the usual pacing and plot resolution issues, Sex of the Devil still delivered the goods, and, in the end, it ended up delivering what it promised on the poster as well.

Blow Job – un soffio erotico (1980)

Not to be confused with Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1963), Alberto Cavallone’s Blow Job is a witchy Italian horror film with a fairly meagre start that escalates into a reality transcending experience that was influenced by Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1952) and the shamanistic writings of Carlos Castaneda. One similarity between both films is the titular blowjob and its ambiguous nature. Warhol’s Blow Job is a thirty five minute still-shot of a young man’s (DeVeren Bookwalter) face while he is supposedly receiving fellatio, allegedly by experimental filmmaker Willard Maas. Because the sexual act itself takes place off camera, it is never absolutely certain if the fellatio is legitimately happening, which along with conflicting accounts of the filming itself adds a curious air of mystery to it.

The blowjob in Cavallone’s film only makes up a fraction of the movie during the third act and coincides with a mescaline (the main active hallucinogen in peyote) trip, and so the fellatio is also presented indirectly. The mescaline aided “blowjob” sort of doubles as a gateway act to a higher form of perception, but the fascination in this case comes more from how the filmmakers choose to represent “suchness” or “the absolute”, the ultimate nature of reality without reduced awareness. One of our lead characters Stefano (Danilo Micheli) transcends reality, under the guidance of an erotic witch Sibilla (Mirella Venturini), to take a trip through the spirit world, aka tripping balls. It involves dancing and low budget experimental set pieces and was more memorable than I was anticipating it to be.

The Sect / La setta (1991)

Beautiful dreams turn into pulse pounding nightmares in Michele Soavi’s highly intricate cult-conspiracy masterpiece, THE SECT (aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER).  

Soavi is the type of director that seems to make every movie as if it was his last, taking the chance to squeeze in as many ideas, symbolism, and set pieces as possible. The result is eclectic and convoluted but also spellbinding, as in THE SECT and CEMETERY MAN, with the former being the more ominous and downbeat of the two, likely the result of everyone working to appease the boss-man, Dario Argento. 

Part of the reason for the intricacy is because THE SECT is a product of three different writers, Argento, Soavi, and Gianni Romoli,* all of whom seemed to have their own visions. The production of the movie started with a screenplay for an unrealized movie called CATACOMBS by Romoli, and Argento took it and added his input, which included references to The Rolling Stones (he’s a huge fan).* Soavi further incorporated a script from an unrealized movie of his, THE WELL, and layered it with esotericism and Celtic symbolism, and the seemingly independent ideas from three different heads was further refined and finalized by Romoli* into one hellava movie.

Nevertheless, the convoluted nature of the film has harmed it for a large fraction of viewers, making it difficult to follow and giving it an underlining annoyance that the movie may not be going anywhere. Therefore, the recommended way to view this is to just concern oneself with what is taking place at hand without worrying about where the story is leading to. It’s best to enjoy the individual segments for what they’re worth, and being that there’s a lot of gold here, they’re worth a lot.