Retro Review: Seven Women for Satan
Seven Women for Satan (1976)
Studio: Mondo Macabre
DVD Release Date: November 11, 2003
Directed By: Michel Lemoine
Cast: Michel Lemoine, Joëlle Coeur, Howard Vernon, Nathalie Zeiger
Review By: Marc Patterson
I’m not a numerologist, but then again I’ve never met anyone who one who actually is either. Numerology seems to be one of the bastard children of the psychic arts. Few people understand it. Most people simply dabble in it just enough to convince themselves that their parents were wrong, and they really aren’t the spawn of the Devil. (At least, that would surmise my personal experience.) Along the way, through bible vacation schools, and Sunday evening services I picked up a few things from the Bible about numbers. See, the number seven is the number of perfection. It is a most godly number. It starts out in the first book of the Old Testament. We have seven days in a week, which is because it took God seven days to create the earth and all in it.
Now want a real mind-fuck? Skip the middle and go straight to the end and read the book of Revelations. It’s laced with references to the number seven. It’s practically masturbation material for one of those geeky MIT kids. You have seven churches, seven seals, seven stars, seven trumpets, seven this, and seven that.
Now, take all this useless knowledge I have about the number seven and then present me with a film called Seven Women for Satan. All the sudden it takes all a whole new meaning doesn’t it? You pagan, devil worshiping fucks that never truly read, nor understood the Bible have a whole new angle on shit don’t you? Yeah. That’s what I thought.
Too bad for everyone, including myself, that all of my pretentious ramblings are for naught. This film has no more to do with the Devil, or even the number seven than apple pie and ice cream. Yeah, it’s that far off the mark. The fact that there were not even seven women killed is reason enough to have a chosen a different title. Add to it that the archenemy of the Lord God Almighty is not even referenced, even in subtext, and you have some misdirection on the scale of what I would expect from Lionsgate. The actual title “Les Weekends Malefiques Du Comte Zaroff”, which roughly translates to “You’d Rather Spend the Weekend at Bernie’s” might be more appropriate.
Nonetheless, despite my obvious disappointment with the poor choice of title for this film I was highly entertained, and had a fairly good time with this early French erotic-horror film.
Boris Zaroff (Michael Lemoine) is a young and relatively good-natured French businessman who has come into his fortune thorough good old fashion hard work. However, he comes from a family with a less than stellar past. His father, the late Count Zaroff was a relentless and mad sadist, hunting women down on the family estate, and subjecting the women to fanciful tortures in the dungeons of the castle. The family retainer Karl (Howard Vernon) has a blood promise with his father to teach Boris in the family ways. And boy, does Karl have his work cut out for him!
Karl continuously sets up precarious situations involving voluptuous and seductive women hoping to lure the evil out of Boris. But Boris just doesn’t get the hang of it. Not for lack of trying though. I knew I was in for a good time with this film when Boris picks up a young hitchhiker and lures her to his castle where he seduces her in an erotic evening involving a lot of champagne and lustful sex.
The morning after is always a little awkward and a walk in the countryside turns bad when Boris begins to strangle his new love, and then attempts to convince her that he didn’t mean to frighten her and that he was simply trying to heighten her arousal. Yeah, that line has never worked too well for me. Maybe he has that kind of sensual French delivery that naïve young girls fall for. Well, that excuse only seems to work for a few seconds until he starts to beat her. At that point she’s about done with Boris, but Boris won’t let her run off. He chases her apologizing for his utter idiocy. The only problem with this is that he’s chasing her down through a field with his car! One can assume with confidence the outcome of this chase. And with that, I’m hooked.
The basic formula that propels this film forward is simple: Meet girl, have an erotic and sleazy sex scene, then kill her, and repeat. Meanwhile, fall in love with a ghost, and chase after her. It’s not complicated stuff here. While the obvious themes and subtext of the basic human struggle to balance one’s warm nostalgia of the past with the realities of the present could arguably be cause for some intellectual discourse it’s hardly a path I would choose to take.
Actor Michael Lemoine (Succubus, Two Undercover Angels) shows off his own chops as the director, and proves himself to be competent. If nothing else he certainly has an eye for the female form. The story is just as erotic and simpler in form than contemporaries such as Jess Franco, but one would be hard pressed to give Lemoine the same cult status of Franco.
The presentation is admittedly lacking. Scratches and speckles abound and visually the films look is a bit too soft. However, considering that the film was all but lost and that what we do have was reportedly pulled from Lemoine’s own private collection, it isn’t half bad. The film is presented in anamorphic 1.66:1 widescreen and available with original French language and English subtitling, or for those non-purists you may watch with English dubbing.
The extras are nicely done with a 15-minute interview with Lemoine, and a feature essay on the film itself, as well as separate biographies for each of the primary actors. There’s certainly a good deal of information on early French horror cinema, and these particular players if one is so inclined to sit through and read it all. I know I was.
For those who find Franco a bit hard to swallow, or just want a taste for something a bit different from Mario Bava, this wouldn’t be a bad choice. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s guaranteed. But with a couple of snarky friends, who can appreciate your taste for Eurosleaze, it will certainly make for a fun afternoon nevertheless.
Brutal As Hell Rating:
3 ½ out of 5
