Nude for Satan (1974) is a low-budget, Italian, erotic, horror movie from the warped mind of writer director Luigi Batzella (as Paulo Solvay) that stars Rita Calderoni, Stelio Candeli and James aka Giuseppe Mattei. There’s not much horror or plot but there’s plenty of surreal oddness and lots of full-on nudity. It’s even got a lusty spider and some girl-on-girl action that got it banned in England for years even after having many minutes cut from it.
Buy Nude for Satan DVDLate one night on a country road, Dr. William Benson (Candeli) is driving to see a patient when he is distracted and pulls over before witnessing a solo car crash and seeing a woman (Calderoni) hanging out of the car door. He pulls her to safety and into his own car before walking off to look for help. He stumbles to a nearby castle (looking more like a mansion) that has suddenly appeared and is greeted by a strange man dressed in black hiding in the shadows. Once inside, he finds the place in tatters and a dusty old book laying open on a podium. Dr. Benson blows the dust of said book and reads its haunting words before he notices a young woman named Evelyn (also Calderoni) who’s the spitting image of the woman, Susan, he’s left in his car. Dr. Benson is confused and intrigued (as was I) but goes off with Evelyn to her chambers for a goodnight romp.
The next morning Susan arrives at the castle and is greeted by the suave man in black wearing a red-lined cape before she heads inside to bathe and be seduced by a pretty servant girl. Later that day, Susan runs into a man named Peter who looks just like Dr. Benson! Eventually, after lots of surreal weirdness (and sexual adventures), both Susan and Dr. Benson come face to face with their doppelgangers as they battle reality as well as the concepts of time and space. You see, in Satan’s realm things like time, space, and memory (and morality) mean nothing as day can turn night in a snap and dreams become sexy frightmares. The whole thing builds to an odd dance macabre/orgy of the undead before the good Dr. Benson torches the place and gets zapped back to the accident that started the whole thing.
Nude for Satan doesn’t take its title lightly, getting right into the nudity. Thirty seconds in and Callderoni’s running at us in her full 1970s glory draped only in a very sheer, flowing, open-fronted nighty. It also doesn’t take long for what little plot there is to get confusing and filled with more holes than moldy Swiss cheese (and a cheap spider web). I’m going to go ahead and say (and stick with) that’s supposed to be the point of it all as throughout the movie there’s lots of kooky dialogue that tries to wax poetic about space, time, and what’s real. What is time? But a memory? A dream? Blah, blah, blah.
Batzella employs twisting, turning, slanted camera angles and jerky zooms in an attempt to make this a Dali-esque, dreamscape masterpiece. While there are a few genuinely atmospheric and creepy scenes scattered about, most of this one just seems like a strange mash up of Count Yorga, Dark Shadows, and Behind the Green Door. The odd characters and doppelganger/dual roles aren’t helped any by the mediocre acting or the unnatural dubbing. The castle grounds are beautiful though and that cheap “lust-crazed arachnid” was a hoot to watch as it captured a screaming, scantily clad Calderoni in its web. A poorly spun web at that as she stands right up and walks out of it after Candelli shows up and shoots the spider off of her.
This demented Italian gothic offering mostly comes across like a comic-book horror story turned into an erotic, spooky movie misfire. I wasn’t bored during its 80-minute runtime but this one would have worked way better as an anime or a graphic novel. There’s even an odd servant of Satan character with black markered-out teeth that stalks the castle and laughs into the camera between erotic episodes surrounded by darkness a la the Crypt Keeper. He even gets to whip another of Satan’s little helpers after some girl-on-girl action. Also, as with any Italian horror piece from this era, one of those ladies will eventually get stabbed in the boob. You’ll have to watch to find out which one though as I won’t give away all of Nude for Satan’s secrets.
I didn’t hate Nude for Satan. It does its best to be cerebral, provoke deep thoughts, and act as a surreal showcase but aside from some eerie scenes that segue into the next erotic sexcapade it falls short. Batzella’s love letter to Salvador Dali and Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert makes little sense and is plagued with weak acting and scenes bordering on XXX. Which truly does seem par for the course in these types of affairs from that time, Italian or otherwise; The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (also Italian from ‘74) comes to mind. Seriously though, there got to be some kind of law against ladies and spiders, right? Meh, probably not.
