Black Magic Rites

In attempt to cobble together some sort of summary:  Several hundred years ago, Isabel (Rita Calderoni from the nearly as fu*ked up Nude For Satan and the much more coherently twisted Delirium) was burned at the stake while her lover (Hungary's own Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mickey Hargitay, also from Delirium) looks on helplessly. In the present day a group of Satanists led by the descendant of Isabel’s lover attempt to resurrect her still-rotting corpse through sacrifice of not-so-innocent victims, generally plucked from some kind of gathering that appears to be taking place in a nearby castle (I think).

How do you sum up a plot that comes across as predominantly incomprehensible? I’m not sure but I don’t think it matters so much in this case: Black Magic Rites is a psychedelic whirlwind of insane events and imagery that just has the viewer sitting there shaking their bewildered head at the fact that anything like this was ever committed to celluloid. There is plenty of nudity and some of the strangest characters ever created - one particularly potty woman is found hysterical on the stairs after supposedly being assaulted by a monster with ‘green hair, like all monsters’ (???) that nobody, including us, has ever seen. There’s something to do with vampirism in here too - apparently there are some family ties to Dracula even claimed along the way. Even as far as Euro-Horror is concerned, this film is booting sanity out the window with almost randomly strung-together sequences of celluloid that could easily have been shot by somebody off their merry head on drugs, but it sort of works as an escape into psychologically unbalanced surrealism and is helped if your perception is chemically manipulated at the time (in my case, inebriation). The late Renato Polselli has crafted some interesting work to be honest - the aforementioned Delirio Caldo/Delirium (1972) is pretty good and comparatively 'normal'! Previously he also made a more conventional Italian Gothic horror with L’Amante del Vampiro/Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), a bewitching piece that dances around in the same ballpark as Playgirls and the Vampire.

The original mouthful of a title for Black Magic Rites (1973) was Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge Nel Trecento (or Black Magic Rites & the Secret Orgies of the 14th Century).  The print of the old US DVD by Redemption (entitled Reincarnation of Isabel) was apparently ultrasonically cleaned before the digital master of the time was created - apart from an excess of dirt/damage visible throughout it didn't look too bad considering the source, being moderately detailed. Under its Black Magic Rites moniker (as was the UK DVD plus a later release by Redemption in the US) on Kino Lorber/Redemption's Blu-ray, the disc was bare bones (bundled merely with a few trailers for a couple of the Rollin and Bava BDs that the company also put out) the image quality was improved in terms of detail and colour, though still quite scratchy and damaged (not something that bothers me personally).  Aside from the unfortunate cropping (albeit slight) of the image to 1.78:1 (damn that ratio!) the Blu-ray is a worthwhile step up from whatever you owned before.  As with those earlier discs we thankfully got the Italian language soundtrack with very clear English subtitles (BD subtitles are much clearer and neater than the digitised looking text we had to put up with on DVD). 

Later still, Indicator have once again hit the ball far out of the park with a limited edition release (separately on Blu-ray and 4K according to your delectation).  The attractive and quality-screaming packaging is in the vein of their Jean Rollin titles, a lavish inner case containing the disc, a beautiful book, all contained in a slipcase.  No BS artcards or other things that you will never pick up again, the money here has gone into the important stuff.  And most importantly is a proper restoration of the film itself – which once could very easily have been lost forever given its history - looking quite staggering compared to everything else, we now have fine, consistent grain with a cleaned image that must be definitive in its presentation.  Audio once again is Italian (with English subtitles), again very clear.  The extras package also belittles all previous discs – of note is a thirty minute consideration of Renato’s work (including 1999 interview footage with the director himself, courtesy of Pete Tombs) and a superb forty minute talk on the work leading up to Black Magic Rites by Stephen Thrower, including his own attempted analysis of the film.  Whether it’s the Blu-ray or the UHD, this is a critical release from Indicator for lovers of Euro-Horror and strange cinema, something that I really hope leads to a reappraisal of Renato Polselli's work, and the restoration/release of some of the films that I've been unable to see hitherto.