Review of The Devil's Lover

The heyday of the Italian Gothic Horror genre was the early-to-mid-1960s; even so, the style lingered on well into the next decade but the results were often far beneath what could be accomplished at its best. Naturally, this is one such example: actually, we start off here with a contemporary setting and the heroine ("Euro-Cult" favorite Rosalba Neri) dreams herself back at least two centuries – under the influence of an old mansion where, legend has it, the devil used to reside! An element these later efforts certainly took advantage of was the relaxation in censorship, except that then we tended to get copious nudity at the expense of plot (and even atmosphere): at one point, for instance, a couple of nubile girls are gang-raped and forced to copulate between themselves inside a cave, a sequence that has no bearing whatsoever on the central plot! For what it is worth, the narrative involves two girls (one is Neri and the other is played by a companion of hers in the modern 'bookends') who both love the same man; when he chooses Neri, the rival (herself pursued by another, played by Robert Woods) turns to a witch who puts a curse on the former. This results in Neri being seduced by a stranger (Edmund Purdom), losing her lover to him and getting burned at the stake for the latter's death…all on her wedding night and, surprise surprise, the interloper is eventually revealed to be Old Nick himself! While the lethargic pacing is decidedly characteristic of such fare, the inept handling is not and, in this case, makes the film a snooze-fest as opposed to the mood-piece its creators probably intended! When I first came across this one, I was intrigued by its description as "the greatest Rosalba Neri movie ever"; however, having checked it out for myself now, I regret to report that things could not be further removed from the truth!