(Sfida al diavolo a.k.a. Katharsis, 1963)
The second disc in Severin's box set THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE is devoted to one of his most elusive continental appearances, in Giuseppe Veggezzi's CHALLENGE THE DEVIL. Filmed during the same Roman adventure that found Lee starring with Daliah Lavi in Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY, this rarely-seen picture started out as an ambitious, avant-garde fantasy film called KATHARSIS which Vegezzi had mapped out in pretentious detail, with plentiful details for prospective investors as to what each character meant and represented, as well as specific camera movement plans with annotations to their own allusive double meanings. According to Roberto Curti's detailed 35m overview of Veggazzi and the production, things were going well until the production company began to bankrupt and the writer-director's unrequited love for one of the actresses led him to attempt suicide. During his recovery, after leaping to his fate from a high castle window, the unfinished film passed into other hands which added 20m of worthless, misleading framing story and, ultimately, very scant distribution of the excruciating result. Lee was brought aboard for only four days shooting, looking far too young to be playing an aged man (an illusion further hindered by high school play-level makeup), but his name was essential to the funding. He appears in the film for roughly 10m, but we - his fans - are accustomed to seeing him in modest roles which allow his presence to be felt immodestly during his extended absences.
Veggezzi's original story involved six delinquent adults, probably meant to be much younger teens, who live for drinking and terrorizing the roads. After a random game of Chicken ends in a collision with an oncoming car and the apparent death of the driver, the gang - led by ERIK THE CONQUEROR's Giorgio Ardisson - moves on and breaks into a local castle - once again, the reliable and affordable Castello Odescalchi used in CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD. After looting the premises of food and drink, they start drumming on whatever is handy as Bella Cortez and the other women dance and strip to heat things up still more. But what their hedonism invokes is the arrival of Mephistopheles (Lee), an elderly spirit who pines to be reunited with his lost love. He compels them to see their way through various tests to free his beloved's soul from its imprisonment in the castle, and there is a surprise twist ending that throws us a final curve, forcing us to rethink all we have seen as an excursion on a more abstract, metaphysical plane. In its own not quite capable way, Veggezzi's parable crudely points toward some of the more metaphysical stories yet to emerge from Italian Gothic horror - CASTLE OF BLOOD, AN ANGEL FOR SATAN, CONTRONATURA, LISA AND THE DEVIL.
However, to get to this actually rather promising story (in intention, if not entirely in execution), one must endure a 20m preamble involving espionage, an attempted assassination, and a dying man's final words to a woe-begone monk (Piero Vida, the only actor to return for the "reparative" filming) who, in his younger and wilder days, was a member of a certain wolfpack. It is he who is compelled to confess the story we are told, which he entrusts to - to all people - former 1950s starlet and dancer Alma del Rio, who looks like Divine and is shown squeezed into what must be one of her old dresses as she attempts a torrid, exotic dance in cha-cha heels... after almost 15 minutes of even more miserable supper club entertainment. Truly, the first quarter of the film destroyed nearly all my will to watch the rest, but I persevered... with you in mind.
It's no surprise that this film attracted no audio commentators, but the disc devotes an additional 35m to Roberto Curti's illuminating talk on the film and Veggazzi's subsequent adventures. We get to see (and hear translated) some interesting production plans, as well as footage of the enfant terrible himself, who seems no better grounded than before as he sits in a lawn chair and expounds on some slippery political rant. We're told that, after the fate of KATHARSIS, he moved away from cinema forever. I don't really need to say it, do I?
Though nothing he says touches on this film in any way, we are also treated - and I mean this, seriously - to 16m of interview outtakes, culled from two sessions many years apart, with actor Giorgio Ardisson, who died in 2014. What he says is candid, philosophical, humorous, fatalistic, and always of interest; a touching visit with (as he calls himself) "a wise old man."
Also included in this snapper case (but described on Severin's website as "Disc 8") is RELICS FROM THE CRYPT, an absorbing collection of interviews, brief visits, outtakes, and audio treats (even songs!) featuring Christopher Lee, covering some 50 years of public speaking - and in more than one language. There is a 16m excerpt from a 1964 Swiss television special called HORROR!, which also includes amazing footage of Boris Karloff in candid conversation, Lee amiably pontificating in French about his many screen deaths while pacing Roy Ashton's relic-strewn makeup room), as well as a set visit to Roger Corman's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH with sound bytes from Corman and Vincent Price; 34m of Lee reminiscing about Karloff for an unfinished video project (he's speaking off the top of his head, so there's some repetition and faltering; it feels a bit too long, but just a bit); a 1975 interview with a young moderator Colin Grimshaw about TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER; an almost hour-long 1976 Belgian television interview conducted in French and subtitled in English (which I found the most fascinating and instructive piece of film on the disc - it's a revelatory introduction to a different side of Christopher Lee); a 1985 audio interview conducted by David Del Valle; a couple of vocal performances with optional commentary from collaborator Gary Curtis; a 15m visit with early British horror historian Alan Frank, which briefly touches on Lee; and a 2011 Q&A session with the venerable star held at University College Dublin. Not last but certainly not least, there is also a 34m featurette about the making of Camillo Mastrocinque's CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE (aka TERROR IN THE CRYPT) with extensive reminiscences from the screenwriters, Tonino Valerii and Ernesto Gastaldi. Near the end, Gastaldi filled my heart with joy with a jovial reminiscence of the first time I approached him to be interviewed for VIDEO WATCHDOG about his "40 year old movies," way back in 1996!
Set some time aside before you load this one up because it's hard to pull yourself away.
Next up: The aforementioned CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE, the Italian Gothic version of Le Fanu's "Carmilla."
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