Movie Notes: Incubus

November 16th, 2006

Incubus: Shatnesperanto.

= 3 stars

Starring William Shatner, Allyson Ames, Robert Fortier
Directed by Leslie Stevens

Amazon link

Movies Okay… this is a truly strange cult classic. It’s a black and white horror film starring William Shatner. Plus, all the dialogue is in Esperanto (an invented language, intended to be understandable worldwide).

Luckily for Incubus, most of the dialogue is standard, terrible horror movie blather, so it being in a foreign language actually enhances it, making it come across as artsy and strangely otherworldly - perfect for the surreal setting.

Yes, I enjoyed this film. The plot is beyond dumb: Marc (William Shatner) and his sister Arndis (Ann Atmar) are tormented by succubus Kia (Allyson Ames) and her sister Amael (Eloise Hardt), who scheme to deliver Marc and Arndis’ souls to the devil. They summon an incubus (Milos Milos) from some moist ground, who takes care of Arndis in a particularly spooky fashion. Marc gets to figure out how to make things right. That’s pretty much it, but it’s all filmed in a creepy, evocative, black and white manner that resembles a more direct Bergman or a dour Fellini with the La Dolce Vita sucked out of him.

Shatner also shines in this 1965 role that preceded his success in Star Trek. I saw some Trek-like aspects that undoubtedly made it more entertaining for me, such as the atonal musical score, and the pretty girls Shatner gets to bounce his lines and smiles off of. Lastly, it’s not that much of a stretch to mentally replace a succubus or incubus with a threatening salt-vampire (M113 Fotiallian) and suddenly, you’re watching an old episode of Trek (except Scotty isn’t aboard the orbiting Enterprise at the ready to blast the satanic sisters with a phaser barrage).

Finally, another fascinating aspect of Incubus is a real-life curse (documented here at Salon). Several people involved in its making dealt with terrible tragedy: Ann Atmar and Milos Milos committed suicide, the company that made the film went bankrupt, and all the original negatives were lost. This DVD version had to be reconstructed from an old print from France.

But thankfully, the curse didn’t seem to affect Shatner who went on to great fame (or infamy), and doesn’t appear to affect bloggers.

IMDB: Incubus
Wikipedia: Incubus
Rotten Tomatoes: Incubus 63%