Lorna the Exorcist (1974)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | Cover + DVD Scan | 01:39:29 | 8,34 Gb
Audio: #1 English, #2 French - AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps (each) | Subs: English
Genre: Horror, Exploitation
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | Cover + DVD Scan | 01:39:29 | 8,34 Gb
Audio: #1 English, #2 French - AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps (each) | Subs: English
Genre: Horror, Exploitation
Director: Jess Franco
Stars: Pamela Stanford, Guy Delorme, Lina Romay
Patrick, a rich businessman, celebrates his daughter Linda's 18th birthday by taking her and his wife to a famous casino resort in the south of France, where, 20 years earlier, he had won the money that enabled him to start his business and begin his rise to the top. At the casino he meets the beautiful and mysterious Lorna, whom he first encountered that night 20 years ago. She reminds him that he made a promise to her back then. She is the power behind his success and now she has returned to claim her reward - his daughter, Linda. A masterpiece of transgressive horror from Jess Franco.
Jess Franco has made a maddening number of films of varying degrees of quality. Some of his work is slick and professional, but much of it is rough around the edges. Some of it is inspired, some is anything but. In his long career of shocking people's susceptibilities, Franco never went so far as he did with Lorna the Exorcist. The somewhat nonsensical title indicates that the film was designed to cash in on William Friedkin's blockbuster The Exorcist (1973), but this is anything but a rip-off. It is one of Franco's most original works; it is also far and away his most pathologically disturbing.
It's tempting to describe Lorna as the ultimate film to watch while looking over your shoulder. It's such a grimy, grotty, deeply disturbing piece of work that one would be hard pressed to want to share the experience with anybody but the most adventuresome of cinephiles. Like many Franco films, it eschews conventional craftsmanship in favor of a more rough hewn, improvisational approach. The film is often crude, even amateurish. Some of the edits are jarring, scenes sometimes drag on far longer than necessary, the lighting is typical of what one would find in a cheap sex film… but despite all of that, the film works. There's a sense of genuine purpose to the picture, as if Franco is using it to explore his deepest neuroses in the hopes of exorcising them for good. The end result is hard to shake, with images and set-pieces that will stick with you for days after it is over.
That's not to say that the film completely overcomes its shortcomings, however. For such a spare, minimalist film, Franco can't resist padding it out with a rather useless subplot involving one of Lorna's previous victims. Confined to her own set — an insane asylum — and chiefly seen lolling around in a state of heightened ecstasy, actress Catherine Lafferiere (also seen in a number of other Franco films from this same period) does what she can to enliven her various appearances; she's certainly eye-catching and game for what is asked of her, but the subplot only serves to restate something that's perfectly obvious: that Lorna's power is something to be reckoned with most seriously.
The subplot also allows Franco himself to pop up as a distracted psychiatrist, but he isn't particularly good here — as an actor Franco is capable of giving committed, interesting performances (cf., The Diabolical Dr. Z, Eugenie De Sade) but here it's almost as if he's too distracted by the material to give it his all as a performer. To make a checklist of all the film's technical shortcomings would be pointlessly defeatist — suffice it to say, it manages to rise above these limitations, or even to use them to its advantage, but the padding caused by this subplot does come close to knocking the film off balance completely.
Having dispensed with the negatives, it's time to discuss some of the positives. The small ensemble, comprised of familiar faces from Franco's films of this period, is generally terrific. Lina Romay is at her very best as the naive Linda, who undergoes a startling transformation as the film unfolds. It's a difficult part, one which requires her to bare her soul as well as her body, and she proves completely capable of hitting its various notes. Watching her in this role leaves one in no doubt that Romay is more than just a pretty face — she's a fine actress, as well. Pamela Stanford, another regular in Franco's films of the period, gets her best ever role as Lorna.
The name "Lorna Green" can be traced back to Succubus (1969) in Franco's filmography, but it would be a mistake to see Stanford as filling in for Janine Reynaud in that earlier film. There is a vague similarity between the two characters, but just as Franco is fond of recycling the name "Dr. Orloff" from picture to picture, it seems likely it's just a name he's fond of using. Stanford is required to wear some very over the top eye liner and wigs, but she conveys a raw sensuality that really comes to the fore during the unforgettably disturbing scene in which she seduces Linda. Guy Delorme is also very effective as the guilt-ridden Patrick, a loving family man whose one instance of infidelity comes back to haunt him in a big way.
Jacqueline Laurent is good as Patrick's wife, while the great Howard Vernon puts in a brief cameo appearance as Lorna's henchman; Vernon also served as a stills photographer on the picture, a function he often filled on Franco's films, using his real name, Mario Lippert. The atonal guitar score by Andre Benichou is one of the finest to be found in a Franco film; the repetitious main theme will stay with you for a while.
Many horror films are described as being transgressive, but most of them seem pretty weak after so much build up. Blood and gore can cause momentary discomfort, but they don't really cut deep into the psyche in the way that a film like Lorna does. The film has its moments of bloodshed, but it's grotty texture and images of sexual hysteria are infinitely more disturbing. The scenes in which a character spews crabs from her vagina or in which a character is violated by a massive dildo (the blood being subsequently licked off) simply are beyond the pale — they defy expectation and description, and it's in moments such as these that one realizes just how utterly pathological the film's imagination truly is.
Franco would continue to explore the link between eroticism and horror in many more films, but he'd never again push things quite so far. From its opening, protracted sex fantasy to its final wail of pain, Lorna the Exorcist is one of the most legitimately unsettling films ever made. Viewers who insist on tight plotting and pacing, and a sheen of technical expertise, will no doubt be tempted to dismiss it as amateurish; but even these viewers would be hard pressed to forget the film's excesses.
Special Features:
- Brand New Anamorphic Transfer from Negative
- Interview with Director Gerard Kikoine
- Interview with Writer Stephen Thrower
- Deleted and Extended Scenes
- Mondo Macabro Previews
Hugey Thanks to franco8102
No More Mirrors, Please.
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