1972 Night of the Devils

  • AKA “La Notte Dei Diavoli”
  • Directed by Giorgio Ferroni
  • Written by Eduardo Manzanos, Romano Migliorini, Gianbattista Mussetto
  • Stars Gianno Garko, Agostina Belli, Roberto Maldera
  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
  • Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgYALkx3Z4E

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s very similar to “Black Sabbath” from 1963, but it’s not considered a remake. They both draw from the same source story, “The Family of the Vourdalak” story by Alexey Tolstoy. We thought this movie was the better of the two, and it holds up pretty well for entertainment value. 

Spoilery Synopsis

After the credits, we open on a man stumbling through the field, obviously wounded. His clothes are all torn, and he soon passes out. He’s taken to the hospital and hooked up to a testing machine. He hallucinates skulls, exploding heads, and naked women getting their hearts torn out. 

The man survives, but has total amnesia; he may not even remember how to speak Italian. The tests don’t show anything wrong with him now that he’s rested and recovered. The Inspector comes by, but he has no idea who the man is. The doctor says the man is fine during the daytime, but he gets very agitated in darkness. 

A woman comes to the hospital and says she knows the man, who’s name is Nicola. He came to town on business, and he seemed perfectly normal when she met him last week. Sdenka smiles when she sees Nicola in the hallway, and he gets terrified and fights the orderlies until they sedate him. Sdenka leaves, but forgets her purse. 

Nicola lies in bed and has a flashback. He’s driving his car out in the country and almost runs into a woman. When he gets out of the car to help she’s vanished, but the car’s broken. As he walks down the path, he hears weird howling and cries. Some gravediggers see him walking past the cemetery; there’s a funeral in progress. The body they bury is in a bloody white sheet. 

Nicola keeps walking and soon comes to a house. The man from the funeral arrives and says he just buried his brother. He invites Nicola to stay there overnight, and he’ll help with the car tomorrow. Everyone in the house closes and bars all the windows and doors as it’s starting to get dark outside. The old man’s son, Jovan, enters, and he’s surly; he might be able to fix the car when the sun comes up. Sdenka is there as well. 

The family hears someone pounding at the door, but the old man says it’s just the wind, but it’s obviously not. Sdenka mentions never having seen a television, which Nicola finds interesting. She shows him to a spare room, and he asks why the windows are barred; she just says not to open them at night under any circumstances. 

Jovan and his father argue over who’s fault their current situation is, and the old man says they need to watch out or they’ll all become the walking dead. 

Outside, the strange woman that Nicola saw earlier starts digging in that fresh grave. She cuts herself and bleeds into the grave. At the house, Jovan comes onto the dead man’s wife, his aunt. Nicola can hear the whole thing from his room. 

In the morning, the men help Nicola with his car, and they walk past the cemetery. The old man decides to go, “I cannot live with this curse any longer.”  Jovan says if the old man fails, it’ll destroy the whole family.  

The old man wanders into a barn where that silent woman has been hiding. She kills him. 

Back at the house, the little girl tells Nicola about the evil witch who lives in the woods; Grandpa went to kill her by piercing her heart with a stick. If Grandpa comes home after six o’clock, he will have become like her, and Jovan will have to kill him. Jovan, on the other hand, warns Nicola to leave as soon as he can… but then the clock strikes six, and the old man comes in, cut up, but apparently alive. “The curse has been broken,” he says. He even brought back the witch’s hand for proof. 

Nicola hears someone skulking around near the children’s bedroom, and Sdenka checks it out. Jovan thinks maybe Nicola was drinking a little too much.  Sdenka clearly likes Nicola and wishes he wouldn’t be leaving tomorrow morning. A sex scene arrives out of nowhere. 

In the morning, the car is fixed, but Jovan learns that little Irinia went off into the woods with Grandpa last night– after dark. Everyone goes out looking for her. Jovan realizes he should have killed the old man after all. Grandpa Gorca returns, and he’s not looking healthy anymore. The little girl is not with him. Jovan tears the old man’s shirt open, and he’s got a big wound. Jovan then impales the man through the heart until his eyes bleed. The old man dissolves as they all look on. 

We cut back to Nicola in the hospital, going mad remembering all this. 

Jovan explains to Nicola that he had no choice, but Nicola wants to bring in the police. Sdenka begs Nicola to forget the whole thing, but he gets in the car and leaves, driving past little Irina, who walks out of the woods toward the house. Elena hears Irina and runs to her. Irina is clearly dead now too, and she bites Elena on the neck. As Jovan comes looking for them, Elena sits up. 

Nicola goes to town, finishes his business, and talks to the man there about the ignorant, hard headed locals he met in the forest. He goes to see the policeman for the area, he was fired for being too superstitious. The man explains that it wasn’t murder, Gorca had become a vourdalak, an undead creature. This sort of thing happens fairly often in this area. He tells Nicola to go and take Sdenka away from that terrible place. 

Nicola does go back for Sdenka. He finds the house all messed up with no one home. Sdenka’s door opens, and she says everyone is dead. He wonders why she’s so cold and has blood all over her neck; she wants him to stay with her forever. He sees the others staring in the window at them. Nicola sees that he’s in a very bad position and slowly backs away. The car stalls not very far away, right next to the two little dead children. Yes, the whole family are vampires now. 

Everyone fights, and Nicola eventually kills Jovan, Vlaado, and Elena and then drives away, leaving the evil children behind. 

In the hospital, we see Sdenka sneaking around and eventually coming into Nicola’s room. She’s still in love with him. He runs into a maintenance room and works to get out of the straightjacket he’s in. He stabs her through the heart and she dies. The orderlies come in and grab Nicola, who swears he’s not a murderer. The doctor turns Sdenka’s body over, and she’s not decomposing like the others– she was alive after all– until Nicola killed her! 

Brian’s Commentary

This is clearly based on the same legend as the Wurdulak story from “Black Sabbath” (1963). It’s exactly the same story, but this one is much more fleshed out and detailed. It’s good!

Kevin’s Commentary

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. I think it added to it watching it in Italian with subtitles rather than a dubbed version. It moves well, and wasn’t too long. Thumbs up.

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