VividSimon Simply Perfect

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

gilligan1965 I like every aspect of this movie! :)It's B&W; very dim and dark; the settings are eerie; the acting is great; the story is well-conceived and scary; the Esperanto language, if one is not familiar, gives the impression that the characters are speaking some ancient and lost language; and, best of all, everything about this old cult-classic gives the viewer the impression that this is set in some Godforsaken, yet, somewhat beautiful, evil European township where incubi and succubi wander the countryside in search of stray human victims! This movie gives off the same creepy vibes as did "The Twilight Zone;" "The Seventh Seal;" and, all of those Spanish and Italian horror movies that came out in the 1960s and 1970s...yet, this was filmed in California!?!? :)Then, again, California isn't all blonde-babes and sunny beaches...at this time, it had Anton Szandor LaVay. This 'California' movie also had its curses - someone destroyed all of the prints of this movie (only one was found later; remastered; and, re-released); Milos Milos, the 'Incubus' in this movie, murdered Mickey Rooney's estranged wife, Carolyn Mitchell, then killed himself; actress Ann Atmar (Arndis - Marco's sister) committed suicide; and, years later, William Shatner was a suspect in his wife's drowning-death.Something great came out of this movie, too, other than the movie itself..."Captain Kirk!"The movie I compare this to the most, due to the terrible events that occurred after production (as with this movie); and, its darkness and evil agenda as far as the incubus is concerned...is "Rosemary's Baby." Like the incubus in this movie, concerning the unsuspecting Arndis, the Devil in "Rosemary's Baby" also played 'hide-the-evil-serpent' with the unsuspecting Rosemary. Despite rumors and urban legend, Anton Szandor LaVey 'didn't' play the Devil in "Rosemary's Baby.""Rosemary's Baby" had a terrible following-of-events as did this movie - "Helter Skelter;" Mia Farrow's on-the-set divorce papers delivery from Frank Sinatra; Roman Polanski's later stachatory rape conviction; and, John Lennon's murder in 1980 at the "Dakota" that was the setting of this movie.However...these are the controversially-scary and believable things that people apply to anything-and-everything in order to add intrigue to an already-great horror movie; or, to anything else.In the end, the succubus (Kia) 'really-did' love Marco after all; and, in the end, she fought the incubus over this. I like how the incubus, after turning into a goat and fighting with Kia showed 'wiggling-tongue' at 1:11:57! I would have, too, if I was on top of her...Allyson Ames was "HOT!" :)This is a great movie, all-the-way, and, I give it EIGHT STARS! :)

T Y Pretension is arranging the surface perception of being deep without actually being deep. That's why 'Last Year at Marienbad' is not pretentious (It's the real deal). And it's why 'Incubus' is pretentious. It shoehorned full of 'poetic' hyperbole ...foisting wall-to-wall pap on viewers in case they might miss it. Poetics are something a filmmaker stumbles across along a structural path. Half-hearted poetics decimate the structure here. There isn't a single gambit, or any stakes here that concern a viewer.If you'd seen this as a kid, it would have done an end-run around your growing adult taste, and bought your affection with some deliriously well-crafted visuals for a horror movie. The effort behind the camera is very accomplished, and suggests a careful study of old noirs. Really nice work. They can't seem to decide on what night looks like; but day for night looks better here than it ever did in noir.Then there's the horrid acting and that whole Esperanto thing.

The_Void William Shatner made a handful of interesting films in his career; and Incubus is certainly one of them; though unfortunately it qualifies more as an interesting failure. The film is shot in black and white, plays out like a fairytale, handles a story about legendary medieval monsters, succubus's and incubuses, and most bizarrely of all, is shot in the auxiliary language known as 'Esperanto'. Director Leslie Stevens' main influence would appear to be Ingmar Bergman as this film feels a lot like one of his (particularly The Seventh Seal) in terms of style, though it's much less deep than the majority of Bergman films. The film focuses on a 'pure' man named Marc. He becomes the focus of Kia, a succubus who spends her time seducing bad men and luring them to their deaths. She's tired of this, however, and decides that she'd rather pit herself against someone good and who isn't going to hell anyway, which is against the will of her sister Amael (also a succubus). However, things don't quite go to plan for Kia so she goes running back to her sister and the two conjure an incubus...The plot idea behind the film is good and admirable as its "pure" horror, but the execution of the film ensures that it's never as interesting as it could, and by rights, should be. I have no idea why the director would choose to make his film in 'Esperanto', it does make it standout somewhat but it doesn't actually add anything to the movie thus making the language rather pointless. The script is poor anyway and the lead characters spend a hell of a lot of time babbling about things that aren't important, which just makes the film feel like an arty farty load of rubbish. One area that the director does succeed in however is the visual side of things as the film really does look great and we've got some great set-pieces too; the introduction of the incubus being the film's biggest highlight! The film is mercifully short at less than seventy five minutes and that's a good thing as the director seems keen to drag things out as much as possible, which means the film can be a bit of a struggle at times. I respect this film for it's visuals but nothing more really and I can't imagine that this would appeal much to many people.

Andrew Leavold Incubus is one of those films that seem to have appeared from a parallel universe - a wonderfully atmospheric film (imagine Lovecraft filmed by Ingmar Bergman!) that was completely lost until the mid 90s. A floating allegory set on a mythical island, a pre-Star Trek Shatner stars as Marc, an innocent Christ-like figure tempted by a sister tag-team of succubi out collecting souls for their infernal master. The younger demoness Kia (played by Allyson Ames) falls in love with his purity which has dire consequences for both of them. After Kia runs screaming from a church Marc has blissfully dragged her to, her sister Amael (Eloise Hardt) raises an Incubus from the pit of hell (which, despite being some scaffolding and cheap theatrical lighting tricks, is a sight to warm the cockles of Brueghel's heart). Esperanto was devised in the late 1800s by Ludovic Zamenhof, an idealistic professor who wanted a universal language to unite humanity. It was quite popular until the Great Wars, which proved once and for all that mankind is destined to remain dumb, angry and divided. Beatnik and would-be mystic director Leslie Stevens obviously shared Zamenhof's idealism, and thus Incubus stands as the language's only feature. It's a bizarre soundtrack to Stevens' visuals - stark black and white photography, beautifully composed, with the robed figures representing a grand battle between good and evil. It's as if Bergman's The Seventh Seal was painstakingly transcribed and translated into pigeon Norwegian.The results are surreal, to say the least, and the final appearance of the Devil as a bedraggled farmyard goat is too much, even for a low-budget horror film with SERIOUS pretensions. Arty, insane, and with Shatner reportedly spouting the worst accent in the history of Esperanto, we unleash the beast from the pit: the 1965 Incubus.