Director: Mario Caiano
Year: 1970
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Ombre roventi
Genre: Cult
Plot:
Heading off for a photoshoot, a model arrives in Egypt to begin her assignment only to find that the company she works for required her to be there in order to fulfill the prophecy of a strange cult believing she is the reincarnation of an ancient god and tries to get away.
Review:
This was quite the fun if slightly flawed Euroshocker. What manages to work nicely for this one is the fact that there's a relatively nice sleazy piece of atmospheric shenanigans at play here that really works nicely for the first half. The idea at play here, that she's been brought there for a significantly different purpose than what she's been lead to believe, gets this off to a nice start with the strange treatment she receives at the airport despite the expected nature of her arrival to the way nobody seems to support the company's existence. Wrapped together with the strange dreams and visions including her in sapphic embraces with a strange woman as well as the surrounding glares from cult members, the first half has a rather nice and mysterious atmosphere that nearly matches the ambiance given by the authentic Egyptian locations. Since that is a rather foreign and unexplored culture, the constant talk of the different gods and their legendary powers, the deep culture cultivated by the religion and placing all the time amongst the different artifacts and locations here makes this one quite appealing during these sections as there's a great amount of supernatural tied together here for an appealing story.
Once that in turn leads to the strange cult and their powers, this one takes off rather nicely into the Eurotrash realm as the first scenes showing their sacrificial ways and offering up the woman before the entire cult makes for quite a rather intriguing premise as for how it's dropped into the film as a whole while the later sequence showing her being trapped and captured by the cult as they prepare her for the ceremony where she's sexually attacked and targeted before the last minute rescue attempt makes for a nice lively bit of action to see getting played out here. That gets built up even more in the finale which is all sorts of cheesy fun with the completely over-the-top ceremony played out in the temple as there's quite a lot of energetic tribal dancing and gyrating that occurs during the preparation attempts which gives this one a nice feel coupled with the sleazy thrill of it taking place while she's in the nude the whole time and ends with a bang as there's the fiery, explosion-filled climax that gives it a nice punch. These here are the film's positive points, although it does have a few minor issues holding it back.
One of the film's biggest stumbling blocks is the fact that hardly anything at all happening in this one. The vast majority of time is building up the fact that there's a strange, mysterious secret amongst the coven that involves her, but rather than get any direct and irrefutable elements that signal she's under the attack of something it's mere suggestion at play here. The endless romance scenes showing him trying to win her trust and the travelogue scenes of them in the city are simply bland and really drag this one down somewhat, making for quite a long time without anything at all happening throughout this one as the pacing comes off really stilted and dragging at times. Likewise, there's also the rather confusing main story in the second half as there's never any clear- cut sign throughout this one about who's on which side as the alliances are which is then further complicated by the actual finale as that never really clears it up either. These here what hold it back even though it has a lot to like here.
Overview: ***.5/5
An incredibly fun and over-the-top genre effort that gets a lot right, there's not too many who won't enjoy this one as a lot of the positives are incredibly crowdpleasing. Definitely give this one a look if you're intrigued by the subject matter, fans of sleazy Eurohorror or interested in the genre, while only those that aren't appreciative of the style won't be won over by this one.
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