Director: Giulio Paradisi (as Michael J. Paradise)
Year: 1979
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Stridulum
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After a series of strange incidents, a man races off to stop a young girl thought to be the last demonic progeny on Earth from leading her mother astray into a demonic prophecy with a Cosmically-ordained cult into procreating a being like her that will signal the end of mankind before it occurs.
Review:
This was just an overall confusing and messy effort that was really troubling. One of the main problems with this one is the fact that there's just no sense at all to the storyline, as this one is so overdone and just plain jumbled together that there's hardly anything that becomes coherent about it. The central concept of the astral-dimensional progeny of a satanic deity manifesting in a little girl is a fine-enough concept if only it stuck with that, despite how loony that plot-device actually is, but then it adds in a series of utterly twisted and jumbled plot-points including a pet hawk that's trained to kill, a holy Jesus figure recounting tales to bald children in a garden-of-Eden setting, aliens disguised as humans, abductions, satanic powers and two secret societies intent on the interest of the little girl yet both of whom seem malicious more-often-than-not including the supposed protectors. This ends up creating a jumbled and chaotic plotline that this thing is so stuffed with off-the-wall moments and plot points that it's hard to keep track of anything.
That leads into the other issue here where there's so much going on here with all these elements thrust into the middle of the story that elements start canceling each other out or drop off all together which either makes their inclusion questionable in the first place or are merely set-up to ensure that there's something on-screen to hinder the criminally slow-pace and lack of action that continually hurtles forth here. There’s so much time here spent trying to kill off the mother in her wheelchair with a series of half-hearted attempts to kill her that make her look incompetent more than the wife being lucky to survive or the intervention by the Cosmic guardian to save her, as each of these presents it's own problems to the film so it sort of lumbers along without much grasp of how to actually utilize such seemingly independent ideas into a cohesive whole, lowering this one from what it could’ve been.
While these are what bring it down, there are some likable factors here. It really does become such a burden trying to shift through the plot here that it finally outlives it's usefulness and renders the finale nearly moot by the time it finally comes around as the action of the chase through the hospital corridors, down into the street and finally back into the house of mirrors that it doesn't seem to matter how much fun and exciting all this becomes as the ensuing points to get there don't make sense and become quite troublesome to get through. The attempts at taking out the mother early on in a series of convoluted accidents offer up some likable ideas overall, from the falcon attack in the car, the ice skating attack, or the celestial beings appearing to intervene in the house ambush, making for a somewhat enjoyable setup here. There's a good film in this somewhere, as the striking visuals and chilling origins state here, but it's just not there under the weight of the massive, messy-written story.
Overview: **/5
Convoluted, messy, and problematic Italian genre effort, this one has an intriguing idea at its core, but does suffer from a series of big issues that hold this back from what it could’ve been. Those with an interest in this type of European genre fare or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, while most others might want to heed caution.
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