The Devil's Plaything (1974)

One of my all time favorites.

It is a performances centric movie

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Baroness Varga was put to death 400 years ago for her Bathory-style attraction to human blood, and she put a curse on the place. She promised to return one day, and it appears that time has come.Hungarian actress Nadja Henkowa plays Frau Wanda Krock, the housekeeper, who bears a passing resemblance to singer/songwriter PJ Harvey. She is is head of a coven of stern eye-browed maidservants who 'welcome' a disparate crew of travellers forced to seek refuge in her castle due to stormy weather (Henkowa's performance is my favourite in the film – a fine balance of brooding menace, fearsome rage and passionate sensuality). The characters address each other with exquisite politeness, but a tone of condescension and abhorrence. In the great cellars of the castle, you see, erotic rituals are taking place that imply the maidservants are not so straight-laced after all. Apart from Henkowa, who steals every scene she is in, Marie Forså is very good as Helga. Her transformation from seemingly 'innocent' to something far more provocative is well played.Everything you need for a typical Euro-horror is here – much stilted acting, bare-breasted erotica, unconvincing day-for-night shots and a genuine crumbling castle set in spacious, beautiful locations. This Swedish/Swiss/German collaboration is directed by Joseph W. Sarno, who began his pioneering work in the sexploitation genre in 1961 with 'Nude in Charcoal', before venturing into more explicit territory.The story is regularly padded out/interrupted/enlivened (the choice is yours) with lingering sex scenes of varied persuasion. The resulting film is vastly overlong and has a disappointingly low-key ending, but nevertheless, is a very enjoyable example of its genre. The physical and mental connection between vampire-like curses and sensuality has always been a selling point, and is portrayed quite explicitly and very effectively here. Although it could be argued that the whole venture is just an excuse for lots of heaving breasts and softcore activity, and that the performances (from a cast who are not speaking in their native tongues) are typically 'Euro trashy', this is a powerful meeting of sexuality and dark rituals - complete with phallus-shaped candles and a tribal drum-beat that will stay with you long after the film has ended!

As has been suggested by others, this is rather disappointing. I've enjoyed all the films of Joseph Sarno, that I've seen and I suppose the most attractive common denominator in the US ones is the normalcy. If not in the characters, necessarily then certainly in the way that the sexual activity is shot, there is a certain frisson for the viewer because we believe into the activity. Here with a vampire tale we are already somewhat distanced and the way this is shot (more like a witch's tale than vampire one) this has to be fantasy. So, vigorous, though the sex is and effective though it is, the one thing it lacks is believability. There are some decent scenes and much nudity but this is no great shakes as a vampire movie - we don't even get a bloody bite till over an hour in - instead there are the constant comings and goings of the coven, sorry vampire lair, and just occasional scenes of visceral action.

Making his way back to home soil following the extended Scandinavian sojourn that yielded the landmark likes of INGA and DADDY, DARLING, Joe Sarno got sidetracked into the Swiss alps by distributor Chris Nebe who had made a mint dubbing and distributing several of the director's '60s sexploitation efforts in German-speaking countries and was now looking to branch out into production. For Sarno who was dragging his feet to return stateside anyway, knowing full well that he couldn't keep escaping the looming ever larger specter of hardcore, this artistic alliance came as a godsend. Their association, which was to last the course of three films (BABY LOVE and BUTTERFLY being the other two), got off to a less than fortuitous start with VEIL OF BLOOD which clearly adhered more to Nebe's notion of naughtiness, informed by Hammer's sexy streak of lesbian vampire sagas with the Karnstein trilogy and his access to a 12th Century Munich mansion owned by his uncle, the Baron Malsen. Sarno seemed out of his depth dealing with the Gothic trappings the genre demanded, resulting in one of his clunkiest carnal capers. Fortunately, both follow-ups played much more to his great strengths as a filmmaker which were the psychology of sex and the often inadmissible motivations that drive a character's attraction to another person. VEIL only really swings into gear when focused on the unhealthy desire between brother and sister Peter and Julia Malenkow, brought to a head by innocent interloper Helga, played by the magnificent Marie Forsa making her dirty movie debut.A proverbial wild child prowling the streets of Stockholm when they met, this Swedish siren served as Sarno's true inspiration for the triumvirate in which she was to take center stage. No shrinking violet, she shrewdly had it put in her contract that no explicit footage could be made public, regarding a legitimate career that never happened, no matter how far she decided to take matters with her co-stars, which was all the way by most accounts ! Her work for Sarno holds additional interest for American audiences to hear her deliver her own dialog as by means of experiment to facilitate export these movies were shot with the predominantly German cast speaking English. This proves something of a drawback in the case of VEIL however as its dense plot requires reams of plot exposition, most of it delivered with fluctuating intelligibility by Hungarian Nadja Henkowa as Frau Wanda Krock, the sinister housekeeper at Castle Varga, the ancestral home of an evil Baroness (Elisabeth Batory in all but name) burned at the stake four centuries ago. Hot to trot Helga's one of two remaining descendants come to roost, the other being uptight brunette for contrast Monika, the scrumptious Ulrike Butz, a veteran of the SCHOOLGIRL REPORT series who sadly OD'd a few years later. She's fawned over by butch best friend Iris, frequently forgotten skin starlet Flavia Keyt, who had caused quite an uproar half a decade earlier sharing a bathtub with pneumatic Sybil Danning in Adrian Hoven's THE LONG SWIFT SWORD OF SIEGFRIED. Monika barely features in the film's narrative until the fiery reincarnation finale, heavily signposted by her "uncanny resemblance" to the portrait of the dead Baroness.Fly in the ointment is Dr. Julia Malenkow (Anke Syring, shouldering the heaviest thespian burden not altogether convincingly, familiar from the impressive line-up of pulchritude offered by Franz Antel's SEXY SUSAN SINS AGAIN supplementing the ranks of Terry Torday, Edwige Fenech and Femi Benussi), an expert in the occult whose car has conveniently broken down in the vicinity. Brother Peter (bland hunk Nico Wolferstetter, an occasional hardcore performer in Lasse Braun's landmark SENSATIONS) in tow, she's dead set on getting to the bottom of the strange goings on at Castle Varga, starting with that infernal bongo beat rising from the basement every night as the bare nekkid Wanda leads her band of boob and butt shaking Baroness worshipers in a rudimentary introduction to belly dancing and bouts of feverish penis-shaped candle fondling, a spectacle even Sarno couldn't save from ridicule. Still worse is the lady doc's bat attack done on the cheap, Syring wildly waving her arms at unseen assailants as amplified bat squeaking fills the soundtrack and subsequently mauled by a pair of unconvincing hand puppets ! Far more effective is the character's tortured soul searching as she finds her brother's taken for granted affection alienated by Helga, the resulting triangle fuels what modest dramatic tension the story manages to develop. Even the vaunted vampire aspect alluded to in all of the movie's many titles is almost casually discarded with only the Malenkows clutching their "garlic crosses" a clear reference to bloodsucker lore, as sure a sign as any Sarno was definitely operating outside his comfort zone. Equally clueless appears the cinematography by his regular contributor Steve Silverman, a master of mood on ALL THE SINS OF SODOM who can't muster much more than murky here, scoring zilch on atmosphere and squandering a superb location.Tragic Claudia Fielers portrays Wanda's right hand wench Samana whose lascivious finger-licking after fondling Forsa "down there" leaves an indelible lustful impression, more genuinely erotic than much of the textbook heavy breathing. She's sadly remembered most for being the subject of Andrzej Kostenko's supremely tasteless THE EVOLUTION OF SNUFF incorporating the actress's real life suicide at age 28. Robust blonde Heidrun Hankammer was a sex education mainstay and co-starred in Dietrich's original 1968 adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's DIE NICHTEN DER FRAU OBERST. While Sarno resumed residence on the other side of the Atlantic for one of his most fruitful filmmaking periods with the Rebecca Brooke cycle, Nebe's association with adult proved short-lived. Taking a page perhaps from the book of respected ex-pat Yugoslavian documentary director Marijan Vajda, who acted as production manager on VEIL while his same-named son handled second unit (and was to helm the Nebe-produced creepy cult horror BLOODLUST), he turned to documentaries with considerable success later in life.

This masterpiece of lesbian horror comes from exploitation master Joseph W.Sarno.It features plenty of soft core sex,really hot lesbian sequences plus a lot of naked women.The acting is pretty good and the film is quite atmospheric and well-made.Marie Forsa is one of the hottest chicks I have ever seen in a horror movie-it's a visual pleasure to see her wonderful body.Sarno really knows how to pick up hot looking ladies.A must see for fans of sexploitation!