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Penned by the great Santiago Moncada (BELL FROM
HELL), Manuel Cano directs this with an unsophisticated zest, employing
blaxploitation clichés (US Video title: VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST),
documentary on-location footage, lensed in Port Au Prince, Haiti, of
elaborately erotic Voodoo rites along with cheap gore effects (a severed
head carried around by our protagonist, a reincarnated mummy, looks
constructed from cardboard soaked with red paint.)
Spaghetti Western veteran Aldo Sambrell is Gato Nebo, a thousand year
old Haitan priest executed along with his lover, Kenya (Eva Leon), for
adultery and murder. The opening precredit scene, set in a tropical
myth-time, is shot through crimson filters and scored with pulsating
native drums. Gato Nebo is fitted out in a long black gown and poisoned
with a serpent ring at midnight on a palm lined beach. The dancers swirl
around flashing vivid lights, banners and ribbons. Lots of lens flares
pump up the hallucinatory ambience. Half naked women taunt the condemned
man as he is placed in his symbol-laden coffin while still alive yet
unable to move. Cut to Nasa footage of lunar modules and the earth seen
from the moon. The Sheriff (Fernando Sancho) narrates, "...begin
again." Then Fernando Garcia Morchillo's fuzz guitar rock score
kicks in for the opening credits.
Most of the action is set on a cruise ship as Gato Nebo goes berserk,
decimating the crew after being awakened. After the boat docks, he
appears in an acceptably human persona complete with a mid-seventies
chic Nehru jacket. With his shaved head Sambrell suggests Telly Savalas
on an LSD jag. He escapes to the airport where he runs a scientist over
with a steamroller! This guy means business, obviously.
There's a romance of sorts with the reincarnated Kenya, luckily enbodied
by the sensuous Eva Leon, now the secretary of anthropologist Alfredo
Mayo (a 70's Spanish horror regular). When cornered by fat Sheriff
Fernando Sancho (in the same white Panama Suit he sported in Cano's
SWAMP OF THE RAVENS) during a live broadcast of Voodoo ceremonies in
Port Au Prince, our favorite mummy escapes with Kenya to an ancient
cavern. Sancho arrives with a squad of soldiers armed with flames
throwers and our lovers are tragically incinerated in a climax which is
simultaneously nihilistic and absurd.
Sambrell really turns on the charm this time around, especially in his
normal human guise and proves to be a capable romantic leading man (or
mummy). Crusted up and clawed in his monster makeup he makes for nasty
looking relic as he runs around the mise en scene decapitating everyone
in sight with a ritualistic sword. The legendary Sancho huffs and puffs
as he pursues the monster claiming to be nothing more than, "a fat
old cop."
This appeared on US video, wonderfully retitled as VOODOO BLACK
EXORCIST, cashing in on the blaxploitation angle, the success of THE
EXORCIST and the 70s cultural fascination with alternative religions. A
totally delirious entertainment package from one of the more obscure
Spanish horror auteurs.
-- Reviewed by Robert Monell
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