[yasr_overall_rating]
The mummy of a long dormant but powerful Caribbean voodoo priest Gatanebo gets revived on a luxury South Seas ocean liner and proceeds to terrorize the passengers. He falls for the ravishing Sylvia, who reminds him of his old flame Kenya.
I can see the advertisements for Manuel Caño’s 1974 Spanish “voodoosploitation” flick, “Voodoo Black Exorcist,” clearly: “The director of ‘The Swamp of the Ravens’ Unleashes A Horrifying Tale of Savage Murder, Witchcraft and… Love!” Okay, I made that tagline up – there was no way I was going to one-up the real thing: “This Dude Means Business, So Watch Out When Your Nerves Start to Shatter!”
Coming from the same bottomless reserve of Z-list exploitation films as the one Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino dug into for grainy, crude and cheap “Grindhouse” inspirations, “Voodoo Black Exorcist” lives up to its genre in every conceivable way. It’s poorly made, from top to bottom: horrific acting from leads Aldo Sambrell, Fernando Sancho, and Eva León; little-to-no sense of camera positioning, lens focusing or, you know, narrative structure; laughable English dubbing; editing so choppy it makes the chopping in the film pale in comparison… And that’s of course, disregarding the blatant racism, white actors shamelessly strolling around in full “blackface” makeup; the glorified violence; the senseless nudity and frequent objectification of women… So bad it’s good? Not really. If “Voodoo”’s got one thing for it, it’s this: predictable it’s not.
In other words, you’ll have little-to-no clue what’s going on and/or you won’t give a rat’s ass. I’ll throw some expletives at you, in true grindhouse tradition. Woman’s Head Gets Sliced Off In A Sinister Island Voodoo Ritual! Blatantly Caucasian Head Swiftly Turns Dark-Skinned Once Detached From Body! A U.S.S.R. Rocket Departs to Space! An Ancient Mummy Inexplicably Ends Up On A Luxury Ocean Liner! A Woman’s Mystical Tribal Belly-Dance Awakens Mummy! Mummy Kills Innocent Kitten! Mummy Sees White Woman, Experiences Flashbacks To Its Blackface Lover! Mummy Chops Off Innocent Man’s Paper-Mâché Head! White Woman Wakes Up Next To Disembodied Head (“Godfather” homage, anyone?)
Filmmakers Take Copious Amounts Of Ayahuasca!
All Hell Breaks Lose!
Some exploitation classics deserve resurrecting. Examples include: “Night of The Living Dead,” “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” Dario Argento’s stuff, all the Pam Grier blaxploitation stuff, “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry” and “Vanishing Point,” if you’re into car chases… I’ll even go so far as to find redeeming value in video “nasties”, such as “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Last House On The Left.” Those cult classics possessed a sort of rugged, dark charm and basic filmmaking proficiency. “Voodoo Black Exorcist” has all the production/ethical values of a cheap 1970s porn, minus the titillation. It’s a truly painful-to-sit-through mess of a film. No wonder it’s been brought back to life by The Film Detective, known for resurrecting cult-ish duds (see: “Dementia 13,” “A Bucket of Blood,” etc). Criterion wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot beeswax candle.
Now available to own on Blu-ray from The Film Detective
