Katarsis (Sfida al diavolo)
Italy, 1963
Director: Giuseppe Veggezzi
Script: Giuseppe Veggezzi
Soundtrack: Berto Pisano
Starring:
Christopher Lee (Lord of the Castle)
Giorgio Ardisson / George Ardisson (Gugo)
Vittoria Centroni / Lilly Parker (Maga)
Anita Cacciolata / Anita Deyer (Jenny)
Alice Paneque / Bella Cortez (Frie)
Mario Polletin / Mario Zacarti (Gian)
Adriana Ambesi (Lady of the Castle)
Pietro Vidali / Piero Vada (Peyo)
Plot
After being wounded in an attack, Carlo goes to a convent asking for help from his old friend Peyo; who has taken the habits and now calls himself Friar Remigio. The one who shot Carlo is a certain Ciro, who has just arrived from Beirut. Ciro intends to get hold of some important plans or documents, which he believes are in Carlo’s possession. However, as the wounded man explains to his friar friend, these documents are not in his possession; they were stolen by a certain Alma.
Alma is a vedette in a variety show. Friar Remigio goes there to try to convince the dancer to return the documents. This is the only way to save Carlo’s life. Alma knew Peyo from the past, and seeing him dressed as a monk, she thinks it is a masquerade; she cannot believe that Peyo has made such a radical change.
Thus, the now Friar Remigio begins to tell the vedette about the vicissitudes that led him to seclude himself in a monastery…
A few years ago Peyo was still a rowdy, hard-drinking hooligan who indulged in all sorts of excesses with his friends – two more boys and three girls: Friya, Gugo, Jenny, Gianni and Maga. The six members of the gang of scoundrels arrived one night at a gloomy abandoned castle. From that moment on, a turning point occurred: after “a hysterical and animalistic orgy” appeared “a strange character”, as if “out of another time”, who told them about his “rebellion against the laws of life and death”, because of his love for a woman who had left this world. For this reason, this individual sold his soul to the devil; and the deadline is about to expire when Satan will come to collect the debt. The “strange personage” asked the young people for help to find his beloved deceased in one of the crypts of the castle and thus break the curse that weighs on them. He promised to reward them with all the riches of the castle if they succeeded.
Friar Remigio goes on to tell Alma how he and his friends, in a frenzy at the prospect of getting rich and drunk after drinking huge quantities of alcohol, began to explore the gloomy castle, descending deeper and deeper into a spiral of horror and delirium…
Commentary
This very interesting and unusual product is a genre crossover with a very atypical narrative structure. It starts as a spy movie, so fashionable in the early ’60s, and gradually turns into a gothic horror film (also fashionable at that time in Italy). The chases of agents looking for secret plans or documents, with shootouts and international intrigues in between, leave room (from the flashback story with voice-over by Peyo/Remigio) to a classic nineteenth-century horror theme with living dead, satanic pacts, ghosts and mysteries from beyond the grave; all in an atmosphere of gloomy castles full of cobwebs and only lit by the faint candles of candelabras.
It is also possible to look for an occult meaning (an esoteric interpretation) to the film, based on its multiple symbolic and archetypal elements: The “initiatory journey”, the ‘transmutation’, the “trials” (which begin as a game but are actually something much more serious)…. The ascent up the “endless” spiral staircase, the hall of mirrors (which seems to indicate that everyone must face himself), the “descent into hell”, the goal of redemption, the “cursed poet”, the fact that one girl is called ‘Alma’ and another “Maga”… All this is seasoned with a very successful atmosphere of dreamlike unreality.
In its surprising (and effective) amalgam of themes, “Katarsis” is somewhat reminiscent of some of the Mexican “El Santo” films – in which the masked wrestler fused such seemingly disparate genres as “James Bond-esque” espionage and vampiric/lycanthropic horror around his charismatic figure.
Another element in the film at hand that makes it similar to the Santo films is the inclusion of filler musical numbers (this is especially the case in the first installments of the Santo saga, see René Cardona’s “Santo contra el espectro del estrangulador”). In Katarsis we are shown the performance of the vedette, that of a supposedly Argentinean singer and something like a charleston number. All this bizarre cocktail gives the film a very particular charm, which makes it unforgettable.
Decades later, many directors of the fantastic-terror genre would take up the premise of “a gang of young hooligans who arrive at a castle or abandoned house and strange things start happening to them”. “Katarsis” is therefore one of the pioneers in that line of argument that would be so exploited especially in the ’80s. Among them are “The Ghosts of Sodom” (1988) or “The House of Time” (1989), both by Lucio Fulci.
Also worth mentioning in this context is the memorable “Tragic Ceremony at Villa Alexander” (Riccardo Freda, 1972), which has several parallels with “Katarsis” (in this case, it is a mixture of polizziesco and gothic horror).
The castle’s “Mephistopheles” is played by none other than Christopher Lee, famous for his roles as Dracula in Hammer films – and who also participated in other Italian productions such as “Hercules at the Center of the Earth” (Mario Bava, 1961). Friya, one of the girls in the gang, is played by Bella Cortez; Cuban actress and dancer whom we saw in the peplums “The Giant of Metropolis” (Umberto Scarpelli, 1961) or “Vulcan son of Jupiter” (Emimmo Salvi, 1962). George Ardisson gives life to Gugo “the cursed poet”. Ardisson participated in the aforementioned “Hercules to the center of the earth” and also in “The long hairs of death” (Antonio Margheriti, 1964).
Unfortunately, “Katarsis” is the only film by its director; the unknown but talented Giuseppe Veggezzi.
The soundtrack was composed by Berto Pisano (“Katarsis” was his debut in the world of film music). Later Pisano would compose the soundtracks of “Strip Nude for Your Killer” (Antonio Margheriti, 1975), “Death Smiles on a Murderer ” (Joe D’Amato, 1973) or the sublime zombie-ploitation “Nights of terror” (Andrea Bianchi, 1981).
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