5/10
Exploitation, gory and disagreeable film jammed with tortures and atmospheric setting
23 January 2020
Gruesome and exploitative film with abundant sensationalistic scenes and flinching shots of torture. Set in 1700 Austria, a young witch-hunter: Udo Kier, is an apprentice who follows his superior, Herbert Lom, a known Inquistor travelling across the county judging, pursuing condemning the suspicious people and the heinous underlings : Reggie Nader, Herbert Fux , Johannes Buzalski. Then the young man has serious doubts about their activities and to be aware the brutality, injustice, falsehood on the inquisitive trials. Things go wrong when the doubtful youngster has an enjoyable romance with a sexy girl, Olivera Katarina, then the latter is framed to be a hag. Along the way, other women accused to be witches : Gaby Fuchs, Ingeborg Schoner and husband : Adrian Hoven who also produced, are cruelly tortured.

This is a B entertainment based on Historical fiction and it cannily captures outrageous scene tortures and a thunderous period full of superstition, great ignorance and fear when innocent people could be chased, and confess to acts of witchcraft just to get the torture to stop. Witchcraft, necromancy and love story do not mix, as a twisted romance takes place at a medieval set between a witch-hunter apprentice and a gorgeous sexy woman accused to be hag. These Witch Finders were inspired by "The Malleus Malleficarum", the witches' hammer , what may be the most blood-soaked book in human history, it is instructed the clergy on how to locate, torture and kill all the free-thinkiing women during Witch-hunt, in fact history tells fifty thousand are captured and burned alive at the stake. The Mark of the Devil has notoriously graphic torture scenes that add to the mayhem , though the strange part is that based on true stories. It is not for the squeamish, as the horrible tortures include a naked blonde girl was stretched on the rack, Chinese torture, slashing, stabbing, young women being tied to stakes screaming while fire burning them from below.

Other films in similar style are as follows : the classic Witchfinder General or The Conqueror Worm 1968 by Michael Reeves with Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy . The Devils 1971 by Ken Russell with Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave. The sequel : The Mark of the Devil by Adrian Hoven with Reggie Nader . And Inquisicion 1977 directed and starred by Paul Naschy with Daniela Giordiano, Antonio Iranzo.

The motion picture was regularly directed by Michael Armstrong, though Michael Reeves was first hired, as he was set to shoot it, but he passed away before filming was to start. Armstrong is a craftsman who worked as an assistant in Witchfinder General, he has directed a few films, such as : The haunted house of horror and Screamtime. He is usually a movie writer, such as Black panther, The sex thief, Shoestring, Adventures of a private eye. Rating : 5/10. And, at the time considered to be a video nasty, banned in many countries. Including vomit bags at the cinemas, rated V for violence and deemed to be positively the most horrifying movie ever made. Passable for some ambiguity, brief period piece and a lingering, grim nature.
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