Incubus 1966
Sherley
Incubus was the second feature film to use Esperanto, following the 1964 film Angoroj. The use of Esperanto was intended to create an eerie, otherworldly feeling,[3] and Stevens prohibited dubbing the film into other languages; however, on the Special Features section of the DVD the makers claim that Esperanto was used because of perceived greater international sales. Esperanto speakers are generally disappointed by the pronunciation of the language by the cast of Incubus.[3] The film was considered to be lost for many years, until a copy with French subtitles was found at Cinmathque Franaise in 1996.
The film is set in the village of Nomen Tuum (Latin, "your name"), which has a well that can heal the sick and make a person more beautiful. Because of the latter, many conceited or corrupt individuals come to the village for this cosmetic effect. The village has notoriety for its magical water, as well as being a ground for darkness and demons. Along the village, succubi entice the tainted souls who come to Nomen Tuum and lead them to their deaths in order to offer their souls to Hell/the God of Darkness. A prominent young succubus named Kia (Allyson Ames) loathes the routine of herding sinners to hell. Kia claims her powers are being wasted, and needs something/someone more stimulating as her prey. Her sister succubus, Amael (Eloise Hardt), warns Kia of the danger that a pure soul will bring: love. Kia persists anyway and attempts to find a clergyman to seduce into darkness. After watching their behaviour, however, she realizes these men are just as iniquitous and shrewd as her previous victims.
She soon stumbles upon a suitable victim: Marc (Shatner), a young soldier, who with his sister Arndis (Ann Atmar) comes to the sacred water in order to heal his battle wounds. Kia then continues to follow the siblings and pretends to be lost. After a brief eclipse, Kia convinces Marc to accompany her to the sea. During the eclipse, Arndis becomes blind from looking into the sky. Disoriented, she stumbles around in order to find Marc. Marc and Kia quickly become attracted to each other.
Marc will not have closer relations with Kia except if they are married. As Kia sleeps, Marc takes her to the village cathedral. Kia flees from the cathedral, bewildered by the sight of Christ and the saints. She is repulsed by both the Godly images and Marc's pure love. His purity makes her ill.
Amael and Kia meditate revenge on Marc for "defiling her" with an "act of love". Amael summons an incubus (Milos Milos) that attempts to kill Marc and rapes and murders Arndis. As Marc prays for his sister, he makes the sign of the cross and the lurking demons cringe in horror. Defending himself from the incubus' attack, he appears to have killed him and Amael tells him he has the sin of murder on his hands. Kia follows Marc, who is dying, to the cathedral where she professes her love for him. The resurrected incubus intervenes and claims she belongs to the God of Darkness. Kia defies him and makes the sign of the cross, surprising even herself. The incubus transforms into a goat and wrestles her to the ground.
After the struggle she claims, "I belong to the God of Light," and crawls toward Marc, who immediately embraces her. The final scene shows the couple staring in disbelief at the boundary of the cathedral, with the goat gazing back at them.
Stevens and producer Anthony M. Taylor wanted a device to make the film unique, and, to this end, chose Esperanto as the film's language. The script was translated into Esperanto, and the actors rehearsed for 10 days to learn their lines phonetically, but no one was present on the set to correct their pronunciation during shooting.[1]
Principal photography took place over 18 days in May 1965. Location shooting took place at Big Sur Beach and at the Mission San Antonio de Padua near Fort Hunter Liggett in Monterey County. Concerned that the authorities would not grant permission to shoot a horror film in these places, especially the Mission, Stevens concocted a cover story that the film was actually called Religious Leaders of Old Monterey, and showed the script, in Esperanto, but with stage directions and descriptions about monks and farmers.[1]
The premiere of Incubus took place at the San Francisco Film Festival on October 26, 1966,[4] where, according to producer Taylor, a group of 50 to 100 Esperanto enthusiasts "screamed and laughed" at the actors' poor pronunciation of the language.[1] Partly because of its Esperanto dialogue, and partly because of the scandal of actor Milos Milos taking his own life and that of his girlfriend Carolyn Mitchell,[1] Taylor and Stevens were unable to find any distribution for the film except in France, where it premiered in November 1966.[5]
Incubus was considered a lost film for many years. When producer Anthony Taylor attempted to prepare Incubus for home video release in 1993, he was told by the company that stored the negative, film elements, and prints, that all were missing and presumed to have been destroyed in a fire. Three years later, a print was discovered in the permanent collection of the Cinmathque Franaise in Paris. However, not only was that print in poor condition, it had French subtitles. A new master was created by frame-by-frame optical printing, and English subtitles were superimposed over the French ones.[1] The Sci Fi Channel funded the restoration from that print and a home video DVD was released in 2001.[6] On February 14, 2023, CineSavant reported that a new 35mm print with "excellent" image quality has been located.[7]
Let's say you're a sexy, upwardly mobile, Esperanto-speaking succubus looking to prove your mettle by claiming the soul of a mortal who embodies all that is pure and good in man. On whom do you set your sights? You guessed it: William Shatner.
What's weird is, the use of Esperanto didn't create a 'seperate' surreal dreamscape/ landscape...(for me) I actually found myself thinking it was one of the better dreamy, crumbling landscape Italian movies I've seen...having watched probably twenty of those during my 60s horror project. So, I guess it was sucessful, even if the world created seemed familiar, there was an air of something being a bit off, strange, until I realized hey, that's not Italian. Shatner is actually not that bad here and some of the imagry is really alien, lovely and horrifying.
A beautiful succubus pines to become more in league with Satan by souring a pure-hearted man (the equally beautiful William Shatner, who else?).
The creator of The Outer Limits helms an avant-garde cult item that goes beyond what could be shown on '60s primetime. Although flirtations with the infernal and arresting cinematography from Conrad Hall and William Fraker can't save it from many melodramatic drags. Using the artificial language of Esperanto only hinders; the picturesque cliffs of Big Sur and eerie monochrome recalling Jacques Tourneur constitutes the work's true uniqueness.
Conrad Hall does some amazing, highly stylized work here as DP; the visual richness, and his anti-naturalistic lensing choices at key moments, are what really sells this one. Content's pretty negligible; there may be an allegory sitting undeveloped outside of the use of Christian metaphysic... maybe... but mostly it's just a hell-vs-heaven, demonic lust vs God's love, version/inversion of that metaphysic. And it's every bit as as sexist and incoherent as Christian ideology itself.
Special moment: with the demons' POV privileged as a narrative voice during much of the movie, the inversion of values in one scene becomes a richly comic thing -- a she-demon was "attacked" by being taken by force into a church, and her exposure to sanctity was decried as being a forcible violation of her evil, described in terms of rape. Holy rape.
'Incubus' has been on my radar for many years, mostly because it's such an obscure entry in William Shatner's pre-Captain Kirk filmography. I expected more of a trashy curiosity, but I didn't think I would actually end up loving the movie as much as I did.
A succubus (Allyson Ames) has it too easy capturing souls for Satan and challenges herself by setting her sights on a presumably innocent man. That man happens to be William Shatner who dials up the suaveness with lines like, "We passed the night together," as he nudges his face closer to hers after they share witnessing temporary night (an eclipse). Not sure how William Shatner is an innocent man, but the movie commits to this, with an incubus showing up to have some fun when Shatner's innocence is too much for the succubus alone to handle.
Because let's face it, when you try to conceptualize pure, mind-numbing terror, the first thing that comes to mind is William Shatner speaking Esperanto in a film that looks like an episode of the Twilight Zone as directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Incubus is an American horror movie. It is black and white. It was released in 1966 and a restored copy of the movie was released in 2001. Leslie Stevens directed the movie and William Shatner starred in it. The actors in the movie did not speak in English. They spoke in Esperanto. The movie was called Inkubo in Esperanto. Incubus was lost for many years, but an old copy was found in France. The movie was filmed in 18 days in California during 1965. Incubus did not become popular and was only distributed in France. Some people believe the movie is cursed because of all of the bad things that happened to the actors and crew. Several of them died by murder or suicide, or had other bad things happen to them, after making the movie.
IncubusDirected ByLeslie StevensProduced ByAnthony M. TaylorWritten ByLeslie StevensNarrated ByPaolo CossaStarringWilliam Shatner
Milos Milos
Allyson AmesMusic ByDominic FrontiereCinematographyConrad HallEditing ByRichard K. BrockwayDistributed ByContempo III ProductionsRelease DateOctober 26, 1966Runtime78 minutesCountryUnited States of AmericaLanguageEsperantoBudget$125,000