It
doesn’t get any better than the opening scene.
A magician does the old levitating woman trick, but this guy does the ancient
gag one better. He cuts the neckline of
the floating woman’s dress, exposing her breasts to the audience. No strings indeed!
Dr.
Wainwright (Larry Hankin) is the living reincarnation of Svengali. To maintain his powers, he must offer up a
human sacrifice to a Satanist (Norman Pierce).
When the doctor falls in love with the woman meant to be sacrificed
(Jane Brunel-Cohen), he struggles to break free of Svengali’s hold to save her.
Lucifer’s
Women employed none other than Anton LaVey as its technical consultant. I’m not sure how much he advised on the
project because it looks like the same old sacrificial shit you’d see in a
typical horror movie. I don’t know how
much time went into making the Satanist scenes accurate. All I know is that they should’ve spent more
time trying to make the film good.
The
plot is just too stuffed to ever really work.
We’ve got possession, Satanism, human sacrifices, mysticism, and none of
it gels into a cohesive whole. The
scenes with Hankin romancing Brunel-Cohen are dull and the sequences where he
battles for his soul are weak. The only
parts worth a damn are the hypnotism scenes.
They have a She-Creature type of vibe to them, and the final magic trick
is reminiscent of The Wizard of Gore.
To
make matters worse, there’s an entire subplot about a small-time pimp (played
by porn star Paul Thomas) with a lisping southern accent that’s practically
unbearable. Thomas acts surly to mimes
and threatens to push Brunel-Cohen into a life of prostitution. This subplot gets in the way of the Svengali
stuff and more or less stops the movie on a dime.
Lucifer’s
Women contains more skin that you’d expect to see in an otherwise tepid Satanism
picture. The majority of the scenes are
lukewarm, although I did like the “Butterfly Girl’ striptease number. The scene where Brunel-Cohen gets turned on
while reading a lesbian porn comic is pretty funny too.
Credits
Watch: David Webb Peoples was the editor. He later went on to write Blade Runner and
Unforgiven! I guess you’ve got to start
somewhere.
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