Obscene Desire (1978) User Reviews (8)

Obscure Object of Desire.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 5/10 · 9 October 2013]

With still having good memories of being introduced to actress Marisa Mell by the overlooked Giallo Diary of an Erotic Murderess,I was pleasantly caught by surprise,when a very kind IMDb'er recently sent me a non-Giallo Mell title,which led to me excitingly getting ready to discover how obscene a desire could really be.

The plot:

Swept up in her holiday romance,Amanda decides that instead of travelling back to the US,she will instead live in Italy and get married to her boyfriend,Andrea.Taking Amanda to the mansion which his family have owned for 7 generations,Andrea is horrified to discover that his families most loyal butler has unexpectedly died.

Attempting to help her new husband deal to deal with his grief,Andera soon makes Amanda pregnant.Initially thrilled about the pregnancy,Amanda soon begins to fear that Andera and the surviving staff of the mansion may be planning something that is far from being in the best interest of her,or her unborn child.

View on the film:

Despite disowning the movie later on,co-writer/ (along with Joaquin Dominguez and Piero Regnoli) director Giulio Petroni closely works with cinematography Leopoldo Villasenor to give the film an elegant Gothic Romance appearance,with Petroni using wide angles to show the Gothic mansion that is towering above Amanda and Andera,and also giving the movie a crisp,stylish sheen.Emphasising Petroni's style,film director Jess Franco, (not the dictator!) gives the movie an unexpectedly superb score,with Franco showing a real skill in knowing when to use a deep bass for the movie's Gothic Horror moments,and also knowing when to unleash the strings for the romantic moments in the film.

Sadly,whilst Petoni,Villasenor and Franco give the movie a strong atmosphere,the screenplay fails to build any feelings of Gothic chills or psychological terror due to not allowing any details about the foundation of Amanda and Andera's relationship to be revealed,which leads to the Gothic Romance scenes in the movie to be rather dry,whilst the psychological Horror elements of the movie feel lack any sense of being connected to the roots of Amanda and Andera's relationship.

Appearing in the opening of the movie by hanging around the corners of the mansion,Victor Israel gives a wonderfully deranged performance as the mansion's last remaining servant,with Israel giving the film a great shot of Gothic Horror by delivering his lines with a sharp twisted cackle,and also creating a strong sense that the servant may know more then he appears to.Contrasting Israel's high shrieks,the beautiful Marisa Mell gives an excellent performance as Amanda,with Mell showing Amanda gradually change from having a head filled with romance,to psychotically crumbling over fears of discovering the obscene desire which lurks within herself and the mansion.

Nice climax

[rundbauchdodo · 5/10 · 29 May 2001]

This post-"Exorcist" and "Omen" possession film is quite odd. It has some typical Giallo elements and until the second half of the movie, it is left unclear whether there is something supernatural going on or not.

The film also boosts some strange characters that sometimes get a little bit overacted by the actors. But the main problem of the film is that it makes the impression of coming about ten years too late. It is too old fashioned to be a typical horror film of the late 1970s (there are many classical Gothic moments in it), and on the other hand it is too graphic to be a late Gothic horror film (two gory scenes and plenty of nude female flesh).

All in all, it's an enjoyable if not amazing little film, and the climax delivers an unexpected downbeat twist to surprise the audience. If "L'Osceno Desiderio" (my preferred title) would have been directed by a more gifted director, it would surely be a remarkable sleeper.

OBSCENE DESIRE (Giulio Petroni, 1978) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 23 January 2010]

This is yet another ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)/THE EXORCIST (1973)/THE OMEN (1976) clone – which I was unfamiliar with until a few months ago – and, again, one in which the possession is really by an ancestor (shades of BLACK Sunday [1960]) rather than the Devil himself. We still get the obligatory 'demonic' scenes, but these here are perhaps the tamest I have ever seen: the would-be exorcist (a disheveled Lou Castel) gives up immediately after the 'victim' (Marisa Mell, past her prime but still looking good in the nude) spits out a host he had just fed her – retreating in a room to pray, where a gust of wind turns a hanging cross upside down, he runs hysterically out into the streets soon after only to be run over by a truck! Similarly, the climax sees the trio of devil-worshippers sent to protect the unborn Devil's spawn (including an unhinged elderly gardener) struggle with and eventually set fire(!) to Mell's husband (whom she had earlier spied in an orgy with two of them – or was it just her imagination? – and is even revealed to be a serial killer on a 'mission' to cleanse the world of sin)!! Following this, in a typically cynical conclusion, Mell boards a plane bound to spread evil in the U.S. The film, then, is muddled in plot development (as if Spaghetti Western exponent Petroni was wary of the material, or presumably lost interest when the producers insisted on adding softcore scenes – in fact, he subsequently disowned the film!) and typically listless in pace…but it nevertheless remains engrossing throughout, aided immeasurably by Carlo Savina's moodily romantic score. By the way, this was originally released as LA PROFEZIA i.e. THE PROPHECY.

I mean, every star is for Marisa Mell

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 20 May 2022]

Obscene Desire is the story of Amanda (Marisa Mell, a goddess if there ever were one and someone who immediately changes any movie from maybe to definitely; my favorite of her films are Marta, Danger: Diabolik and Perversion Story, a film in which she has one of the greatest outfits not only in the history of Italian film but perhaps all movies ever), an American woman ready to marry the rich Andrea (Chris Avram, Enter the Devil) and move into his huge mansion.

Within the walls of that gothic expanse lies something evil, something that has possessed Amanda's soon-to-be husband to indulge in black magic and ritual murder. In fact, the only way that he can keep his soul from being taken by his domicile is to keep killing prostitutes.

This movie should teach you to never trust a gardener (Victor Israel) and that the Italian film industry would keep on making Rosemary's Baby ripoffs ten years after that movie was unleashed. Or The Exorcist five years later. Or The Omen two years later.

Look, I'm a simple man. Marisa Mell with short dark hair, not unlike Mariska Hargitay, possessed by the devil and writhing on a bed and revealing that her tongue is superhumanly long. Do I even care that this movie has no real story and really goes nowhere?

No, not at all.

What were we talking about?

Laura Trotter (Dr. Anna Miller from Nightmare City) and Paola Maiolini (Cuginetta, amore mio!) are also in the cast for this film directed by Giulio Petroni (Death Rides a Horse) and written by Joaquín Domínguez and Piero Regnoli (the director of The Playgirls and the Vampire and writer of 117 movies including Demonia, Voices from Beyond, Burial Ground and Patrick Still Lives).

Under-par Italian riff on The Exorcist

[Red-Barracuda · 4/10 · 30 August 2021]

Here is another low budget Italian riff on The Exorcist. It involves a newly married couple who move into an ominous Gothic house. Almost immediately, the wife becomes possessed while pregnant, while someone is brutally murdering prostitutes nearby.

This one is elevated by the presence of Marisa Mell in the lead role. She was famous for iconic appearances in earlier movies, such as Danger Diabolik. It has to be said that here though, her presence is not enough to save this one. None of the plot strands are very interesting and it never escapes the feeling that is has been made in a hurry and at a low cost. There are a few isolated memorable moments but mostly it was a bit tedious sadly.

Another Italian rip-off of a U.S. horror hit

[melvelvit-1 · 7/10 · 7 September 2014]

Sexy Marisa Mell stars as an American ex-pat whose new husband brings her back to his ancestral castle where she learns the family was cursed by a witch burned at the stake centuries before. She soon becomes pregnant and it's a ROSEMARY'S BABY redux (cashing in on THE OMEN's recent success) from here on out, only now the emphasis is on "erotic horror".

Almost all the sex is gratuitous; Marisa's husband kills prostitutes in his spare time for no good reason other than to provide more nudity in a film already rife with it courtesy of Ms. Mell. Even the U.S. title, OBSCENE DESIRE, is only there to titillate. Since it's the '70s, an exorcism (sort of) was thrown in for good measure and although the whole thing is more than a little silly, it's a lot of fun anyway, the "bare" essence of "Eurotrash". But what was up with that ending?

***SPOILER***When Marisa and her baby (the son of Satan) board a plane for the U.S., one of the coven seeing her off smiles and says, "America needed that baby." ***END SPOILER***

This was obviously a good-natured (?) zinger, unlike the Italian giallo's cumulative xenophobia. Most of them are exotic "travelogues" set in the various capitols of Europe and beyond but when seen collectively, the unmistakable (albeit unintentional) message seems to be, "This sick sh!t doesn't happen here", it's always somewhere else whereas nearly all Spanish gialli take place on their own turf.

The still-gorgeous Marisa Mell was about 40 when she made OBSCENE DESIRE and her looks are a bit "hard" here, no doubt from a growing cocaine dependence. She'd been an international playgirl and tabloid darling for over a decade and was romantically linked to Alain Delon, Warren Beatty, Robert Evans, Roman Polanski, Alex Onassis, and the Shah of Iran among others but by the early 1980s the actress was reduced to posing nude in hardcore men's magazines. Destitute and alone, Marisa died a horrible death from throat cancer in 1992.

"Movies are my life, and my life is a movie." -Marisa Mell

Strange and eerie Italian "The Exorcist" clone.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 8/10 · 9 April 2010]

"Obscene Desire" aka "La Profezia" is an erotic and genuinely eerie Italian "The Exorcist" clone which predates and is quite similar in tone to Andrea Bianchi's "Malabimba".Amanda,a beautiful American girl is soon to be married to Andrea Orsomandi,a wealthy nobleman who lives in an extravagant Gothic mansion.However there exists something dark,sinister and supernatural within the walls of the mansion.It seems that Andrea has been driven to madness and is a victim of the evil contained within the house.It soon transpires that he is involved in black magic,perverse rituals and serial killings with the aid of his sadistic henchman and gardener Giovanni.Killing prostitutes in order to exorcise this Evil.Now the demonic forces set out to possess Amanda,take her soul and turn her into another victim of the mansion."Obscene Desire" is full of graphic nudity provided by Marisa Mell,Laura Trotter and Paola Maiolini.It has solid acting and moody score by exploitation veteran Jesus Franco.8 out of 10.

Obscure and underrated

[christopher-underwood · 7/10 · 19 November 2013]

Obscure and underrated Rosemary's Baby style thriller from Italian director, Giulio Petroni. He was better known for spaghetti westerns, made this when he was sixty and had his name taken off the credits. I don't know why but with such a fierce and satanic theme with the added sexuality of Marisa Mell, this was bound to upset someone. Not me, however, I was surprised how enjoyable it all was and if the director doesn't seem to have a clear grip on things there are enough excellent sequences to make up for the odd rough edge. Chris Avram, for instance, seems particularly lost in his ill defined role as husband, serial killer and defender. Marisa Mell, on the other hand, is magnificent, well remembered for her role in Fulci's, One On Top Of The Other, ten years before, she was raped by Helmut Berger in 1977's, The Mad Dog Killer (Beast With A Gun) and here puts in a very fine performance and her submission to the powers of evil as she lays in bed is remarkable.