SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

BA_Harrison A soft-core sex film masquerading as a horror movie, Black Candles sees Spanish director José Ramón Larraz—the man responsible for cult erotic Euro-horror classic Vampyres—using the themes of Satanism and witchcraft as an excuse to depict as much sexual depravity as possible. While he doesn't quite stray into graphic Jess Franco territory, steering well clear of gynaecological close-ups, Larraz still manages to seriously steam up the screen with wall-to-wall lesbian and hetero sex. Plus a little something for animal lovers…The film starts as it means to go one, with a sex scene between a balding middle-aged man and a young woman half his age; as the guy happily bangs away, someone uses a voodoo doll to give him a fatal coronary. On hearing of her brother's sudden death, Carol (Vanessa Hidalgo) travels to England with her husband Robert (Mauro Rivera) to stay with her sister-in-law Fiona while the estate is settled. What Carol doesn't know is that Fiona is part of a devil-worshipping cult that wants her to become a bride to Satan.Although obviously inspired by Rosemary's Baby, Black Candles has none of that film's suspense or atmosphere—it's simply one sleazy sex scene after another: Robert screws Carol, Carol screws her brother (in an incestuous dream sequence), Fiona screws Robert, the local reverend screws Fiona, a goat screws a farm-girl (not too explicit, but still rather shocking), Robert screws Carol up the wrong 'un, a farmer screws his wife who proceeds to screw the farm-hand while the farmer shouts encouragement, and in the orgiastic Satanic ritual finalé, the reverend screws Carol while everyone else screws around them! Phew!After all this rampant humping, plus a memorably nasty scene in which the farmer gets a sword rammed up his jacksie, the film wraps up matters with a disappointing cop-out ending which reveals that everything we have seen has been a dream (making the incestuous dream a dream-within-a-dream), but one that may be a portent of things to come.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Review based on 84-minutes long UK version, titled Black Candles, which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the film itself. Chick and her husband go to London after her brother dies, and allegedly her hubby is pulled into a Satanic cult when they arrive there. I say "allegedly" because, in a dumbass plot twist at the very end, we learn that everything was all just a dream. That wafer thin plot is merely an excuse for Vanessa Hidalgo and Helga Liné to get nude as often as possible (Helga Liné, approximately 48 years old at the time, looks like she was only in her early 30s) Pick any one sex scene at random and watch that and then stop, because any one scene is probably enough of this flick. Plenty of nudity and sex, but film is rarely erotic or titillating, mostly just tiresome and slowly paced. The goat-rape scene was revolting to watch, but not the way the filmmakers intended, serving only to drive the viewers away, rather than shock them.There is a certain amount of atmospherics to some scenes, and again, the two leading girls are very attractive, but the film is very slow going, and for the most part the acting ranges from bland to awful; the music score sounds prerecorded; and the footage is often times highly washed-out, like it had been filmed through a diffuser, or two, and then underexposed also.

movieman_kev Extremely thin 'plot' of satanic rituals or some such mumbo-jumbo provides the hokey excuse to thread copious amounts of sex scenes together. Straight vanilla sex, masturbation, lesbianism, S&M, bestiality, incest, and a few other sexual proliferation's all get their time in the spotlight here. The problem is the storyline is so dull that the rampant sexuality gets pretty tedious after awhile. Who knew that a film with an intimate goat/ girl encounter could be so damn boring? Well now I do.Eye Candy: Venessa Hidalgo shows all; Helga Line provides T&A (both on display quite frequently); women viewers get the occasional penis.My Grade: D+Region 1 DVD Extras: Trailers for "Pick Up", "Legend of Eight Samurai", "Don't Answer the Phone", "Prime Evil", & "Sister Street Fighter" (also the same DVD holds a second feature movie "Evil Eye")

The_Void I didn't go into this film expecting much as I've never heard a good word said about it. Black Candles is basically just a variation on the same sort of plot that worked a lot better in the earlier Spanish horror film 'Satan's Blood', as well as a whole load of other films. It starts out interestingly, as we are introduced to the central characters and we start to get an idea of where the plot is going. There seems to be a correlation between devil worshipping in Europe and having loads of sex, and that's something that director José Ramón Larraz (who made a whole load of trash films, including the sleazy 'Vampyres') seems keen to capitalise on, as the actors spend a good half of the film without any clothes on. The plot is, of course, very simple and starts off with a man dying suddenly while having sex after a woman sticks a pin in a voodoo doll. We then get introduced to his sister and her husband, and they travel down to stay with the dead man's husband; her sister-in-law, and it transpires that she's into devil worship (Shock! Horror!) Everything about this film is completely amateurish! (Which is odd as Vampyres was quite professional for a sleazy slice of Eurohorror. Obviously Larraz didn't get better at film making as he went along!). The acting is terrible; sometimes even cringe-worthy, which is quite shocking since I'm certainly used to watching films with less than great acting. The scene setting is frankly lazy, and Larraz makes practically no attempt to build an oppressive atmosphere or lift the film out of the pits in any way. This would normally stamp out any chance of a decent rating for a film; but Black Candles still deserves a few points as it's actually quite funny, and luckily the director's laziness doesn't extend to the sex scenes; which are actually quite erotic, mostly owing to the fact that the women are nice to look at. There are a couple of nasty scenes too; a sex scene with a goat…which I didn't enjoy too much and a death scene that involves someone having a sword shoved up his backside! Overall, I can't recommend going out of your way to see this film; its obscurity isn't undeserved - but it's not terrible in spite of the fact that everything about it is trash, and that can't be said for every film like this one.