Incubus
Incubus
| 26 October 1966 (USA)
Incubus Trailers

On a strange island inhabited by demons and spirits, a man battles the forces of evil.

Reviews
AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks
MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant
Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
bregund If you liked Vampyr (1932), then you'll probably like this film...it has virtually the same disconnected atmosphere, wandering script, and creepy special effects. I immediately recognized the music score from Outer Limits, which makes the film even creepier. And yes, Shatner still has that odd, halting way of speaking, even in Esperanto, but it's a treat to watch him, he's a decent enough actor. The California coastal settings are loaded with rich, wind-blown texture, and all in gorgeous black and white with plenty of contrast between shadows and light, and lots of fog machines. Even watching the characters wade across a shallow river is a treat, you can almost feel the water against your toes. Milos Milos is a hoot, he looks like an evil Spanish flamenco dancer.At the heart of the story is a doomed romance between Shatner and the succubus, whose scheming sister plots to separate the young lovers. I think this film, much like Vampyr, is a nice, immersive treat for a dark night, just sit back and let the film coax you into its bizarre world.
ironhorse_iv Like the Poltergeist's curse, Rosemary Baby's Curse, and lastly the Omen's Curse, many people connected with the film met unfortunate sad fates after the film wrapped, giving rise to an urban legend that Incubus was a cursed production. Actor Milos Milos, the Serbian actor who played the Incubus, killed his girlfriend, Barbara Ann Thomason Rooney – the estranged fifth wife of Mickey Rooney – and himself in 1966, nine months before the film's premiere. Actress Ann Atmar whom played Arndis committed suicide twelve days before the film's premiere. The daughter of actress Eloise Hardt was kidnapped and murdered. William Shatner's third wife drowned in a pool. Lastly, the Director Leslie Stevens and actress Allyson Ames divorced, and Stevens' production company, Daystar Productions, went bankrupt. The film was even lost for many years because the original print of the film burned in a fire and all copies were reported lost, destroyed, or worn away, but a copy of the film with French subtitles was found in the permanent collection of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2001. So finally we the audience get to watch this lost-long haunted film, and it wasn't good. The whole movie is first off, is a foreign language film of a language not many people know of called 'Esperanto'. Esperanto was created by a Dr L. L. Zamenhof, designed to be an international auxiliary language, to be learned to communicate across cultures. Sadly it didn't become that way. The producers thought by having Esperanto be the focus language, they can reach the most audiences. They should have done more research. The Esperanto-speaking audience is thinly spread around the planet, and virtually every country has little Esperantists. Not a very effective marketing strategy, as it turns out to be for them. Incubus was the second feature film primarily using Esperanto ever made. The first, Angoroj (Esperanto for Agonies) appeared in 1964 also failing to connection a audience. Esperanto speakers are generally disappointed by the pronunciation of the language by the cast of Incubus whom had to learn the language quickly. William Shatner sounds like he is forgetting his lines. My opinion is the movie dialogue is well enough pronounced, considering the short time they'd all been speaking it. Only in a medieval fantasy can you have a story line where Esperanto is spoken. It didn't help that the director Leslie Stevens has prohibited the film dub into other languages. The film is set in the town of Nomen Tuum haunted by succubus whom seduce tainted souls leading them to their deaths in order to offer their souls to Hell. A prominent young succubus named Kia (Allyson Ames) get bored, and wanted a challenge by seducing a good person. Her sister succubus, Amael (Eloise Hardt), warns Kia of the danger that a pure soul will bring something stronger than them: love. Kia persists anyway and attempts to find a man to seduce into darkness. Enters soldier Marc (William Shatner) and his over-acting whom come to their sacred water to heal his battle-wounds. She fails as her task, and falls in love with him. While the movie is call 'incubus', we don't see one until late in the movie. It's should be call Succubus. Her sister finally summons an incubus (Milos Milos) that attempts to kill Marc. The rape scene between the incubus and Marc's sister is probably the most disturbing thing in this film. The incubus actor is just awfully bad, mostly walks around in the buff and make weird faces. The movie is full of silly scenes, most noticeable is Kia fighting a goat. The movie is also a bit too preachy, as the film basically hangs on Marc deciding to have pre-marital sex or not, rather than worrying about going to hell for the fact that he murder people in the war. Arguably very Catholic viewpoint. The best part of the film is the black and white cinematography, due it remind us of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Using natural lighting, Conrad Hall contrasts light and shadows throughout the eerily setting to create an ominous feeling with a minimum amount of artificial props. Individual shots often qualify as art pieces—his camera shoots between ferns and wildflowers, through creeping fog and up through the ocean. The long shots of the black-robed succubus slowly proceeding on the beach is amazing. I thought it was very atmospheric. Somebody must have seen Shatner on those two Twilight Zone episodes and thought he would be perfect. Check it out, it's a must for Shatner completest.
Richard-B-Graham Incubus is my new Gold Standard of bad films. I used to think "Robot Monster" was the worst film ever made until I saw "Plan 9 From Outer Space". I used to think "Plan 9 From Outer Space" was the worst film ever made until I saw "Manos – Hands of Fate". I used to think "Manos – Hands of Fate" was the worst ever until I saw - - "Incubus". "Incubus" has what is needed for a fun bad film - pretentious photography, silly plot line, bizarre acting, Junior-High-School-profound dialog. But mainly – William Shatner! William Shatner, overacts with inappropriate pauses and emphasis, in a language he is speaking phonetically (barely). Gather your friends and have a good time laughing and shouting "MS3TK" style insults at "Incubus". You…will have…a GOOD time!
Lee Eisenberg Obviously, the two things that "Incubus" really has going for it are that it's spoken entirely in the artificial language of Esperanto (listening to that language, it sounds like a bastardization of Italian), and that it stars William Shatner right before he became Capt. Kirk. He plays a man who gets involved with a devil woman. I know, it doesn't sound like much, but it's neat hearing Esperanto spoken. As it is, this movie seems sort of like a premonition of Shatner's movie "The Devil's Rain" (in which he also battles the Prince of Darkness).So anyway, this is a neat time capsule. And Esperanto sounds like a neat language. I'd like to learn it.