Seven Women for Satan

REVIEW
Danger After Dark: 3 Stars
Say, have you ever noticed how some 1970’s European exploitation films not only look like they obviously came from a different time and place, but sometimes look like they came from a different planet? Case in point: Seven Women for Satan, a berserk, hallucinatory erotic horror film directed by its star, French character actor Michel Lemoine, a screen persona in possession of an unforgettable face that resembles a bug-eyed hybrid of Alain Delon, John Phillip Law, and a rabid wolf. Here Lemoine plays a wealthy aristocrat who lures beautiful young women to his isolated chateau for torture and murder—or are these just dreams and fantasies initiated by Lemoine’s sinister butler (Euro-cult favorite Howard Vernon)? Seven Women begins with a sequence involving a naked woman being pursued by Lemoine on horseback, and only proceeds to get considerably stranger from there. A perverse, dreamlike time-capsule trip into an era of experimental, low-budget Euro-sleaze sex-and-blood filmmaking, Seven Women finds Lemoine taking The Most Dangerous Game and approaching it through the feverish sensibilities of his former director Jess Franco, creating a memorably morbid shocker with enough tacky 70’s fashions and music (the main theme is, regrettably, rather unforgettable) to satisfy the most demanding European cult movie fetishist. Perfect for brandy-fueled late-night viewing, particularly if you have a DVD player in your basement torture dungeon.