THE ANTICHRIST (1974)

As far as THE EXORCIST ripoffs go THE ANTICHRIST isn't too bad.  A young woman named Ippolita (Carla Gravina) was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident when she was 12.  The strange thing is the doctors cannot find anything wrong with her.  Her father (Mel Ferrer) is extremely wealthy and will do anything to cure her, so when her uncle (Arthur Kennedy) suggests a psychologist, who specializes in cases like hers, Mel immediately brings him in.  The doctor, using hypnosis, soon discovers that the paralysis is caused by both sexual frustration and a past life experience by a relative (who had the exact same name) who was burned alive for witchcraft!  Wow!!!  Somehow during all of this Ippolita is possessed by the same demon that possessed her ancestor.

Anyway, the whole story is just an excuse to get to the demon stuff and...it's entertaining.  THE ANTICHRIST had a lower budget than THE EXORCIST and the story is nowhere nearly as gripping, but the acting (by the impressive cast) is above average and the story does move along at a nice pace.  The demon-possession scenes themselves featured green projectile vomit, one head-spinning murder, demon-powered levitation, visions of a Satanic ritual (complete with off-screen goat butthole licking!), fire, rain, a fake-as-hell-looking snake, very mild nudity, blood licking, vomit licking, invisible demon sex, mouth foam, tons of blasphemous profanities and floating furniture.

Worth a viewing for fans of such things, but mainstream audiences would probably dislike it.

EATEN ALIVE (1977)

What a bizarre movie.  Instead of doing the logical thing and following up THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE with a cash-in sequel (who knows, maybe there was an legal issue) TCM director/producer/writer/composer Tobe Hooper, writer Kim Henkel and main actress Marilyn Burns created this almost fever dream-like story of an old coot (Neville Brand) running a hotel near a swamp.  Despite the fact that the hotel is completely dilapidated, there's no road nearby and the owner is clearly insane the place still gets a steady stream of customers...whom, the owner, kills about as quickly as they show up and then feeds to his huge crocodile.  It makes no sense at all.

Still, there's something about EATEN ALIVE that you can't take your eyes off of it.  It's just so strange that it's more fascinating than it is entertaining.  Over-the-top acting by an whole cast of weird characters, sudden unexpected spurts of violence, gritty camerawork that reminded me at moments of TCM, eternal nighttime, two surprisingly nice topless scenes, strange set design, fake as hell looking crocodile, Marilyn Burns underused (she should have had a bigger role), lots of fog (at one point - 1:19:53 - I swear Neville does the Leatherface dance, but there's so much fog it's hard to tell), old timey country music playing almost non-stop, surreal colours, Freddy Krueger topless.

Not horrible, but not good either.  Just strange.