User Reviews

Les Demoniaques, or Demoniacs as it is largely known under in English speaking country's, starts on a beach where a gang of four people, one known as the Captain (John Rico), his right hand man LeBosco (Willy Braque), Paul (Paul Bisciglia) & an attractive but deadly woman named Tina (Joelle Coeur) wave lanterns to attract ships which then get wrecked on the rocks & sink at which point they steal anything of any value, these gangs are known as 'wreckers'. This particular night things go well & they recover some loot, suddenly they see two young women (Lieva Lone & Patricia Hermenier) stagger ashore, obviously survivors from the shipwreck. LeBosco & Paul rape, beat & generally abuse them while the Captain & Tina have sex together. The gang leave the women for dead & wander off into the night, the Captain ends up at the local tavern where he begins to have spooky visions of the two women while the landlady (who happens to be psychic) Madame Louise (Louise Dhour) becomes suspicious. The two women manage to make it to the apparently cursed ruins of a Church where the devil resides in a crypt protected by a guy with a long beard & a woman dressed as a clown (Mireille Dargent), they release the devil who gives them the power to extract a terrible revenge on the gang of wreckers...

This French Belgium co-production was written & directed by Jean Rollin who made quite a few of these arty surreal horror sex films of which I have not seen many, however I thought Les Demoniaques was an OK film if not exactly brilliant. The script tries to tell a decent story about supernatural revenge & it does a fair job at entertaining. The film moves along at a fair pace & never becomes too boring although the character development leaves a lot to be desired, no one in Les Demoniaques has any sort of personality beyond whether they are meant to be good or bad. The two shipwrecked women are good & are violated innocents while the wreckers are uniformly evil who never stop drinking, fighting & having sex. There is no depth or subtly here I'm afraid but then Rollin isn't renowned for his writing abilities is he? No, Rollin is far more interested in the visual side of a film which is not a good thing. Lots of things don't make any sort of sense as he tries to mix horror, art, exploitation, sex & supernatural elements with uneven results, I was also expecting a big 'pay-off' for the wreckers at the end which unfortunately never materialised, that alone made sitting through the thing rather unsatisfying.

Director Rollin lays on the visual style with Les Demoniaques being a very textured film, I love the old wooden boats, the inside decor of the tavern, the stone work of the Church, the bright almost cartoonish costumes & the dangerous looking jagged rocks of the beach. Personally I think the arty surreal shots in Les Dominaques aren't that distracting, although the scenes in the Church with the clown, crypt keeper & some guy locked in a room who looks more gay than devil like are bizarre to say the least & destroys any credibility that the powerful & graphic opening establishes. There is far more nudity in Les Demoniaques than violence, in fact apart from some fights & a bit of blood there isn't much graphic horror here while the nudity & sex is plentiful including a couple of very graphic & exploitative sexual assaults which do nothing for me personally. You should also be aware that Les Demoniaques was filmed in French & I don't think an English language version exists so the sparse dialogue is subtitled throughout.

Les Demoniaques must have been a really low budget affair, there are barely any actors in it, it has about three locations, no special effects to speak of & as a whole it could be described as minimalist. However the locations Rollin chooses are appropriate, from the Gothic Church ruins to a beach full of stranded shipwrecked boats. Obviously the photography is by far the most impressive aspect of the production although I suppose it's generally well made throughout. The acting is pretty poor from all involved especially the two shipwrecked women who are mute for the majority of the film yet still manage to be awful & irritating, oh & that Tina is a nice looking bird with or without clothes...

Les Demoniaques is an OK Euro horror sex film from Rollin, if your a fan of his style of film-making then you'll probably love this, if not then you'll probably hate it. But what about me? Well, I'm stuck somewhere between the two, not my favourite film by any stretch of the imagination but I found enough here to entertain on a basic level. My advice would be to think carefully before you give it a go.

Bizarre but i liked it, it was well made with some impressive directing from Jean Rollin especially the shot near the Ruins. The photography was superb and the set pieces were awesome!. The ending was creative and the o loved the locations!. The actors really didn't have to do all that much. The story was very interesting if a bit confusing at times, and we get TONS and TONS of nudity!. But the 2 main females just stand there and stare! and don't say anything. There is a bit of gore here but not all that much. we get a beer mug full of blood , a couple stabbings , and a wicked sequence involving glass (i won't spoil it for you. The acting is okay but they really didn't have to do all that much. Patricia Hermeneir and Lieva Lone are both hot but all they had to do was stare and act scared. John Rico does fine as the captain and did what he had to do well. Willy Braque does okay here as Bosco but didn't have to do that much. Paul Bisciglia is the comic relief here and Joelle Coeur is beautiful but didn't have to do much except act crazy and take her clothes off. Overall well worth looking for if you can find it was on digital cable a channel called the Scream Channel (a bunch of others were too. *** out of 5

This is without a doubt one of the worst movies i have ever seen. It is even worse than the 70's Hindu movies where eagles carried babies and women are always blind and all people turn out to be brothers!! at least some of these Hindu movies had decent stories. Here it is even worse. People siting all around in a bar having sex and the only thing to change that is to fight with one another, a guy kills a girl without noticing, and when a friend gets mad at him for that he kills him too!! then swims about 30 meters like a pro and slips off a shipwreck 1 meter high and drowns without even hitting a rock or banging his head against anything !! and what's with the clowns, the cheap looking actor playing the wizard or whatever he is, the tide that is rising and the change in water level is very visible!! and the water rose about 10 meters!!. I watched that movie when i was surfing some french channels over the sat and stumbled across it, believe it or not, i was attracted to see the movie as i never thought i could see something that bad!!

An allegory of some sort. The film revolves around "wreckers," bandits who beached boats and raided the spoils. We are introduced to a captain, his sadistic girlfriend, a drunk, and the Other Guy. While out raiding crashes one night, out of the ocean emerges two beautiful blonds. The pirates rape the girls. The next day, the captain has visions of the girls. Still alive, they wander into haunted ruins, guarded by a woman in clown make-up and Rasputin. They make a deal with a man locked in a prison under the hill, who might be the devil. He deep-dogs them both and grants them the powers they need for revenge.

"The Demoniacs" doesn't have much in way of pacing. We lull slowly from one location to the next. The bandits try to kill the girls, without much success. A cross-dresser plays ominous songs on a piano. It drags until we get to the ruins. The moss covered chapels and rotting churches are gorgeous and make a memorable setting. The clown woman is bizarre, especially her first appearance perched on a rock. A man drinks out of a giant bottle before tripping and slicing his neck on the glass. Dead bodies sink into mud as the tide rolls in. The bow of a ship, an animal skull placed there, disappears slowly under the waves. As you'd expect, female nudity abounds and Rollin frequently frames the nubile bodies in a greater tableau, such as a stark naked babe standing on a bed in a ruined room, chastising the cowering men.

Once empowered by the devil, you'd think the movie would become a rampage of revenge. Not quite. The girl's abilities come with a few strings attached. In the last ten minutes, the movie descends into almost pure allegory, as the mute girls (Did I mention they're mute?) are set upon by their attackers. Nature intercedes each time, cutting down the villains. Our protagonists are raped again, their much touted innocence further sullied. I think that's what the movie is getting at, something about the death of innocence. I'm not sure.

There's some camp. The sadistic woman tries to corner the girls in an abandoned church. They use their powers to make statues fall around her. That's got to feed into the film's theme, statues of Mary and saints shattering. The mute girls hilariously direct the statues by waving their arms stiffly. Despite being a period piece, everyone is dressed in pastels and spandex. There's a lot of stereotypically French stripy shirts. The Devil looks like a swarthy seventies lover. A 1800s pirate in bright red stretchy pants is pretty comical. The girls' tan lines betray the setting.

"The Demoniacs" is Rollin at his most linear but also his most pretentious. Eventually, it stops making any sense on even an interpretive level. Despite the numerous rapes, the movie never looses its softcore sheen. I suspect the filmmaker was aroused by the images. I'll be returning to the director's vampire movies next where I suspect his talents are better suited.

There's a gnag of wreckers who lure ships to the rocks on a foggy shore that destroys them, led by The Captain (John Rico), and including Le Bosco (Willy Braque), Paul (Paul Bisciglia) and Tina (Joëlle Coeur). The latest ship they've smashed has two survivors - played by Lieva Lone and Patricia Hermenier - who are dazed and damaged as they struggle down the beach and into the arms of the crew that's already taken so much from them. They're assaulted and left for dead as the pirates drink away their cares, but The Captain keeps seeing the girls, so they go back and trap them in a shhip and set it on fire.

Yet that's still not enough to put them away. They run to some ruins where a clown (Mireille Dargent) takes them deeper into the grounds where a demon (Miletic Zivomir) is imprisoned and if they allow him into their bodies, he will give them a limited time to have his power and gain the revenge they desire.

Jean Rollin is the only director who I could say was inspired by his childhood to make suce a strange and upsetting movie. Yes, it's another return to the beach but there are no vampires, instead the ghostly hauntings of victims and the sheer insanity of Tina. Seriously, Coeur is an absolute force in this movie, as seductive as she is frightening, demanding more carnage and becoming sexually aroused by the death and horror that she helps create.

This is at once a film filled with sex and one desperate to destroy your desire. Rollin was challenged by how big this production was and yes, there are some pacing issues, but it's another journey through bleak unending sadness on a beach and my feet are soaked and the sand is in every pore.

Four pirates(..labeled "wreckers" for they draw ships with light crashing into the shore to pillage them)ruthlessly rape and assault two blond young women as they walk to shore, appearing from the darkness in nothing but gowns. Soon the Captain(John Rico), already insane, is haunted by ghostly apparitions of those two girls they left for dead on the shore. Yet, somehow, the girls survive fending off yet another proposed attack by the pirates, making their way to the "haunted ruins" which holds a demonic presence, imprisoned by two guardians who can give them the power they seek in weakness needed for revenge.

I really enjoyed this one, even if I was often left with my jaw open wondering what the hell was going on. I couldn't help but snicker when the twins make to the haunted ruins and are greeted by the female clown. Many would probably throw their hands up at that, but I couldn't help but love such an audacious move by Rollin to throw a modern image inside a film representing pirates. I loved the brothel pub hybrid with patrons fondling the gals as our clairvoyant Madam plays the piano when she isn't foretelling doom. I like how over-the-top the pirates are, even Tina(..let me stop for a moment and gain my composure)who Rollin films in nearly every scene naked, delighting in her devilish ways. Take, for instance, the Captain who lifts his mug to drink with beer spilling out all over himself, or Bosco(Willy Braque), always morose until he begins to trash the fisherman's bar and brothel.The film is Joelle Coeur for me. There's one image I'll always have to summon every now and then. Rollin's camera eyeballs a naked Coeur with her arms stretched to the heavens after their conquest and corruption of the innocence of two girls who had just lost everything. The camera slowly pulls away as she stands, enjoying every minute of the atrocities committed. How Coeur can't help herself as her men ravage their bodies, tearing their already shredded gowns, in a state of ecstasy. She craves this type of cruel activity, embellishes the evil they partake in. The wrecking is child's play compared to the rape and destruction of innocence.

I liked how Rollin gets his skeleton and bat in the film, by using them as "decoration" in the brothel-pub. Oh, and I loved that winged creature statue in the brothel-pub as well(..I believe Rollin shoots one of the girl's apparitions next to it when they haunt the Captain).The ruins left me in a state of bliss, particularly how Rollin shoots the female clown guiding the girls to the "crypt-watcher"(..he looks like a Russian czar, or something)down those massive steps. And, when the girls remove their shirts making their way to the prisoner's cell to release him.. One of my favorite techniques established by Rollin is how he follows his female beauties, either naked or clothed under a gown or shirt(..just long enough to cover their crotch), holding a candle to guide themselves, as they make their way to a specific destination.I also liked how the final sequence ends with water engulfing the main characters. Oh, and my favorite scene, besides the bedroom sequence where the Captain is fondling a bird he'd later rip into as Coeur slowly gets naked, is a certain character's death as a piano plays on it's own.