That was an excellent one.

Pretty Good

How sad is this?

Don't listen to the negative reviews

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.

The first film in Esperanto! Moody black and white film was made by Leslie Stevens who created the Outer Limits and stars William Shatner. It has something about women in the service of the devil luring men to their doom until one falls for Shatner. Its a beautiful film that is flawed because the readings in Esperanto are all over the place with an emotion filled line is followed by a flat one. The entire cast is guilty of the unevenness where the fact that they are not "native speakers" or fully comfortable with it is painfully clear as they are uneven in their vocal acting.Making things worse-and making the film almost unwatchable- were the subtitles- supposedly the print was restored than to money from the SCIFI channel,who should have known better. They are big black strips that often cover half the image so in close up you're looking at a nose and eyes, the lower part of the face being completely covered. At other times you have to wait for breaks in the talking to see what you're suppose to be seeing. Its the worst subtitling I've ever seen and that includes some white on white debacles. I can't rightly rate the film because I got so frustrated I started scanning. It looks great when its not obscured by subtitles, but I can't say about the story.

William Shatner made a handful of interesting films in his career; and Incubus is certainly one of them; though unfortunately it qualifies more as an interesting failure. The film is shot in black and white, plays out like a fairytale, handles a story about legendary medieval monsters, succubus's and incubuses, and most bizarrely of all, is shot in the auxiliary language known as 'Esperanto'. Director Leslie Stevens' main influence would appear to be Ingmar Bergman as this film feels a lot like one of his (particularly The Seventh Seal) in terms of style, though it's much less deep than the majority of Bergman films. The film focuses on a 'pure' man named Marc. He becomes the focus of Kia, a succubus who spends her time seducing bad men and luring them to their deaths. She's tired of this, however, and decides that she'd rather pit herself against someone good and who isn't going to hell anyway, which is against the will of her sister Amael (also a succubus). However, things don't quite go to plan for Kia so she goes running back to her sister and the two conjure an incubus...The plot idea behind the film is good and admirable as its "pure" horror, but the execution of the film ensures that it's never as interesting as it could, and by rights, should be. I have no idea why the director would choose to make his film in 'Esperanto', it does make it standout somewhat but it doesn't actually add anything to the movie thus making the language rather pointless. The script is poor anyway and the lead characters spend a hell of a lot of time babbling about things that aren't important, which just makes the film feel like an arty farty load of rubbish. One area that the director does succeed in however is the visual side of things as the film really does look great and we've got some great set-pieces too; the introduction of the incubus being the film's biggest highlight! The film is mercifully short at less than seventy five minutes and that's a good thing as the director seems keen to drag things out as much as possible, which means the film can be a bit of a struggle at times. I respect this film for it's visuals but nothing more really and I can't imagine that this would appeal much to many people.

"Incubus" is a very strange movie to be sure – it's unique because it is the only film ever shot in the "universal language", Esperanto. It may be worth it for some viewers to see the film simply because it has camp-master William Shatner speaking his lines in this never-land language. But not for me. From the very first moments of the film you can tell what you're looking at – a good photographer with a bunch of amateur actors and an overambitious director gathered on the beaches of Big Sur in a desperate attempt to capture some of the magic of Ingmar Bergman's films "The Seventh Seal" and "Hour of the Wolf" and apply that magic to a straight-up horror film in the occult vein.The story is very confusing despite being very simple, due to the cryptic dialog and ineffective direction. I've seen it twice now so this is what I have been able to piece together – Shatner is playing a guy who is some kind of idyllic woodsman who lives with his sister in a cabin. A female devil worshipper sees him somewhere and gets a crush on him so she decides to corrupt him and make him a Satanist too, which her sister discourages. Soon Shatner is following the evil woman across a lovingly photographed wasteland, back to the beach again, and eventually he is involved in a confrontation with the "Incubus" (a male version of a Succubus, for those not in the know… this movie won't tell you so I might as well).The "Incubus" is literally a goat that someone put on top of Shatner that kicks him a bit and then disappears. Outside of some interesting but unoriginal photographic effects there really is nothing happening in this movie. Shatner's character completely forgets about the sister character, who has been blinded by a solar eclipse and spends most of the movie wandering around. There's no scares whatsoever. Maybe this movie appeals to people who like surrealist cinema. Usually I don't like that kind of thing anyway so I couldn't tell you if this is a good or a bad example of that school of cinema. My guess is that it's bad, and it's certainly bad from my perspective as someone who expects at least a minimum of character development and plot in a film.However the music is interesting and the photography is great. This is a good movie to watch if you were curious how to distinguish directing from photography because this is a very poorly directed but well photographed film. Other than that and the fact that it has Esperanto dialog there's nothing to distinguish it or make it memorable.By the way, I was able to see it this time in a 35mm presentation in the theater thanks to the producer Anthony Taylor who has a nice print and lives in Southern California.