The Incubus - 1982

I had a brief explosion of reviews recently, finished that 70's set, and was very prolific with my writings.  And then I moved, got a roommate, became busier, and shit yo, the reviews be slippin.  It took me about 5 days to get through the Clint Howard 80's vehicle EvilSpeak, and although I do remember it well, I tend to not want to review things that took me so many sits to get through.  But, in all this, I actually did sit all the way through The Incubus last night.

The Incubus feels a bit older than it is.  In my guessing of the year, I guessed 1979.  It has that dialogue, slow burn type of development.  I should have been a bit clued in by the prevalent amount of nudity and just the fact that the plot involves rape should have furthered my predisposition to know it was 80's but hey...  no one's perfect.

I just found out that The Incubus was written by the same guy who wrote another movie I reviewed, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.  That's cool!  Although honestly they don't feel similar at all.

This is a good example of just how things did change in the 80's, come to think of it.  I don't think the 70's would have necessarily shied away from a topic such as demons, blood and nudity, but I do find that with graphic discussion of rape, that's where the line would have been drawn.  Of course, such movies as Straw Dogs and Deliverance came out in the 70's, even I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left, however the rape in those is much more for shock value, and that's the difference.  The difference here is the tone, the casual and exploitative feel behind the tool of rape used in this versus the grossness and injustice of the rape in those 70's movies.

The Incubus stars John Cassavetes just a few years before his death.  He is carrying a look and a style similar to prime Al Pacino in this, and his role as doctor Sam Cordell is easily one of the best in the film.  Sam and his daughter Jenny live in a small town where crimes don't really happen.  That's why it's a shock when a girl turns up, so brutally raped that her uterus has been ruptured. Naturally everyone is freaked out.  When more girls turn up shortly thereafter with similar situations, the natural course of the conversation becomes who or what is causing these horrifically brutal rapes?  The only semen found at the scene is mutated and different, casting a whole other lens of mystery and gruesomeness to the rapes.

With nudity, interesting dialogue, good acting, and a tight air of brutality and true mystery to it, this movie was a pretty good one to watch.  I was expecting some low brow exploitation or whodunnit murder mystery.  But they stepped outside the lines and brought in some other genres, and explored a bit outside of their lines.  It's not for everyone, and the graphic nature of it is off-putting at times, but in that it does have a "newness" I wasn't expecting.  It's this type of movie that makes you realize that you had "thought you'd seen it all" only to be surprised you were wrong.

Some later plot turns were unexplained and seemed rushed, and the end puzzle fitting together doesn't completely make sense, but for what it is, it's done well.  We're not left with burning gapes in story or idea, instead some mild complaints and yearning questions.  I could stand to have more movies leave me in the emotionally disturbed void that The Incubus left me in.  And for that it gets...