A Candle for the Devil (Una vela para el diablo, It Happened at Nightmare Inn) (1973)

Like The Undertaker and His Pals, this one comes to us from the Blood Feast Collection DVD set that Jeff Burr left with me in 2016... at least, the truncated American version titled It Happened at Nightmare Inn does. As with two other movies in that set, I had never heard of this at all before and the running time, which was claimed to be 120 minutes, had me terrified, as the movies in that set were proving to be hard to sit through. So, I was pleasantly surprised when the movie turned out to only be a little over an hour in length, especially given how it was obvious that the movie was building to a climax and I didn't see how it could possibly go on for nearly another hour. It also proved to be one of the more tolerable of those films but, that said, it still wasn't all that great and was obvious fodder for "Schlocktober." However, what I didn't know until recently was that what I had seen was actually a severely cut American version with a completely different title; the original Spanish version is much longer, with more violence, nudity, and sexual content, and has a  bit more substance to it. This knowledge made me wonder if the movie would be featured this month at all, since it sounded like that version could possibly be considered a genuinely good film, but after watching it, I've decided that, while more coherent, it's still pretty schlocky. It does feature some interesting dynamics in regards to the psychology and relationship of the two sisters who act as the film's antagonists, the setting of a small village in Spain is a memorable one, and there are some interesting direction and editing choices, but otherwise, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill, 70's exploitation movie, one that tries to be Hitchcockian in some aspects but ultimately boils down to a bunch of mindless violence and sensuality.

Laura Barkley travels to Madrid, Spain to meet up with her sister, May, who's staying in a small village inn called Las Dos Hermanas, run by two sisters: Marta and Veronica. The two women are deeply religious and conservative, especially Marta, the older one, who sees the scantily-clad women who often come to tour the village as sinning harlots. When the sisters catch May sunbathing topless on the terrace, getting the lustful attention of some men in a nearby building, Marta tries to throw her out. During the scuffle between them, May gets shoved down the stairs and smashes into a stained glass window, which kills her instantly. Seeing what happened as divine punishment, Marta decides to hide the body, when Laura arrives. She allows her to stay, fearing that hastily sending her away would arouse her suspicion; Laura, in turn, despite being told that her sister checked out, decides to stay until she hears from her. While walking the village's streets later on, she learns that May didn't use a bus to leave, nor did she use either of the local taxis. Unbeknownst to her, the sisters have dismembered and burned May's body in their oven. The next day, Laura meets Eduardo, a local whom May had gotten to know and was planning on having lunch with, and he tells her that she didn't say anything about her planning to go somewhere else. Meanwhile, Marta is unhappy with the arrival of Helen Miller, a free-spirited young woman whom she sees as indecent, and also suspects Veronica of taking money from the cash-box. It turns out, she's right, as Veronica has given the money to Luis, a young man who works at the inn and who is also her secret lover. It isn't long before Helen's skimpy clothes and attitude about Marta's strict demeanor finally drive the sisters to murder her and do the same with her body as they did May's. Laura, after still not hearing anything from her sister and chaffing from Marta's rigid and judgemental nature, decides to leave the inn, but becomes concerned for the well-being of Norma, an American woman who arrives with her eight-month old son. Her concerns double when she learns from Eduardo that he took a very drunk Helen back to the inn the night before, even though the sisters say she checked out the next morning. Upon learning something disturbing about Marta's past, Laura fears the worse when Norma does, indeed, disappear as well, and decides to get proof that the sisters are behind the vanishings, a plan that may put her own life in grave danger.

Eugenio Martin (his first name anglicized in the credits as Eugene), was a director who made many films in the genre around this time, the mid-60's to the early-70's being his most productive period (his early credits, however, include being an assistant director on the Ray Harryhausen films, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad). Some of his more notable movies during this period include the 1966 western, The Bounty Killer (The Ugly Ones in America); a comedic western in 1971 called Bad Man's River, with Lee Van Cleef; Pancho Villa, with Telly Savalas and Clint Walker; and Horror Express, which starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. After A Candle for the Devil, which he made as an anti-fanaticism movie, he continued directing steadily into the early 80's, with movies like 1973 musical, The Girl from the Red Cabaret, with Mel Ferrer, 1976's Call Girl, and 1977's Let's Leave the War in Peace, as well as working as a director, producer, and writer on Spanish television. His career slowed down considerably by the end of the 80's and he only wrote and directed one film in the 90's, 1996's La sal de la vida, before seemingly retiring altogether.

The two sisters are, by far, the most memorable and interesting part of the movie, from the dynamics of their relationship to their psychologies. Marta (Aurora Bautista), being the oldest, is the more dominant and strict of the two, as she wholeheartedly believes that the free-spirited, scantily-dressed women who frequent the village and their inn as tourists are disgusting, sinful harlots who deserve to burn in hell and makes no secret of it, be it to the women themselves or others whom she finds to be decent. She absolutely will not tolerate such lewd behavior at her inn, and while the first death, that of May Barkley, is an accident, she sees it as an act of divine punishment, with her and Veronica acting as God's "hand of justice," and afterward, grows more willing to kill other such "sinners." She also uses that notion as justification for her and Veronica hiding the bodies by dismembering them, storing them in a wine vat in the cellar, and cooking and likely serving them as food to the guests. However, despite her overzealous convictions, Marta is shown to be repressed and not without kinks of her own, as she watches a group of young men skinny-dipping in a river and is clearly taken by the scene, before walking through a grove of sticks and briars that scratch her up and, apparently, enjoying it. That night, she's seen wearing the type of sultry dress that she criticizes other women for wearing and admiring herself in the mirror after putting on some makeup and lipstick. You later find out that said dress was given to Marta by her fiance who, several years before, had stood her up on their wedding day, eloping with a younger girl, which solidified Marta's hatred for the current, looser generation of women. This comes to a head when Norma, the young mother of an eight-month old boy, arrives at the inn. Initially taken with the two of them, seeing Norma as a "nice girl," Marta soon feels fooled and betrayed when Beatriz, a life-long friend of hers, tells her that she overheard Norma say that she has no idea where the baby's father is. Thinking that this means she's unwed, Marta and Veronica attempt to take the baby from Norma and throw her out, only for Marta to kill her in the ensuing scuffle. Afterward, Veronica finds a letter in Norma's belongings that proves she was married, though likely heading for divorce, but Marta doesn't see anyone who would want one as being in a real marriage. To the very end, Marta insists she has a clear conscience and feels that if what they've done is evil, they will be found out; otherwise, they won't. Needless to say, the ending, where they're discovered trying to kill Laura, answers that for her.

While often doing whatever her dominating sister tells her, Veronica (Esperanza Roy) is a more conflicted person. Unlike Marta, she doesn't see May's death at the beginning as anything more than an accident and is surprised when Marta doesn't allow her to call the police, as well as makes her let Laura in when she arrives. She does join her sister in dismembering and roasting May's body but is much more reluctant to kill, telling Marta at one point that she can't truly know the will of God. Indeed, she comes off as horrified when she kills Helen Miller, thinking she's attacking Marta, and also stops her sister from killing Laura afterward. Also, her own religious convictions don't stop her from having a sensual love affair with Luis, who works at the inn, as well as stealing money from the inn's cash-box and giving it to him. Like Marta, she welcomes the arrival of Norma and her baby, as both of them are positively smitten with the latter, feeling the need to look after him as his mother often leaves him unattended; Veronica is also happy because Marta's good spirits during this period keep her from spying on her. However, when Beatriz tells them that she overheard Norma admitting she's not married, Veronica is as taken aback by this as Norma and both are intent upon taking the baby from her, though Marta is the one who ultimately kills her. After the murder, when she discovers the note that proves that Norma actually was married, Veronica feels guilt over what they've done, despite Marta assuring her that there's a reason for it all. Marta's growing determination not to get caught and suspicions about Veronica's state of mind about the situation begin to slowly turn the sisters against each other, with Veronica saying what they've done is the worst sin possible against God. Sure that they're going to get caught, Veronica gives Luis enough money to leave the village and start a new life, breaking off her relationship with him. During the climax, when the two sisters capture Laura while she's checked into the inn with Eduardo, who posed as her husband, Veronica is, again, the more sympathetic of the two, telling Laura that they don't want to hurt her. But, when she gets free and they chase her throughout the inn, Veronica seems as willing to kill her as her sister, but both of are them ultimately caught in the act by the townspeople.

The other protagonist, Laura Barkley (Judy Geeson), is a fairly shallow character, as her only motivation in the story is finding her vanished sister, May. While staying at the inn, thinking that May will come back and meet up with her, she tours the village, trying to find any information about her, and learns that no one in the place's limited range of public transportation took her out of the village, that she never mentioned to Eduardo about going anywhere, and that she was apparently sunbathing on the terrace right before Laura arrived. When Helen Miller disappears as well, and Laura learns that Eduardo took her back to the inn the night before, while the sisters say that she left the next morning, she begins to suspect that there's something sinister going on, especially given how judgemental and dismissive Marta is about the whereabouts of people she finds to be indecent. Her concerns grow when the young mother Norma arrives at the inn with her baby and she tries to tell Eduardo and the village's mayor about it but they don't really pay it much heed. She then meets up with Norma and tells her about the disappearances, asking her to let her know when she leaves so that she can be sure nothing happened to her as well. But, the next morning, when Laura tries to get in touch with Norma, she's told that she has left, and when she looks out the window of where she's now staying, she sees a glimpse of someone watching her from the window of the inn, which is right across the street. That night, she sneaks into the inn in order to find some proof of her suspicions, heading down to the cellar and investigating the wine vats down there, but having to flee when the sisters hear and almost catch her. She then checks back into the inn with Eduardo, who poses as her husband, but when the latter is killed by Marta while investigating the wine cellar, Laura is attacked by the sisters, who bind and gag her. She manages to flee the room and, her hands still tied, tries to find a way out of the inn, but is cornered by the sisters. Fortunately, the townspeople arrive in order to confront the sisters about a piece of human flesh that was found in the food they served to their guests and stop them from killing Laura.

After the sisters, the most memorable character in the film is Helen Miller (Lone Fleming), a young Danish tourist who represents everything that Marta despises about the current generation. A very free-spirited woman who's not afraid to strut her sex appeal, Helen arrives in the village via bus and makes a complete spectacle of herself by jumping into a fountain and splashing herself with water from the spritzes. Unaware of the bad first impression she's made on Marta, she leaves her things at the inn and runs off to the village's public pool, completely oblivious to Marta trying to make the excuse that they have no available rooms. She doesn't get back until very late that night and when she does, Marta admonishes her for it. However, Helen ignores her and teases her about the fairly sultry dress she's currently wearing, asking her if she has a lover, and when Marta says that she doesn't like women who come in at late hours, Helen asks, "And what about you?" The next day, she continues to flaunt her looks, receiving leering looks and undivided attention from all the men in the village, both young and old. Though they're never seen interacting, Helen seems to become friendly enough with Laura that the latter introduces her to Eduardo, whom she spends the rest of the evening with. By the time he brings her back to the inn, it's not only very late but Helen is also completely drunk and acting obnoxious. This, combined with provocative pictures she found in her room, makes Marta decide to force her to leave the next day. In her drunken state, Helen begins taunting Marta about what she has under her clothes that makes the two of them so different from one another and starts ripping them off. The more she reveals, the bolder Helen becomes, until Marta grabs a knife and stabs her right in the gut, with Veronica coming in and, thinking she's attacking Marta, bashing her in the head to finish her off. Like May, Helen's body is dismembered and cooked.

A woman who, initially, has the exact opposite effect on the sisters is Norma (Blanca Estrada), the young mother who arrives at the inn with her eight-month old son. She seems like a nice enough girl and the sisters have pity for her, traveling alone with a baby because, as she says, her husband couldn't come with her, but she does prove to be a bit irresponsible, as she sometimes leaves the baby by himself. Their attitude about her changes when, while shopping at a store, Norma comments that she doesn't know where the baby's father is, adding, "If you can find one for me, let me know." Beatriz tells the sisters what she said and they decide that she's unfit to be a mother. Meanwhile, Norma is elsewhere in the village, talking with Laura, who tells her of the disappearances of May and Helen, and asks her to call her when she decides to leave so she can make sure nothing happened to her as well. Following this talk, Norma seems uneasy when she walks back to the inn and, upon arriving, finds that the sisters have put her suitcase out in the hallway and have the baby with them in the kitchen. Marta admonishes her for being an unfit mother and not setting a good example for her child, but Norma isn't having it and fights with Marta to get around her in order to take her baby back from Veronica. But, Marta kills her by stabbing her in the back, and her body suffers the same fate as those who came before her. Whatever happened to the baby is left unanswered, as he's not seen again after his mother's death.

None of the male characters, as few of them as there are, are all that memorable, including the two main ones. Eduardo (Victor Barrera), a local man who got to know May to the point where they were going to have lunch together, and also gets to know Laura, becomes the person she first goes to about her suspicions regarding the sisters. She also hooks him up with Helen Miller, whom he takes back to the inn late that night and last sees when she walks in drunkenly. Despite Laura's suspicions, Eduardo isn't too concerned about it, though he does direct Laura to the village's mayor, since the village doesn't have much of a police force. Following Norma's disappearance, Laura tells Eduardo of it but he still doesn't think there's anything to worry about, adding that she needs evidence to back up her suspicions before she reports them. But, after she snoops around the inn that night and is almost caught, he does agree to help her by checking into the inn with her, posing as her husband. Late that night, he does some investigating of his own and eventually finds human body parts in one of the wine vats in the cellar, but Marta axes him in the back before he warn Laura of it.

At first, Luis (Carlos Pineiro), the young handyman who works at the inn, seems like he's going to be either a minor character or a potential friend and love interest for Laura, as his first scene involves him bringing her some food and telling her what he knows about the last time anyone saw May. But, as it turns out, he's actually Veronica's lover, as she often comes to see him at his humble home in the village so the two of them can hit the sheets. Despite her being twenty years his senior, Luis comes off as genuinely attracted to her, wanting to see every inch of her body, though she tries to put something between them while she takes her clothes off, and wants her to spend as much time with him as possible, becoming a bit jealous when she rushes back to the inn in order to see to Norma's baby. Other than that, there's not much to say about Luis, and he's last seen before the movie's climax, when Veronica pays him one final visit. Fearing that she and Marta will soon be caught for what they've done, she gives him a big wad of money from the inn's cash-box, which she often robbed for him (he never asked her to, though), telling him to use it to leave the village and go live somewhere far away, such as Madrid. Not understanding what's going on, as she doesn't give him a straight answer when he asks why she wants him to leave, he tells her that he wants to go on seeing her, forcing her to break off their relationship by yelling that she doesn't want to see him anymore and storming out of his house.

Weirdly enough, I'm 99% sure that Luis' actor, Carlos Pineiro, appears in the scene where Marta watches a group of boys skinny-dipping (unless it's somebody who's wearing the exact same clothes he was wearing when he was first seen at the inn and has the same build and hairstyle as him). That confused the hell out of me, as those boys, whom I initially thought were teenagers, look to be rather young, given the size of their private parts (which you get uncomfortable close-ups of), and then, I see Pineiro, who's a young man, amongst them. They don't even try to hide the fact that is him, as you get a good look at his face, despite how close-in and shaky the camera is during this scene. When I was looking back over the movie, I thought maybe this is why, when Veronica comes to see him at his house, he was lying in bed naked, but I then remembered that takes place before this scene. It's just weird. Like I said, there's a small chance that I could be wrong and that's not Pineiro, but it looks way too much like him.

Beatriz (Montserrat Julio) is an old friend of Marta's who, while unaware that she and her sister have resorted to homicide, shares her disgust of the current generation of "indecent" women. Most significantly, when she hears Norma's comment at the market about her not knowing where her son's father is, Beatriz goes to the inn and tells the sisters about it, writing her off as an unmarried tramp. Little does she know that she just sealed Norma's doom, as she's murdered that night. Ironically, though, it's Beatriz who ends up unintentionally exposing the sisters' evil deeds, as when she and her husband, Pablo, eat there a couple of nights later, she becomes absolutely horrified at the sight of an eyeball with a piece of flesh attached to it amongst her food and passes out from it. As the other diners gather around, Pablo spots the flesh and removes it before anyone can see it. It's later revealed that Beatriz suffered a small infection but the doctor manages to catch it in time. Concerned about what he found, Pablo has the doctor examine the meat to prove that it is what they suspect and later on, the doctor confirms his findings to the alcalde (Fernando Hilbeck), or mayor, whom Laura had come to earlier about her concerns (he'd told Laura the story of what happened with Marta's fiance years before). Now knowing this, the alacalde leads the townspeople and the police to the inn in order to arrest the sisters, getting there just in time to stop them from murdering Laura.

One of the film's best aspects is its location of the tiny village in the picturesque countryside of Spain. It makes for an interesting juxtaposition in that you have a story that takes place in the early 70's and yet, this village feels like it belongs in a completely different age (the dichotomy is hammered home from the beginning by your seeing Laura land in the enormous, modern Madrid airport during the film's opening). Not only is it small and congested in the way it's constructed, with there seeming to be hardly any breathing room between the buildings and streets, and tall, oppressive walls often on either side of the streets, but there aren't very many modern conveniences, aside from a bus and a couple of taxis, one television that's seen in a room at the sisters' inn, and a public pool. The only actual home you see the inside of is Luis' and his is a rather small, simple-looking place. Eduardo even says that there are very little police there, meaning that the only person Laura can go to with her suspicions about the sisters is the alcalde. It's only when he sees a grisly remnant of the sisters' handiwork firsthand that some armed officers join him in marching to the inn in order to arrest the sisters. Speaking of the sisters, their inn, where most of the film takes place, is an especially interesting setting in how it has just enough modern touches to suit tourists but is still a very old-fashioned place in the look of its architecture; the way the sisters do everything by hand in the kitchen (the stove they have in there is especially primitive); the backyard where wood, and likely the chickens that you hear clucking, are chopped with an axe; and the large cellar where big wine vats are kept. Of course, this is all meant to reinforce the notion of just how out-of-touch this place is with modern times, including with what is now deemed socially acceptable in regards to women, meaning that strict, judgemental, stringently religious mindsets like those of the sisters and Beatriz can still be prevalent. In fact, some of the tourists who come to the village, especially Helen Miller, do feel very alien here, and the assorted glances they get from the townspeople aren't unwarranted.

The direction and editing is quite competent for the most part. There are some instances of glaring camera zoom-ins, though it's not even close to Jess Franco territory, and a few scenes, like the one where Norma comments about not knowing where her baby's father is, cut abruptly, but other than that, it is a technically well-made film. If you can find a really good, high-definition print of it (the film is available on Blu-Ray), the cinematography will come off quite nice, as you have lovely shots of the countryside surrounding the village, the exteriors and interiors of the huge art gallery that draws much of the tourism, which is just as impressive for its own architecture as it is for its paintings, and nighttime scenes, both inside the inn and on the village streets, that do have some mood to them (there is some day-for-night stuff here but it's more well-done than in some of the other films we've seen so far). Editing is also often used to emphasize the sisters' mindsets, to give a metaphorical quality to some scenes, and to give ominous hints of what's to happen. When Marta, referring to May, says, "Years ago, that shameless girl would have been burned alive," the film cuts to a painting in her bedroom of devils flying amidst some flames. In another scene, when Marta disapprovingly watches Helen strut about the village, it cuts from her watching to a close-up of a knife-blade being sharpened on the street below, which alludes to Helen's eventual fate. Also, after Norma makes the aforementioned comment about her baby's father, the movie cuts to Laura taking pictures of some paintings in the art gallery... some very grisly and disturbing paintings, and when Beatriz tells the sisters that she heard Norma mention that she wasn't married, the film cuts back to the art gallery and those paintings (most tellingly, the painting of Medusa's screaming face is shown first both times). Finally, before you see the sisters watching Norma when she leaves the inn that night, now believing that she deceived them, you see a shot of their oven, the flames inside it crackling very loudly.

While not among the grisliest or most disturbing movies ever, there is a fair amount of bloodletting and unsettling images to be found here. The murders are not that graphic in and of themselves, consisting of May getting shoved down a flight of stairs and crashing into a stained glass window, Helen getting stabbed a couple of times in the gut and then whacked in the back of the head, Norma getting stabbed and sliced open down her back with a hook, and Eduardo getting an axe in the back, but there are pretty gnarly shots of blood dripping from or splattered on the weapons and objects that caused the deaths. The most memorable of these shots is of the chunk of stained glass with May's blood seemingly, and symbolically, dripping from the image of a sword etched into, which Marta takes as a sign that her death was divine punishment. What's much more unsettling is the idea that, after the deaths, the sisters dismembered and cooked the bodies, as well as kept some of the spare parts down in one of the cellar's wine vats. You don't ever see this act being done in graphic detail but the way it's hinted at, with the editing showing them closing all the doors and opening the stove, as well as our getting a glimpse of the aftermath of they're doing so to May's body, with them washing up blood that's on the floor and walls, and they're preparing to do the same to Norma when we see them stripping her clothes off, is quite affecting. Plus, we do get the skin-crawling shots of a chunk of flesh and eye found on Beatriz's plate, as well as a decapitated head floating in the wine vat with some other pieces of flesh, which is more than enough. In addition, if you've ever gotten scratched up by briars and underbrush (as I have numerous times), then watching Marta get all sliced up while walking through a grove of them in one scene should really make you wince. And I really can't help but be put off by the graphic close-ups of severed lamb heads and chopped up meat that you see in the sisters' kitchen, which I have a feeling wasn't fake, since we're talking about a movie made in Europe in the 70's.

Much more overt than the violence is the sexual content and nudity, which there's plenty of. You see Veronica and Luis either partially or completely naked a couple of times (I used that image of Luis laying in bed earlier because you see him nude more often than you do with his clothes on!), most graphically during their first tryst, where you see a shot of him sleeping in bed, with his naked rear exposed for all the world to see, come very close to seeing his penis a couple of times, and then watch them get into bed and, after a lot of rolling around and playing, begin to have sex. You also see May Barkley sunbathing topless on the terrace and you get plenty of looks at her breasts when the sisters try to throw her out, leading her to tumble down the stairs, smash into the stained glass, and collapse at the bottom. While Marta is never completely nude, you do see her wearing a fairly sensual dress in one scene and her clothes all ripped up in another. The most unsettling instance of nudity is when Marta watches that group of boys skinny-dipping in a river. You see a full-on closeup of one's butt, as well as his little knob of manhood, which, as I said earlier, is so small that it makes me wonder exactly how old that kid was. Plus, let's not forget that the older one among them is apparently played by Carlos Pineiro (Luis), which is both kind of "ugh," as we have a young man skinny-dipping with some young boys, and, again, very confusing, as this takes place at the same time he's supposed to be getting it on with Veronica at his house.

However, there's more to it than just old-fashioned nudity and sex scenes, as there are also overtones that make everything come off as far more kinky. There are some hints of lesbianism, both sometimes between the two sisters (Marta's disapproval of Veronica's relationship with Luis, which she doesn't know of for sure but suspects, comes off a bit like jealousy) and between Marta and Helen, the latter of whom is uncomfortably interested in how lovely Marta looks in that aforementioned dress and then, when she's drunk, comments on Marta looking at her and decides she wants a closer look at her. In a sort of partial rape, she starts ripping off Marta's clothes, commenting on what she sees as she does, such as noting that Marta's breasts are bigger than her own. This act leads to her being stabbed but even after she is, there's a shot of her hand touching Marta's chest as she leans up against her. Speaking of Marta, when she's making her way back to the inn after spying on the skinny-dippers, getting cut up by the thick underbrush that's all around her, it's implied that she's getting turned on by it, with how she has hear back and her eyes closed as she's cut, and the music emphasizes this. Once she's back at the inn, breathing heavily as she rinses and cleans her cuts, she acts like she's coming down from an orgasm just as much as she's trying to compose herself. And there's no getting around how the sisters' undressing Norma after they killed her also has a feeling of rape about it, as well as necrophilia, given that she's dead.

Despite all its interesting aspects, the reason why I decided to make A Candle for the Devil part of Schlocktober is because, at the end of the day, it's not much different from many of the other exploitation and Euro-horror films being produced during that period. If you're like me and have seen a lot of these movies, there's nothing here that you can't find elsewhere and, more than likely, you've seen it done better. The film tries to make itself come off as more intelligent by throwing in a handful of Hitchcockian elements, with the basic plot being similar to Psycho, as is the scenario where Laura and Eduardo pose as man and wife in order to investigate the inn; some little touches to the story that you really need to pay attention to, like how what Norma said at the market is misinterpreted by Beatriz when she relays it to the sisters, and that the chunk of flesh and eye ends up on Beatriz's plate because, while probing the clean wine vats down in the cellar, Laura hastily places the stirring stick for them next to the one for the vat with the body parts in it and the sticks got mixed up when they were next used; and some attempts at suspenseful sequences, such as when Laura is searching the cellar and Marta, hearing her down there, goes to investigate and almost catches her (that shot of her shadow on the wall in the next room while Laura is up against the wall next to the kitchen door looks very much like something you would have seen Hitchcock construct). Despite these instances of competent to fairly-inspired filmmaking and editing and the more subversive aspects of its story, the movie ultimately doesn't amount to being much more than just 86 minutes of sex, nudity, and bloody violence.

Now, as you should know, I have no problem whatsoever with a movie that's just mindless entertainment... if I find it entertaining, that is; I don't get that with A Candle for the Devil. Despite all the noteworthy things about it, most of the story is a mystery that we already know the answer to, and so, we're watching Laura wander the village and question people, trying to find out something we've known from the beginning. Interspersed with that, we get the interesting dynamics with the sisters and some more of their grisly crimes but, for me, it's not enough to offset the dullness of watching Laura bumble around in the dark and grow concerned over what she fears may be happening as more people disappear. There aren't many sequences that are that thrilling or suspenseful, either. The lesbian overtones of the confrontation between Marta and Helen that build up to the latter's demise are, as I mentioned earlier, interesting, and if you want to know the sequence that had the most effect on me, it would be the lead-up to Norma's murder and seeing her body being stripped, her clothes and personal items then burned, before she's dismembered, because of just how horrific the notion of a young murder being murdered and eviscerated like that is, especially given when it's revealed that the sisters were greatly misinformed about her marital status. I also find it unsettling that you never learn what happened to her baby afterward, and the hints that you are given earlier about his potential fate make it all the worse: at one point, Marta comments, "He should never grow up. Like that, they are so innocent," and during another conversation, she suggests sending the baby somewhere he could, "Grow up and see good examples around, and be a man," which Veronica is very opposed to. I'll let you fill in those blanks for yourself. But, most of the third act's thrills revolve around whether or not Laura will be able to escape the sisters' wrath and, because she is such a bland, uninteresting character, I don't find myself that on the edge of my seat when she's nearly caught while snooping around the wine cellar or when, during the climax, she's running around the inn, with her hands bound behind her back and her mouth gagged, trying to find a way out, and is only saved when the alcalde arrives with the police.

There are also aspects of the story that aren't explained well and, even with repeated viewings, can be very confusing and hard to wrap your mind around (either that, or it's just me, but hear me out). For instance, that explanation of how the eye and flesh ended up on Beatriz's plate? I must clarify that that's what I think happened but it's never made very clear, nor is it that the sisters ever actually cooked and served parts of their victims to the guests. You know that they used their stove to dispose of their belongings and likely to burn up body parts but then, if that's the case, why keep some body parts down in the wine vat and burn some others? Maybe those down in the vat are ones they couldn't put in the stove but even then, doesn't that run the risk of causing the kind of mistake that does do them in? I don't know. I thought the forced cannibalism was something else they were alluding to but, upon other watches, I'm not so sure. The letter that Veronica finds amongst Norma's belongings is also a confusing matter, as it doesn't make clear if she wrote it or if her husband wrote it; therefore, you're not sure if Marta's justification for killing her because she wanted a divorce holds any water (putting aside the fact that there's never good justification for killing an innocent person, of course). Even official sources about the movie don't seem sure who exactly wanted the divorce, as I've seen it explained both ways in plot synopses. A small thing in the long run, but it bugs me. Finally, there's what happens with Beatriz when she discovers that nasty surprise on her dinner plate. At first, you make think that she was so horrified by her discovery that she passed out or came close to having a heart attack, but you later hear the village doctor diagnose her with a slight infection from it. Why was that necessary? I get that you would get a bad case of food poisoning from ingesting something like that but it felt a little too messy to me and that it would have been better just to have everyone think she suffered a heart attack, or high blood pressure, as woman initially thinks it is.

The best way to describe the music score, composed by Antonio Perez Olea, is that it's very diverse, not just in mood but also in styles. Sometimes, you'll be hearing traditional Spanish music, other times you'll be hearing themes that are played on church organs, and in one scene, when you see more tourists arrive, you hear a rocking guitar piece! Some of the more memorable parts of the score are a low, strumming ukulele theme for the more ominous, the aforementioned church organ for when the sisters' fanatical religious beliefs are expressed, and a fairly folksy sounding theme with some female voices vocalizing that you hear during one scene where Laura is snapping photographs of the artwork, which clashes with the unsettling images that you're getting a montage of. But, the piece of music that's always stuck with me ever since I first saw this film is this weird tune that you hear when Helen Miller is introduced. As she jumps into the fountain in the town square and splashes herself with water, you hear what I can only describe as women singing in scattered Spanish intoning to the tune of Singing in the Bathtub. I couldn't come up with anything half as bizarre myself, and you actually hear one little section of that music being played repeatedly when she walks into the inn and leaves her luggage behind. You also hear a kind of funky music during a bit where she's walking the village streets, as Marta watches her. See what I mean when I said the music score is diverse? But, if anything else, at least I have something to talk about this time around.

The film was released in the United States in 1974, under the alternate title of It Happened at Nightmare Inn, and there have been a few heavily butchered prints of it floating around with that title. I'm not exactly sure if the film originally played over here mostly intact, with maybe a few cuts to give it a PG-rating, and was then chopped up very badly when American-International Pictures played it on television, but whatever the case, the version that I first saw on that Blood Feast DVD set and the one you're most likely to come across here is that very, very truncated TV cut. The uncut version is already fairly short, at just 86 minutes (Eugenio Martin's now lost original director's cut is said to have been around two hours), but this version is cut down to only 68 minutes, is in full-screen, and is likely to be in crappy quality. Most of the cuts are made to eliminate the sexual content and the violence, with the murders being either only partly shown or eliminated altogether and the same goes for the scenes that showed a lot of skin. Sometimes, the edits aren't too distracting. When Helen is stabbed, for example, you only see one of the stabs into her gut, and Veronica bashing her in the back of the head is edited in a way where it looks as if she simply collapsed to the floor following the stabbing. The section after that, where Marta heads upstairs to kill Laura, thinking she heard what went on, is completely gone, but you're not likely to know anything was missing. Norma's death is pretty much as is, save for the shot of her dead body lying on the floor, with the hook sticking out of her, and you don't see her being undressed but you do see the sisters throwing her belongings into the stove, which gets the point across well enough.

However, as you can guess, there are edits that really make the movie feel disjointed and incomprehensible in some regards. For instance, the entire death of May is removed, with the film cutting from the sisters' hearing the men on the opposite building whooping and hollering about her looks right to Laura's arrival. Only the brief shot of May's body in the bedroom is left in to let you know that someone was murdered. The entire subplot involving Veronica and Luis is removed, although they kept the moment of jealousy where she tells him to stay away from Laura's room and to wait for her, which, in the long run, would seem pointless. You can still guess where Veronica is when Marta is looking for her but, because it doesn't lead to anything in this version, you'll still be wondering what the point of it was, as well as the moment where Marta catches Veronica looking at the drawer with the cash-box, since the reveal that she's been giving Luis money are in those more sensual scenes. They could have at least left in the last scene between them, where she gives him the money necessary for him to get away from the village, to give that material some kind of payoff here. The skinny-dipping scene is still in here, although all the shots of butts and penises are removed, as is the sequence where Marta walks through the brush, causing her to appear randomly cut up when she gets back to the inn, as they leave in the moment where she washes those scratches. Weirdly, they removed the scene early on where Laura asks around to see if anyone knows by what means her sister left the village, making it come off like she hasn't been looking for May as much as she says she has. The third act is pretty much the way it is in the uncut version, the only deletion being the shot of blood dripping from Marta's axe after she kills Eduardo (yeah, they get rid of that, but they leave in the shots of the human remains in the wine vat and the chunk of flesh with the eye), but this point, it's way too late to try to salvage what it did originally have to offer.

Needless to say, if you ever decide to watch this film, it's best to avoid that butchered version at all costs. In its original, uncut version, A Candle for the Devil, while having some noteworthy qualities, is ultimately a pretty typical, 1970's Euro-horror film. It benefits from the interesting portrayals and psychology of the two sisters, a couple of other memorable characters, some subversive overtones to parts of the story, a nice setting, competent cinematography, direction, and editing, bloody murders, gruesome images, and disturbing allusions that mixed in with some Hitchcockian elements, and a memorably eclectic music score, but at the same time, it has a number of cons that keep it from achieving greatness. A lot of the other characters are bland and shallow, there are details in the story that can come off as confusing, the attempts at classiness and subversive substance can't change the fact that the movie is ultimately just a bunch of violence and sexuality, and the main protagonist is so underdeveloped and bland that the suspenseful scenes involving her aren't all that exciting, anyway. I ultimately don't know whether or not I would recommend it. I guess if you like Euro-horror, it's worth one watch, but there are many other Spanish and Italian horror movies that I think are much more worth your time.