The Demoniacs (1974)
We begin the movie with an introduction to a group of "Wreckers" I guess these were people that would shine lights out into the sea at night to "wreck" ships on the rocks and steal their cargo. The Captain, Le Bosco, Paul, and the "beautiful but perverted" Tina.
After a recent wrecking, two young women survive and come to shore where they are brutalized by the Wreckers.
The crew heads to the village brothel to drink, and the Captain gets all weird and paranoid. They decide to go back to the wreck and kill the women. They set fire to ship but never find the bodies.
The girls, believed to be dead, make a deal with the Devil, who is locked in an old castle for some reason, to have the power they need to get revenge. Of course to give them the power he has to have sex with them.
Though I am not exactly what power he gives them. They find the Wreckers, but it seems they are brutalized some more and all six die in the end.
Well. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been Jeunes filles impudiques, aka Schoolgirl Hitchhikers, which was just dreadful.
Red Scream Vampyres (2009)
Caught this one streaming after I was done with the Demoniacs BluRay. Needed something a little newer. Well. I am really disappointed and should have gone to bed instead.
Earlier I was complaining about the "Daughters of the Craft" movies. Well, I'd take the worst Craft remake here over this bottom basement "Vampyres" remake. I have seen terrible remakes of Vampyers before, this one is unwatchable.
October 2021
Viewed: 38
First Time Views: 25
Regarding Wreckers, you're perpetuating some dubious claims there, as is the movie. Yes, many coastal communities looted the wrecks of ships that foundered nearby, taking whatever valuables they could find. That was a definite thing that happened, and pretty much a worldwide phenomenon. Settlements that happened to be near unusually dangerous stretches of coast often wound up getting very good at it and relied upon wrecking to boost their income, at least in the age of sail. They also generally did what they could to save survivors, albeit with a suspiciously low success rate that makes one wonder how much of a priority it was.
ReplyDeleteBecause of all that, rumors grew about some wrecker communities deliberately luring ships to their doom, often by somehow imitating nearby lighthouses or messing about with coastal landmarks. This inevitably expanded to claims of them deliberately hunting down and killing survivors, infiltrating agents onto ships that would sabotage them at the right moment, and being tied to smuggling to evade customs fees. AFAIK there's never been hard evidence presented of deliberate wrecking, sabotage, or murder, and most historians consider it a myth at this point.
OTOH, the smuggling thing, that was very real, particular in England and parts of Europe. Excise taxes were enormous in some periods and the lure of relatively easy money drew a lot of small coastal communities into co-operating enthusiastically with smugglers. There's evidence that many of the ships that wreckers looted were actually smuggling operations that had gone awry. Sneaking in close to shore on a dark night to unload contraband isn't the safest practice in the world, and since the wreckers on shore were expecting you *and* knew your hold was full of valuable cargo, it just makes sense that they'd take a "waste not, want not" approach if you went aground. If there's any truth to the darker side of wrecking, it probably involved betraying smuggler "allies" at an opprtune moment. Certainly much easier to draw them onto some rocks with "misplaced" lantern signals than imitating a lighthouse to catch innocent passers-by.
Wrecking as a practice was widespread and enduring enough (well into the 19th century in some places) that many of our modern maritime salvage laws grew out of trying to regulate it.
Just stating what is in the movie. I am pretty sure the claims of Satan living in a castle so he can have sex with teenage girls were also a bit made up.
ReplyDeleteNo, His Satanic Majesty lives there for the view. The sex thing's just a bonus, like having a neighbor who'll let you borrow his riding mower to do your lawn. :)
ReplyDeleteIf you can't get sex as a bonus then what is the point of even being Satan! Right?
ReplyDelete