Incubus

Plot synopsis:
In a lake at a rock quarry, a young woman named Mandy and her boyfriend, Ray, are swimming. The two spend the night at the lake camping, but are attacked by an unseen figure; Ray is killed, and Mandy is taken to the hospital with a ruptured uterus and serious trauma. As the attack occurs, teenager Tim Galen experiences a recurring nightmare he has in which a woman is tortured by a monstrous figure; his grandmother, Agatha Galen, tries to dissuade him of his suspicions about the premonitory dream. At the hospital, Mandy is treated by Sam Cordell (John Cassavetes), a surgeon and physician in the small community of Galen.
Sam's teenaged daughter, Jenny, is dating Tim, but he disapproves of their relationship. At the hospital, Sheriff Hank Walden (John Ireland) questions Sam about Mandy's injuries, and a nosy local reporter, Laura Kincaid, arrives to question Walden, who forces her to leave. That night at the local library and museum, a librarian named Carolyn Davies is brutally raped and murdered while closing the building. During her autopsy, Sam finds she suffered similar wounds as Mandy, and finds an inexplicable amount of semen in her vagina.
Attempts to question the comatose Mandy about her attacker are futile. Sam shows Laura pictures of his deceased 2nd wife and their amazing resemblance to each other. The following day, local farmer Ernie Barnes and his two daughters are brutally slain at their farmhouse. Tim again is tormented by his vision, and runs into a local movie theater in an attempt to distract himself. While there, a young woman is raped and murdered in the downstairs bathroom of the theater, and the metal stall door is found nearly bent in half. Sheriff Walden and Sam arrive at the crime scene shortly before Laura, who insists she may be able to help the investigation. She confides in Sam that she discovered historical records detailing Satanism and similar crimes occurring throughout the town's history.
Tim confronts Jenny at her home, hysterical, and says he believes his dreams are responsible for the crimes. Sam gets a sample of Tim's semen to compare against that which was found inside the victims, but they do not match. Tim and Agatha meet with Sam, Jenny, Laura, and Sheriff Walden at the library that night, where Laura reads a passage from a book detailing the shapeshifter known as the incubus, which manifests through dreams and can appear in human form. Agatha reveals that Tim's mother had died before his birth and had been accused of witchcraft due to psychic powers she possessed; Agatha claims that the Galen family has a legacy of witch hunters, and that his dreams are a result of this.
Laura and Tim return with Sam and Jenny to their home. As Laura takes Jenny upstairs to go to bed, Sam attempts to induce Tim's dream to prove its connection to the murders. Tim goes into a seizure-like state and runs upstairs into Jenny's room where he tries to attack Laura with a dagger given to him by Agatha, but Sam intervenes and stabs him to death. Laura then approaches Sam, and her face briefly shifts into that of the monstrous incubus; it is revealed that Laura has in fact been the incubus all along, manifesting in female form. As Laura embraces Sam, he looks over her shoulder to see Jenny's dead body lying on her bed, blood pouring out from between her legs.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
Shocking, well-made chiller is an undervalued tale of atrocious murder and evil forces.Small town doctor tries to discover who, or what, is committing a series of violent sexual murders.Incubus is a tight mystery, with some horrific murder sequences, that builds to an off-beat and eerie climatic twist.
The direction of John Hough, along with a bizarre music score, combine to create a dark atmosphere of dread that runs through out the film.
The great John Cassavetes does a solid performance as the new doctor in town.
Also good are the performances of Kerrie Keane as the local reporter, Helen Hughes as the town historian, and Duncan McIntosh as a tormented psychic teen.All around Incubus is a forgotten horror film that needs to be re-discovered and re-evaluated.*** out of ****.
That works to make the movie more eerie -- we aren't distracted by the gross-out effect.Cassavetes shows his talent -- he can make the worst dialogue sound believable.
On the other hand, there were a number of interesting scenes where you expected someone to break out in positively bad, cliched dialogue and instead -- nothing was said.Others have commented on the creepiness of the doctor's quasi-incestuous relation with his daughter.
That kind of behavior is something that almost never gets shown.Summary:  good if you want to see a creepy movie with a great actor and lots of strange things going on.
John Hough's horror films are a mixed bunch, but this one is far more interesting than its horrendous critical reception would suggest.
It is ostensibly a detective story of a small town policeman (John Cassavetes) investigating a series of unusually vicious rape homicides.
Undeterred, Hough would treat similar themes in his equally maligned "American Gothic".Graphic, contemplative and unrelenting in its bleakly oppressive visual style, this is a disturbing film experience: one of the more confrontational of taboo-breakers dealing with the always problematic theme of sexual homicide.Intriguingly enough, the film has some elements in common with Wes Craven's "Deadly Blessing" released around the same time, and dealing with sex crime, isolated communities, deceptive innocence, female independence and role expectations, and the other-worldly demon, the Incubus..
John Cassavetes stars as a surgeon in a small New England town where a series of bizarre rapes-turned-murders are occurring left and right against the area's female residents.
Thrown into the mix is his teenager daughter whose boyfriend claims to be witnessing the crimes as they are occurring within nightmares he experiences.As far as I'm concerned, John Hough is one of horror's unsung heroes when it comes to mood and atmosphere— if "The Legend of Hell House" or the marginal Disney thriller "The Watcher in the Woods" aren't enough proof of that, "The Incubus" is.
A somewhat withered Cassavetes is still on his game here, with John Ireland supporting as the miffed sheriff and Kerri Keane as a nosy local reporter.The chilly, Gothic autumnal environment in which the film takes place is entirely disrupted by its explicit sexual violence, and it features some of the most disturbing and visceral assault scenes I've ever seen in a horror film (the library sequence near the beginning especially stands out).
The script's medley of violence and female sexuality under attack is fascinating in its repulsive representation, and even more bizarre are the incestuous undertones and gender-bending revelation at the film's twisted conclusion.
While the finale is irrefutably shocking (and the monster makeup surprisingly scary, even by today's standards), I can say that the narrative build-up could have been a tad better handled as it all does seem to come crashing down rather awkwardly; a bit more finesse in script and editing could have remedied this, but the film still works in spite of it.Overall, I found "The Incubus" to be a formidable and disturbing film; Hough's handling of the rural New England locale is fantastic in atmosphere and tone, and effective, moody cinematography really establishes a menacing and inauspicious feel.
The film's one major flaw is the hackneyed pacing in its last act, but I personally found this a forgivable sin amidst the movie's audacious presentation of sexual violence and generally grim demeanor.
Seriously, I can easily stomach a lot of on screen blood, gore and repulsiveness, but what really makes this film disturbing & uncomfortable to watch is how the doctor character keeps on rambling about the physical damage done to raped women.
The aforementioned doctor has an odd interpretation of daughter-love and continuously behaves like he's a suspect himself, the town's sheriff (John Ireland) appears to be in a constant state of drunkenness and doesn't even seem to care about who keeps raping & killing the women in his district, the female reporter is even too weird for words and the Galens (an old witch and her grandson) are just plain spooky.
Basically these are very positive factors in a horror film, but the narrative structure is too incoherent and the characters are too unsympathetic for "Incubus" to be a really good film.
The story itself is not a bad one but a better director could not have hurt.I have to admit I was drawn back to this film after years of searching because the Library/Museum in the story, with it's Gothic look that might have come straight out of Lovecraft has always stuck in my mind.
Based on Ray Russell's dark bestseller, this John (WATCHER IN THE WOODS) Hough-directed bust has little going for it.Though it does not lack gory violence, it lack narrative sensibility and "characters".The "Incubus" of the title is a demon endowed with a mammoth penis that shoots red sperm into vaginas during intercourse -- or, to be more precise, rape.John Cassavetes, moonlighting from his successful directing career, is convincing as a doctor who questions the circumstances of the bizarre attacks on young women.Horrific possibilities of the victims spawning demonic offspring are not considered -- and neither is the audience's tolerance for slow moving garbage.The script's reluctance to explore the dramatic repercussions of a fertile premise exemplifies the major problems with this vapid Big-Schlong-On-The-Loose exercise..
The demonic spirit; The Incubus is mostly kept off screen when it attacks its victims, until it finally shows in a couple of frames in the final few minutes of the film.
Meanwhile the young Tim Galen (Duncan McIntosh), who dates Sam's daughter Jenny Cordell (Erin Flannery), discloses that he has premonitory visions of the deaths, but his grandmother Agatha Galen (Helen Hughes) tries to convince him that he has nothing to do with the murders.
But when Jenny learns about his dreams, she summons her father and Laura and they discover a supernatural secret about the Galen's family."Incubus" is a horror movie with an intriguing story, good cast including John Cassavetes and beautiful cinematography.
You know you're in trouble when John Cassavetes is operating at half-speed instead of full-throttle in a movie, and "The Incubus" is a dreadful, worst-case scenario of a great actor going through the motions to pay the bills.
The movie has something to do with a series of rape-murders going on in a small town, with a lot of supernatural hokum mixed in.
THE INCUBUS is strictly by-the-number horror film: unseen killer/monster is raping and murdering women in a small town.
It's a stand-out scene not necessarily because it's good but because it's so funny and pointless: the movie playing on the big screen shows a rock video-like moment with a guy in red leather pants getting his obviously fake long hair cut, all of this edited with scenes of a girl who is being attacked in the movie theater's washroom by the incubus.
The incubus has none.I actually contemplated NOT making a comment on this "piece" for fear that someone may watch it out of curiosity, but I am compelled to warn anyone who appreciates film to skip this movie..
To say that The Incubus is underrated is quite the understatement.From start till finish (even with a somewhat flawed script) it keeps you interested.There is a very good build up in suspense and it is gory when needed.Not everything is what it seems and there are a few red herrings thrown it to keep the viewer guessing.Now there are some sexual themes touched perhaps to deepen the intrigue which do work to a degree but overall distract the viewer a little.It looked like they realised this in the latter part of the film where events have been opened up and defined more and sort of let go these sexual themes.Not that it becomes clearer.Because some oft the raised questions are left unanswered.Which surprisingly works in favour of the ending.The acting is pretty darn good and it is nice to see these fine actors take the main plot seriously.John Cassavettes brings in that extra sophistication and is able to be interesting because of the underlying sexual themes I was talking about earlier and a little sub plot that could be seen as an explanation to his behaviour.But also could be a red herring as well.For the build up of tension and suspense it is extremely effective but I can understand that it could lead to some disappointment for viewers who wanted to see his story explained.Maybe the minimalistic approach of the plot is not for everyone.And normally I don't like that either.But in this case I did.For ones who still aren't convinced I think it is best to view this as a slasher with Gothic elements.Definitely worth your time..
but to me the ending alone is worth the price of admission(rental).Good acting in horror movies never hurt anyone,Sometimes when people make horror movies they forget that they can be clever and still supply some gore and surprises but not be too scared to show us a little more than they do.
"The Incubus" is a mix of the good (an interesting murder mystery), the bad (a disconnected script, a sloppy resolution, badly made attack scenes) and the weird (strong incestuous overtones, a strangely sleepy and stiff performance by John Cassavetes  - was that character really meant to be so "wacko"?).
In the small town of Galen, a young lad, Tim (Duncan McIntosh), suffers from recurring nightmares that he believes are somehow connected to a spate of local rapes/murders.
Doctor Sam Cordell (John Cassavetes) and cop Hank Walden (John Ireland) investigate, the evidence (lashings of red sperm) leading Sam to believe that the terrible events are the work of an incubus: a sex demon borne by a witch.With its rapey monster and the suggestion of incestuous desire (Sam seems little too close to his daughter Jenny, played by Erin Noble), this could have been a jaw-dropping shocker, but director John Hough decides to play it safe, keeping the apparently well-endowed, semen spurting monster hidden from view, and leaving the daddy/daughter relationship to one's imagination: instead, the film is largely content to be a routine mystery, with Tim and Sam presented as most likely to be the monster in human guise.
Actually, both are red herrings, the real creature eventually revealed to be reporter Laura Kincaid (Kerrie Keane), which means that the title of this film is highly misleading/totally confusing: she would be a succubus, not an incubus, and would attack men, not women.Hough provides a little gore along the way (bloodiest moment: a farmer gets a shovel in his neck and accidentally blows the end of his foot off with a shotgun), plus some gratuitous female nudity (Noble is seen naked by her possibly pervy father, we get a shower scene with a sexy blonde, and for those who like 'em dead, there's a corpse on the slab), and a hilariously dated scene in a movie theatre that is showing a heavy rock film starring Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden fame.
The film's director, John Hough, is the same man responsible for bringing you titles like 1973's The Legend of Hell House, American Gothic from 1987, and the 4th installment in the Howling franchise, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare released in 1988.
We're not here to talk about other films, though, so let's discuss what I've discovered about The Incubus.The premise involves Dr. Sam Cordell (John Cassavetes - 1968's Rosemary's Baby), who along with his daughter Jenny, recently moved to a small New England town by the name of Galen.
John Cassavetes does a great job performing the role of a doctor looking for answers.
In almost every scene poor John C looks like he's trying to think of a way to get out of his contract.
The dialogue between John C, the Sheriff, and the Mayor makes you think what great fodder this film would have been for Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
Years ago a movie going friend and I went to see a horror film that we thought would be good because it starred John Cassavetes.
For the uninitiated, John Cassavettes was an actor, screen writer and director (married to actress Gena Rowlands), nominated for Oscars three times, who wrote and directed a variety of good low-budget films using his income as an actor to keep himself afloat.
Up until seeing The Incubus, we did not understand that John Cassavetes income was made from any movie that was offered to him.
A brutal rapist is on the loose in a small Wisconsin town,and Dr.Sam Cordell(John Cassavetes)suspects his daughter's boyfriend,until the horrible truth is discovered-the rapes and killings are committed by a mysterious demon."The Incubus" is an above average horror film that has slick production values and nice-looking professional actors.There are some gory scenes like wonderful moment where one guy has a shovel shoved into his neck.There is also a gratuitous shower scene,so fans of nudity won't be disappointed.The film is truly creepy,unfortunately the action is rather slow.The film's director John Hough,has had uneven career at best,but he is primarily known for having helmed "The Legend of Hell House",a very creepy horror film that has to be seen to be believed.Anyway,give this one a look if you're a real horror buff.Highly recommended..
This may sound like a completely asinine reason to discredit the film, but believe me, anyone who has seen the film is almost sure to agree with me.John Cassevetes plays Dr. Sam Cordell.
It is a very tense moment and it starts the film off on the correct note.Also introduced into the tangled wed of a story is a young man named Tim that seems to be having strange dreams of a faceless woman that is bound in a torture chamber surrounded by men with cloaks covering their faces.
Toss in a quiet and turbid grandmother, a meretricious female reporter and a strong yet venal local sheriff and you have all the ingredients necessary to create the makings of an imbroglio in the small town of Galen.Throughout the film more people are massacred but most of the time, the males are slaughtered with extreme prejudice and the females are raped.
Dr. Sam Cordell (John Cassavetes) and his daughter Jenny (Erin Flannery) are both new to Galen after the death of Sam's wife.
A local journalist named Laura Kincaid (Kerrie Keane) reports the events and suggests to Sam that a similar string of rapes and murders occurred in the town 30 years earlier.
Tim's story and digging into the towns past makes Sam become convinced of the existence of a creature known as an Incubus - a shape-shifting demonic entity that exists only to reproduce!
Directed by John Hough this is one seriously dull horror film.
"Incubus" is one hell of a bizarre and trashy horror film.
The story is about brutal rapes & murders being committed in a small New England town named Galen.
A relative newcomer to the town, doctor Sam Cordell (a slumming John Cassavetes) tries hard to help the befuddled local police chief, Hank Walden (John Ireland) by working the clues.
The movie is really more interested in the mental health of the doctor, who makes eyes at his daughter and worries a little too much about which guy she's dating.
The actors (read: people who owed the director money) couldn't act for their worthless lives, and the story was not one of the best I've ever seen.SPOILERS: When the father tells the girl that she shouldn't get too close to the townspeople in the beginning of the film, what the crap was he talking about?
I can't imagine what the writer of the original novel feels about this film, but I'd be scared to find out.Avoid this movie.
I know it sounds like I'm being overly negative, but if you feel that way, go ahead and watch the movie.
A vicious demonic monster rapes and murders various women in the heretofore sleepy small town of Galen.
Based on Ray Russell's novel of the same title, Incubus is all about demon rape.
And hey, John Cassavetes is in it!The film opens in a rock quarry where Mandy and her boyfriend are swimming.
While all this is going on, Tim Galen, a local teen, dreams of hooded men tying a woman down and torturing her.Dr. Sam Cordell (Cassavetes) is treating the girl and we soon learn a lot about his life.
Oh yeah - and she's also dating Tim.Sheriff Hank Walden (John Ireland, whose career stretches from classics like All the King's Men and I Saw What You Did to Satan's Cheerleaders) and reporter Laura Kincaid are on the case too, which expands when a librarian is killed and murdered.
If you're thinking this is a totally scummy storyline, well, buckle up.The rapes and murders continue and every single time, young Tim is having the dream while they happen, including an attack at a movie theater where he's gone to try and distract himself.
I warned you that this film was rough, didn't I?Incubus was directed by John Hough, who was behind one of my favorite movies of all time, Twins of Evil.
The film's plot follows several characters investigating horrendous rapes that are occurring in a small New England town.