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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The Outer Limits television
network show creator Leslie Stevens mostly worked in the small screen format
for much of his career having only directed a couple of features in the early
1960s with Hero’s Island and Private Property before embarking on
the truly cursed and completely bizarre 1966 American-Esperanto horror film Incubus. The second feature film to use the language
much to the chagrin of Esperanto speakers who disliked the poor pronunciation
of the language by the film’s English-speaking actors, the film is perhaps
better remembered for its surreal foray into obscurity than anything on the
finished piece itself. With two of the
principal actors having committed suicide around the time of the film’s
premiere followed by the still unsolved murder of actress Eloise Hardt’s daughter
compounded with the film’s language track, this oddball black-and-white horror
curiosity starring William Shatner is quite frankly the actor’s weirdest role
of his career which he reportedly took just prior to being cast in his most
famous role of Captain Kirk in Star Trek.
Wounded soldier Marc (William Shatner) treks to the remote
secluded village of Nomen Tuum (Latin for ‘your name’) in search of a well of
water with healing properties. However
unbeknownst to Marc, Nomen Tuum is a dangerous nest of demon seductresses who
lure interlopers to damnation, particularly succubus Kia (Allyson Ames) who has
a fixation on the wounded soldier. Coming
to the well with his sister Arndis (Ann Atmar), Kia closes in on the siblings
pretending to be lost amid an eclipse which leaves Arndis blinded and desperately
searching for her brother Marc now smitten by Kia. However a chance trip to the village
cathedral repositions Kia on a path towards revenge for Marc “defiling” her
with his “purity”, and a demonic incubus is summoned to walk the earth and
finds itself pitted in mortal combat against the dying soldier Marc.
The brainchild of Leslie Stevens, producer Anthony M.
Taylor, future American Beauty cinematographer Conrad Hall and composer
Dominic Frontiere, Incubus was poised as a quick shoot with the cast
only given ten days to rehearse their phonetically spoken Esperanto followed by
an eighteen day shoot, rather tight for this outdoorsy devil horror flick. Given the nature of the script and the
locations of filming at the Mission San Antonio de Padua, the director devised
a ruse involving a cover story regarding a nonexistent film called Religious
Leaders of Old Monterey and even went as far as showing stage directions
about monks and farmers. William Shatner
is fine in the piece though like most of the other cast members his Esperanto
pronunciation is poor, causing an uproar of enthusiasts decrying the misuse of
the language. As a result, the film only
ever really found distribution in France.
It didn’t help that the actor playing the incubus itself, Milos Milos,
killed himself and his girlfriend further drawing the film into untenable
scandal.
Long thought to be lost for decades with producer Anthony
Taylor remarking attempts to bring the film to home video in 1993 stalled by
news the negatives were destroyed in a fire.
Circa 1996, the film was rediscovered in Paris with burned-in French
subtitles and a new master was funded by the Sci Fi Channel who then released
the film on DVD in 2001. Circa February
2023, the film resurfaced again this time in crisp 35mm per the only surviving
theatrical print and soon after Arrow Video went the full distance with a 4K restoration
followed by a limited 4K UHD disc release.
For all of the film’s lore and curiosity, it still seemed a bit strange
for this title of all films to go on the format. Like Shatner’s other devil horror movie The
Devil’s Rain, the film doesn’t really work and mostly serves as an outlier
in William Shatner’s canon. Fans of this
new renaissance of unearthing forgotten Shatner titles will relish in the film’s
cult weirdness and peculiar language spoken by the actor while others will come
away indifferently. A nifty curio not
necessarily worth the asking price at present.
--Andrew Kotwicki
