Some of the most outrageous and memorable horror comic books that I’ve ever read were published by Skywald Publications in the 1970s. “Frankenstein: Book II” was an ongoing story in Skywald’s anthologies. It picked up the story of Frankenstein’s monster following the events of Mary Shelley’s novel. In the first chapter, the monster enters a log cabin, greets two dudes, and then eats their faces. He says, “Heh heh heh!”
Obviously, “Frankenstein: Book II” wasn’t fucking around. I wish I could say the same for Maleficia.
It’s 1860 and we’re “just north of Transylvania.” The Karlson family has inherited a castle estate from an uncle who died under mysterious circumstances. This is important to note, because it’s the closest we get to context, structure, or a plot. For the rest of the movie, we hang out with the Karlsons as they witness a Satanic ritual, run from zombies in the woods, enter a castle, explore the castle, escape from the castle, battle a den of vampires, enter a church, and witness another Satanic ritual. Also, there’s more screaming in this movie than in John Waters’ Desperate Living. And fireworks are lit in someone’s house to announce the arrival of Satan.
Folies Meurtrieres was the 1984 debut from underground French filmmaker Antoine Pellissier. It’s one of my most cherished trash-horror discoveries of the last decade, a stunning spectral-void-slasher filled with warbled synth-pop, cars that bleed, and dreamy Super 8 visions. Maleficia, the shot-on-video follow-up directed by Pellissier and written by Camille Costedoat, isn’t Folies. While both movies are basically about nothing, Maleficia doubles the runtime and cuts the electricity in half. This is Pellissier literally fucking around with a video camera, placing emphasis on extreme gore sequences over mood. Faces are cut off of heads. Scythes slice through heads like cantaloupes. Boobs are lopped off by machetes. Like H.G. Lewis and Nathan Schiff before him, Pellissier treats flopping intestines as if they were a chocolate babka on The Great British Bake Off — the camera lingers over every detail for way too long. Still, there’s a lot to love about a movie that has a scene where a grandma decapitates her grandson with a shovel. You just have to work for it.
If Maleficia ran 50 minutes instead of 100, it would join Folies Meurtrieres and Ogroff as an essential dreamstalker from the wilds of France. The building blocks are all there; music and opening credits that feel like cutscenes from Castlevania 64, spazzed-out photography, black sheets standing in for walls, pitch-shifted demon voices, a wild appearance by Satan, and a twist climax that borders on genius. But to appreciate all of that, you have to sit through endless — and I mean ENDLESS — scenes of people screaming, running, and digging through ripped-open stomachs. While watching, I couldn’t stop daydreaming about how fun it would be to create a new edit of the movie that didn’t vaporize the good stuff with droned-out tedium. But if I did that, it would take time away from reading “The Legend of Lady Satan,” the next Skywald comic in my queue. Priorities!
Fun fact: In English, maleficia translates to maleficia.
