“Black Candles” (1980)
Studio: Films Around the World
Starring: Carmen Carrión, Vanessa Hidalgo, Alfred Lucchetti, Mauro Ribera
Directed by: José Ramón Larraz
Rated: Unrated
Running Time: 84 min.
Synopsis: A woman and her boyfriend visit the woman’s sister-in-law after the death of her husband. She soon learns that her sister-in-law may be the one who killed her brother for her satanic cult.
REVIEW
Chris Woods
Satanism, lesbianism, incest, and beastiality are the main elements to this Spanish horror film. The movie is more of a soft core porn film with a dark vibe than really a horror movie. The film is loaded with tons of sex and nudity. You won’t find any scares or much gore in this film, but you will find some bizarre sex acts. The movie has an interesting premise, but it lacks in story and the only intriguing aspect of the film is the sexual actions of the satanic cult.
The movie starts off with a man having sex with a beautiful woman. The scene then cuts to another woman, his wife, holding a voodoo doll. She stabs it, killing her husband. The husband’s sister and her boyfriend go to London soon after her brother’s death to visit the wife. The wife lives in a creepy house in the English countryside. The wife has a strange obsession with the occult and freaks out her sister-in-law. The sister gets suspicious of her brother’s wife and suspects she has something to do with his death. She soon realizes that she’s a part of a cult that worships the devil and has recruited her boyfriend into it.
With a weak story and weaker actors, the only thing that keeps this movie interesting is the eroticism throughout the picture. From beginning to end, the film has one hot sex scene after another. One scene has the sister and her boyfriend having sex in their room on the first night and the brother’s wife is watching them through a peep hole and getting herself off. Another is the sister having this strange dream where she’s running outside in lingerie and seeing her dead brother. She then suddenly is in a bed with her brother having sex with the brother’s wife watching. The wife goes over to the bed and starts kissing the sister. They are plenty of girl-on-girl scenes throughout the movie and some very strange sex acts.
In all my years of watching horror films, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this scene that I’m about to describe. There’s a part where members of the cult are in a barn and they have a young woman naked laying on the ground. They bring over a goat and have it startle the girl. The people then make the goat have sex with the woman. Yes, a woman fucks a goat in this movie and she liked it. The scene actually goes on for awhile and is very disturbing and gross. Another gross out scene that stands out is when the cult takes this ranch hand (who was trying to save the sister and stop the cult) and strip him down and bend him over a table to punish him for trying to interfere. What they do is pull out a large sword and shove it up his ass killing him.
Black Candles is not a good horror film, but it is worth watching for the hot and bizarre sex scenes and any other weird and twisted scenes that you haven’t seen in any other movie. The director of the film, Jose Ramon Larraz also directed another erotic film from the 1970’s called Vampyres and many other horror films throughout the years.