Release Year: 1965
Country: United States
Starring: William Shatner, Allyson Ames, Eloise Hardt, Robert Fortier, Ann Atmar, Milos Milos.
Writers: Leslie Stevens
Director: Leslie Stevens
Cinematographer: Conrad L. Hall
Music: Dominic Frontiere
Producer: Anthony M. Taylor
Availability: Buy it from Amazon

Several years ago, I read an interview where The Cramps excitedly talked about a lost black and white horror film starring a young William Shatner. From what I recall, the film sounded like a typical schlocky low-budget horror movie, with the added benefit of Shatner’s early scenery-chewing acting style. Oh yeah, and the whole thing was filmed entirely in the artificial language Esperanto.

The story behind Esperanto is pretty interesting, and besides, anything that pissed off Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Joe McCarthy must have had something good going for it. The language was the brainchild of Doctor Ludovic Zamenhof, who was distressed at the ethnic strife he witnessed growing up in Warsaw. If the whole world spoke the same language, Zamenhof reasoned, ethnic groups would better understand each other, eliminating many of the problems between different groups and making the world a better place. Zamenhof worked on Esperanto for years, finally publishing his first book on the language in 1887. Esperanto societies sprung up all over the world in the early 1900s. Soon there were scholarly articles, international congresses and all the other educated stuff you have to do to start a new language. It looked like Zamenhof’s dream of world peace through shared language just might work. Then World War One broke out and put an end to all that. The war diminished Esperanto’s popularity for a while, but the language still exists, with over 30,000 books and publications printed in the language.

Esperanto was used in several movies, usually when filmmakers needed an exotic, unknown tongue. In the Charlie Chaplain’s The Great Dictator, the fictional country of Tomania has their street signs printed in the language. In The Road to Singapore, Esperanto is used in the songs to give the film a strange and alien feel. Incubus, however, was the only film to use the language exclusively, partly in an attempt to disorient the viewer and also because writer/director proto-new age guy Leslie Stevens was a strong supporter of Esperanto. Incubus garnered several favorable reviews, but never really caught on in the American market. In France, however, Incubus played packed theaters for decades. One could take this as another instance of the French embracing ignored American culture that would not be popular in the States for another few decades, such as gritty film noir and crime fiction. Of course, they could just be screwing around with us, like with that whole Mickey Rourke thing.

Considering that the French loved it, it was filmed in a made-up language and chances were great that William Shatner would give another one of his “But what about! Love?!” performances, I figured Incubus would be a nice campy little treat to take my mind off recent events. Imagine my surprise when Incubus turned out to be pretty good and closer to Ingmar Bergman than Ed Wood Jr. Well, a little bit closer.

The town of Nomen Tuum (which is actually Latin for “Your Name”) houses an ancient deer well which contains healing waters. Visitors who drink the water are said to acquire a subtle beauty, so the well attracts the vain and shallow as well as the sick and afflicted. What with pride being one of the seven deadly sins, it comes as no surprise that a gang of sultry demons have taken to hanging around the place in order to meet their quota of souls to send down to Hell. In the beginning we watch one of the demons named Kia (Allyson Ames) tempt a vain drunkard into the ocean, where she steps on his head and drowns him. Her job complete, she builds sand castles on the shore and awaits her older demon sister Amael (Eloise Hardt). With the abundance of corrupted souls that gather at the well, Kia is bored and wants a more challenging target to really test herself. Amael warns her to keep away from the good, but being a young demoness, Kia sneaks off and looks for a suitable target to tempt.

It seems that the Prince of Darkness finally thought about that old “You can catch more flies with honey” saw, as Kia and her sisters are all easy on the eye. Instead of sending goat legged men or hulking Max Von Sydow looking guys to Earth to tempt men with dreams of power, knowledge and wealth, he simply sent some hot chicks in robes up there, accomplishing the same thing with a lot less trouble. After watching a group of monks, Kia is disappointed when one after one they reveal secret sins. Luckily, Marc (Shatner) shows up, having used the waters to heal a war wound. Marc is a soldier who performed heroically, but is tired of war, and wants to settle down and farm with his sister. Kia can sense that Marc is good and pure of heart and thus will make a fitting challenge for her demon skills.

Playing to Marc’s basic goodness, Kia approaches as a lost, hungry peasant. Naturally, Marc feeds her, and is in the process of giving her directions when an eclipse occurs. Kia asks if this is an omen, but the scientific Shatner assures her that it is a natural occurrence. Kia leaves with Marc following. The tempting Kia leads Marc to the beach, but he resists. In a switch from most of Shatner’s upcoming roles, he wants to share a soulful, spiritual love with Kia, but Kia just wants to get down to some soul-corrupting sex. Shots of Marc and Kia walking through fields of wheat are intercut with short clips of Kia’s previous victims underwater or halfway submerged in the sand of the beach. Perhaps overcome by Marc’s steadfastness, Kia passes out. Marc picks her up and takes her to a nearby church, which really doesn’t work out too well. Upon waking and seeing the religious icons, Kia freaks out and rushes out of the church.

Disappointed, Marc goes home, where his sister Arndis (Ann Atmar) has been rendered blind from staring at the eclipse and is only comfortable in the dark. Marc is smitten with the beguiling Kia, even though Arndis points out that they just met that afternoon. “I’ve known her all my life,” Marc dreamily replies. Arndis has romantic longings of her own, so she understands why Marc is swooning over the demon girl. Meanwhile, Amael is furious that a mortal man touched Kia’s heart and defiled her hatred. She takes Kia to the ends of the earth, where they walk into a fiery pit full of scaffolding, hanging corpses and large bat winged demons. Realizing they need the big guns to take down this mortal, they raise the Incubus, who rises silently out of the ground.

Back at Casa Shatner, Marcs’ sleep is interrupted by visions of Kia’s earlier victim drifting in the sea. Hearing her call, Marc heads to the beach. Meanwhile, the Incubus has changed into a studly yet goofy looking young man to tempt Arndis who is sitting in the darkness. He brings her to his “bridal chamber” where the robed woman demons begin a ritual, ripping off her clothes, and apparently letting the Incubus have his way with her. On the way to the beach, Marc finds his sister’s robe and runs home.

Finding Arndis whimpering on the ground, Marc attacks the Incubus. This delights Amael who wants Marc to “smear his soul with murder,” so that the demons will finally gain his soul. After Marc kills the Incubus, Amael gravely intones, “He is yours now” as Marc wanders through the countryside tormented by visions of hell. Suddenly, bells peal and Marc heads to the church in search of salvation. Kia is having doubts as well. Did a mortal’s unselfish love actually transform her?

What I thought would be a campy little trifle was actually a fairly well done meditation on free will, choice and the redemptive powers of love. As Amael states, everyone has a choice in life, and nothing is predestined. Interestingly enough, while the story is obviously based on Christian beliefs, no specific belief system is mentioned, other than some shots of Christian icons and churches, a big ol’ goat demon at the end, and the demonesses using the “heavy metal salute.” This helps to make the story more universal. Gorgeous black and white cinematography (by future American Beauty and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid cinematographer Conrad Hall) adds greatly to the film, and with the overriding themes of good and evil, Incubus is frequently compared to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

Using Esperanto was a good choice. The use of the little-known language and the odd costuming employed in Incubus (close to tunics, but not really) tend to keep the viewer off-balance. To my untrained ear, the language sounds vaguely Scandinavian (inviting more comparisons to Bergman), and words that seem like variations on Romance languages reinforce the feeling that this story had roots somewhere in the not too distant European past. To the trained ear, however, the language simply sounds mangled. Though everyone gives it the ol’ college try, speakers of Esperanto, and there are still at least three people int he world who bother, will tell you that the actors’ pronunciation is pretty horrendous. Frankly, what’s the use of a manufactured language if William Shatner can’t nail it the first time out?

Since this was early in Shatner’s career, his patented overacting style hadn’t taken hold yet, and he is pretty enjoyable. Of course, it could be the Esperanto that caused him to actually speak in whole sentences instead of the jerky “cut up” method he would later employ. Allyson Ames as Kia is believable as well as she alternately goes from tempting to bewildered to tortured. The nerds at the Sci-Fi Channel recently released Incubus off a restored French print, and the film is definitely worth a look. If you were picking it up for a fix of Shatner histrionics, however, you’d probably be better off with Star Trek V.