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To me, this movie is perfection.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

"Incubus" is a true oddity. I was surprised to discover it is neither the first nor the last film to be performed entirely in Esperanto but it is, doubtlessly, the most famous. It would be a very strange film, even without being filmed in an obscure, invented language. The decision to shot the story in Esperanto just furthers the movie's otherworldly atmosphere. "Incubus" feels like a fable from another place.The story is simplistic, playing almost like a Greek myth. On an island there is a monastery and, near-by, a spring with supposed healing properties that is also supposed to make whoever drinks from it beautiful. This attribute attracts a lot of vain, morally bankrupt people, so the island is also a gathering ground for demons. Succubi lure impure, corrupt men into the ocean and then drown them, holding their heads under the water. Kia, a young, proud succubus, longs to seduce a holy, pure man. Despite the objection of her fellow succubi, Kia's quest leads her to Marco, a war veteran living with his sister near the spring, hoping to heal his lingering war wounds. Marco immediately falls for Kia but can't bring himself to consummate the relationship. His pure love infects her, prompting the other succubi to unleash an incubus on the island in revenge. There's a solar eclipse, a blind girl wandering through the forest, a lot of religious imagery, and a savage goat attack.The movie feels very much like a 1960s art film. Certain shots recall both Bergman or early Polanski. When the succubus is brought to the chapel, when her evil soul is "raped by goodness," we get a lot of crash zooms on the religious icons, followed by a shifting, upside down shot of her running off. Early on, we get a drowning man's perspective, the camera shooting up through the water. Seeing Shatner bring his usual stilted style to Esperanto can be as exactly hilarious as you'd imagine. However, the movie is legitimately eerie and creepy at times. A dusty wind seems to being blowing at all hours on the island. The sequence were the Incubus is summoned is especially effective. A demon, his wings wide and huge, stands in an abandoned building, silhouetted in the shadows, fog blowing all around him. The ground shakes as the Incubus emerges from the dirt and mud. The film's latter half is shot entirely at night in deep, foreboding darkness. Even on DVD, it's sometimes hard to see what is happening. The climatic goat attack sounds absurd on paper but, in practice, it feels almost sincerely sacrilegious. The sparse score serves the otherworldly feel.The film was followed by a lot of bad luck. Two actors committed suicide, but not before one murdered Mickey Rooney's wife. Another actress had her child kidnapped and murdered. The production company went bankrupt and the film was lost for many years. The only existing print was found playing in Paris as a midnight movie. The French subtitles were burnt on the print which is why the DVD's English subtitles are so big and black, obscuring half of the screen at times. The DVD includes a sparse, frequently quiet, hilarious, melodramatic, no doubt lie filled audio commentary from William Shatner, a must-listen for fans of the actor's unique style. At only 75 minutes, "Incubus" is a quick watch and, considering how odd and unforgettable the film is, well worth your time.

The concept for this full-length film as well as its genesis are truly weird. The guiding force behind the television show "The Outer Limits" (Leslie Stevens) decides to produce the first (and probably only) full-length American-made Esperanto film--with a plot that is strongly influenced by his TV show as well as Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL! Talk about strange! Yet, oddly, the experiment works, though in hindsight I am glad the idea never really took off and resulted in further films in this so-called "international language".The film begins with a Satan worshiping siren who has delighted in luring people to their deaths. However, apparently this is getting rather old and this lady confides to an older Devil-loving lady that she wonders what it's all about, why they only take the souls of evil ones and why the Lord of Darkness, if he's so powerful, needs their help anyway! And, in fact, she'd like to try battling against a righteous soul instead of the typical damned ones! Well, the older lady will have none of that and counsels her to do her job and get such foolish ideas out of her head. But, given that the younger lady is apparently quite stupid, she sets out to seduce a "nice guy"--who turns out to be a young William Shatner. The problem is that once the evil incubus (a soul-stealing demon) is summoned to take Shatner, the siren has fallen in love with him and is torn between her duty and doing what is right.While all this probably sounds a bit silly to someone who has never seen the film, it somehow works--mostly due to the efforts of Stevens. An old score from one of the "Outer Limits" shows is recycled and sounds very, very eerie--fitting the action quite well. In addition, the black and white cinematography is lovely as well as the odd yet appropriate camera angles. These work together to make the film seem other-worldly--like it occurs perhaps on another world or in another time.As for the actors, they did a pretty good job and I was amazed at their speaking this odd language. In particular, it was a bit jarring to see Shatner both speak the language AND actually do a competent job acting. In some shows and movies, he has a tendency to way over-act--and especially to over-emote. Here, however, he seems quite capable as the nice guy who cannot allow himself to give in to temptation. Sadly, however, according to IMDb and interviews with surviving film crew, two of the main actors would be dead within a year of the completion of the film--one due to suicide and another to a murder/suicide! As they said, the film had the "curse of the incubus" on it! While I am sure this film would not interest most people due to its artsy style, it is entertaining and worth seeing if you are a patient person. Spooky, strange and amazingly successful for a project that reportedly cost less than $100,000 to produce. And, of all the many, many Esperanto films out there, this one is surely the best!

William Shatner made a handful of interesting films in his career; and Incubus is certainly one of them; though unfortunately it qualifies more as an interesting failure. The film is shot in black and white, plays out like a fairytale, handles a story about legendary medieval monsters, succubus's and incubuses, and most bizarrely of all, is shot in the auxiliary language known as 'Esperanto'. Director Leslie Stevens' main influence would appear to be Ingmar Bergman as this film feels a lot like one of his (particularly The Seventh Seal) in terms of style, though it's much less deep than the majority of Bergman films. The film focuses on a 'pure' man named Marc. He becomes the focus of Kia, a succubus who spends her time seducing bad men and luring them to their deaths. She's tired of this, however, and decides that she'd rather pit herself against someone good and who isn't going to hell anyway, which is against the will of her sister Amael (also a succubus). However, things don't quite go to plan for Kia so she goes running back to her sister and the two conjure an incubus...The plot idea behind the film is good and admirable as its "pure" horror, but the execution of the film ensures that it's never as interesting as it could, and by rights, should be. I have no idea why the director would choose to make his film in 'Esperanto', it does make it standout somewhat but it doesn't actually add anything to the movie thus making the language rather pointless. The script is poor anyway and the lead characters spend a hell of a lot of time babbling about things that aren't important, which just makes the film feel like an arty farty load of rubbish. One area that the director does succeed in however is the visual side of things as the film really does look great and we've got some great set-pieces too; the introduction of the incubus being the film's biggest highlight! The film is mercifully short at less than seventy five minutes and that's a good thing as the director seems keen to drag things out as much as possible, which means the film can be a bit of a struggle at times. I respect this film for it's visuals but nothing more really and I can't imagine that this would appeal much to many people.

"Incubus" is a very strange movie to be sure – it's unique because it is the only film ever shot in the "universal language", Esperanto. It may be worth it for some viewers to see the film simply because it has camp-master William Shatner speaking his lines in this never-land language. But not for me. From the very first moments of the film you can tell what you're looking at – a good photographer with a bunch of amateur actors and an overambitious director gathered on the beaches of Big Sur in a desperate attempt to capture some of the magic of Ingmar Bergman's films "The Seventh Seal" and "Hour of the Wolf" and apply that magic to a straight-up horror film in the occult vein.The story is very confusing despite being very simple, due to the cryptic dialog and ineffective direction. I've seen it twice now so this is what I have been able to piece together – Shatner is playing a guy who is some kind of idyllic woodsman who lives with his sister in a cabin. A female devil worshipper sees him somewhere and gets a crush on him so she decides to corrupt him and make him a Satanist too, which her sister discourages. Soon Shatner is following the evil woman across a lovingly photographed wasteland, back to the beach again, and eventually he is involved in a confrontation with the "Incubus" (a male version of a Succubus, for those not in the know… this movie won't tell you so I might as well).The "Incubus" is literally a goat that someone put on top of Shatner that kicks him a bit and then disappears. Outside of some interesting but unoriginal photographic effects there really is nothing happening in this movie. Shatner's character completely forgets about the sister character, who has been blinded by a solar eclipse and spends most of the movie wandering around. There's no scares whatsoever. Maybe this movie appeals to people who like surrealist cinema. Usually I don't like that kind of thing anyway so I couldn't tell you if this is a good or a bad example of that school of cinema. My guess is that it's bad, and it's certainly bad from my perspective as someone who expects at least a minimum of character development and plot in a film.However the music is interesting and the photography is great. This is a good movie to watch if you were curious how to distinguish directing from photography because this is a very poorly directed but well photographed film. Other than that and the fact that it has Esperanto dialog there's nothing to distinguish it or make it memorable.By the way, I was able to see it this time in a 35mm presentation in the theater thanks to the producer Anthony Taylor who has a nice print and lives in Southern California.