Because Sebastian was born with a caul over his face, his brother, Joe (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, In the Folds of the Flesh) believes that the kid has clairvoyant powers — shades of Stephen King’s The Shining. Joe is correct.
Now that their father has passed away, those powers come to the forefront for the teen Sebastian (Christian Borromeo, Tenebrae). Throw in high-school hormones, and Li’l Sebastian is awash in a highly volatile stew. It’s creepy enough that he sits in his room playing with a knife. It’s creepier that he secretly records his newly widowed mother (Helga Liné, Black Candles) having one-night stands, and later fondles her undies and sniffs her sheets. But to have his lower lip bleed whenever he has a vision of someone’s near-future death? That’s the absolute creepiest.
Wait, I take that back. His tactile and olfactory activity concerning Mom? That is the absolute creepiest; the unsettling hints of incest make it a kissin’ cousin to Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground. The lip thing is just weird.
After a couple of people close to Sebastian die shortly after he sees their demise, he begins to worry if he perhaps is willing their fates. Joe’s girlfriend (Alexandra Bastedo, 13 Frightened Girls) is concerned and, being a big believer is the psychic world, wishes to help Sebastian get the bottom of his prescient visions. Or are they visions of the past?
Stigma represents another trip into the supernatural for director José Ramón Larraz (The House That Vanished) and it’s right in line with other possession pics that popped up in the second half of the 1970s after the success of The Omen and The Amityville Horror kept the subgenre spinning. It’s more than a little ballsy in that Larraz gives you no hero; Sebastian is a despicable character – smug and spoiled and simpering. And there’s no Gregory Peck to his Damien. This family is like the circuses of dysfunction that made Jerry Springer the ringmaster of trash TV: You wouldn’t want to spend any real time with them, but through the safety of the tube? It’s difficult to look away. —Rod Lott