Exorcismo may not have existed without The Exorcist, but it’s hardly a rip-off. Only in the final minutes does it feel like an imitator, with Paul Naschy’s Father Dunning tossing streams of holy water and Scripture at the babe in the bed amid smears of puke, but he actually spends more time battling a German shepherd (Gero, per the end credits).

The Regan MacNeil of this Spanish bedeviler is Leila (Grace Mills, Night of the Howling Beast), a young woman whose family believes hasn’t acted the same since her archeologist fiancé, Richard (Roger Leveder), returned from Africa. He’s the kind of guy whose apartment is decorated with voodoo masks and a blue cabinet on which red-paint letters read, “ALL YOU NEED IS TO FUCK.”

Once cast members are found with their heads rotated at a clean 180˚, Dunning investigates. Leila exhibits flashes of tempers and contorts like a seizure victim, but only Leila’s sister (María Kosty, Night of the Seagulls) brings up the possibility of possession. That certainly would explain Leila’s attendance at fully nude funk-sex-occult parties in the ruins of a nearby castle!

Viewers hoping for a satanic shocker are likely to be disappointed. Overly talky, Exorcismo offers few big moments, but they are there. In one, Naschy hallucinates a snake emerging from the faucet; in another, Leila shows up all milky-eyed, pustule-skinned and crusty-lipped at the bedside of her smokin’-hot mom (Maria Perschy, The Ghost Galleon). Atmosphere comes less from director Juan Bosch than composer Alberto Argudo. Watch up to the final split second for a puzzling quick trick. —Rod Lott

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Watching this sequel to 1991’s Warlock, I started to wonder if maybe a young Michael Bay had seen it before debuting with 1995’s Bad Boys. The third film by second-generation director Anthony Hickox (Waxwork), this second entry in the Warlock mythos not only shares part of a title with one of Bay’s films, but displays all of the same stylistic hallmarks that have made Bay both one of the successful and hated filmmakers of his generation.

Filled with pointless close-ups shot at strange angles, hilariously dramatic pull-ins and a complete sacrifice of character in favor of constant momentum, Warlock: The Armageddon, like most of Bay’s work, plays less like an actual movie than an abridged version of one with all of the potentially boring bits cut out.

And that is so not a bad thing.

For those of you concerned about the plot, the film features a returning Julian Sands as the titular villain, an Antichrist who rises in anticipation of a long-awaited lunar eclipse and who must find a collection of ancient stones in order to help his father, Satan, escape from Hell and take over the living world. Stopping him are Chris Young (TV’s Max Headroom) and Paula Marshall (whom you know from a dozen cancelled shows … and my dreams), the youngest descendents of a tribe of California druids, whose deaths and subsequent resurrections make them the only warriors powerful enough to halt Sands in his tracks.

More goofy than scary, the movie features a lot of dated effects, but is made highly watchable, thanks to the game cast and Hickox’s stubborn refusal to give you enough time to dwell on the film’s many absurdities and enormous plot holes. Consider it a film for those of you who wish a certain “director” would stop wasting his “talents” on racist toy-robot sequels and get back to the gloriously stupid basics. —Allan Mott

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