Horror As Folk: The Sun-Drenched Witchcraft of Il demonio (1963)

If I were watching these strictly in order, I would actually have caught this one before Dark Waters, as that’s how they’re arranged on the disc they share. Obviously, though, that didn’t happen. So, here we are instead, addressing what might be, in some ways, the folkiest folk horror film we have yet covered…

The Wikipedia entry for Il demonio (its Italian title is typically used when discussing the picture, to distinguish it from the numerous other movies called The Demon) cites film scholars Keith McDonald and Wayne Johnson in their 2021 book Contemporary Gothic and Horror Film: Transnational Perspectives where they claim that the flick is “an early progenitor of the folk horror genre due to its themes of superstition and curses, occurring in a pastoral setting” (quote from Wikipedia, not the book).

While that’s true, as far as it goes, there’s a much more compelling reason to classify Il demonio as a folk horror film, also making it one of the earliest that we’ve covered here. Indeed, Il demonio is, if anything, more folk than horror. The film opens with a lengthy title card, which says, “The producers wish to thank Professor Ernesto Martino of Cagliari University, whose ethnological studies of Southern Italy made this film possible.”

It goes on to claim that, “This film is based on a recent, tragic true story. The rites, spells, and demonic possessions discussed in the story are scientifically verifiable, as well as being a fact of life in Italy, just as they are anywhere else in the world.”

In a 2012 issue of Video Watchdog, Tim Lucas interviewed lead actress Daliah Lavi for her 70th birthday. In the course of that interview, she confirmed that the film was loosely based on a true case of supposed demonic possession and that Lavi got to meet the ostensibly possessed girl before playing the part.

Certainly, Lavi is the highlight of the film, and what people talk about most often when bringing it up. The Israeli actress was already familiar to me before I watched Il demonio, as she played opposite Christopher Lee in Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body this same year. As Purificata in Il demonio, she delivers a bravura performance filled with mugging for the camera, writhing and shrieking, and all the other stuff that we’ve come to expect from an exorcism film. Look online, and you’ll see plenty of people comparing Lavi’s performance in Il demonio with Isabelle Adjani’s showstopping turn in Possession.

Here’s the wild thing about Il demonio, though. At times its depiction of possession and exorcism feel shockingly familiar – because we’ve seen them before, in The Exorcist and countless imitators since. Except that Il demonio was released a full decade before that flick. The weirdest moment in which Il demonio prefigures its successors is during a scene in the church when the priest attempts to drive out the demons he believes are possessing Purificata.

Writhing away from the encroaching crucifix, Purificata arches her back and proceeds to do the by-now-obligatory spider walk. Of course, we all know that there is a notorious “spider walk” scene in William Friedkin’s 1973 classic, albeit one that was cut from the original print and not reinstated until 2000. So, was Friedkin ripping off Il demonio? It seems unlikely, as there’s little evidence that the film was released in the States.

At the same time, the spider walk in Il demonio isn’t one that was somehow ripped from the true stories that supposedly inspired the film, either. Lavi was, among other things, a trained dancer, and it is reported that she did the spider walk during her audition. The filmmakers liked it so much that they wrote it into the script – and now, however it got there, and however it found its way into The Exorcist, it has become a staple of possession and exorcism narratives ever since.

As interesting as the parallels between The Exorcist and Il demonio are, this isn’t a column about exorcism movies. However, we can’t leave behind the true story that Il demonio is supposed to be based on. Because what makes this flick maybe the most folk horror we’ve tackled so far is its ethnographic preoccupation. Alongside Purificata’s story – in which her obsession with an engaged man leads her to place a curse on him, and the people in her rural Italian village to label her a witch – the film engages in long detours into the folk customs of the people it is ostensibly observing.

There are times when the proceedings feel as much like a documentary as a feature film, complete with a narrator explaining the actions of the people. However, these cul-de-sacs aren’t entirely disconnected from Purificata’s story, either. The narrative weaves between Purificata’s torments and obsessions and the rituals of the townspeople and shows how her own spells and curses are just variations of the Christian folk magic that is practiced all around her.

In one of the most striking moments of this, we see the parents of two newlyweds (one of them the object of Purificata’s obsession) preparing the bed for their wedding night. They place a scythe beneath the bed, to “cut the legs of Death” and sprinkle dried grapes on the bed in the shape of the cross, to “be the bait for the Devil.”

This fixation on the folk traditions of rural Italy in the 1960s makes Il demonio something different than most folk horror flicks about witchcraft. It isn’t just that it captures elements of actual folk belief – despite that introductory title card, I can’t speak to how accurate the traditions depicted in Il demonio are or are not – but the way that it juxtaposes those elements against its own narrative devices.

Il demonio is the type of film that can be read either way. You can see Purificata as actually possessed, capable of real magic, or you can see her as simply a person with untreated mental illness. In the end, the second reading is probably the most profitable. As with a film like Apprentice to Murder, what is most interesting here is the ways in which our protagonist’s torments feed and are fed by the “normal” beliefs of the people around her.