This second entry in BCI/Navarre's Welcome to the Grindhouse series of double features contains a pair of European horror films from the days when the grindhouse was king. As with the previous entry in the series (The Teacher and Pick-Up, which I reviewed here), both features are surrounded by trailers for schlocky flicks from the Crown International library.

The first film, Black Candles, is a Spanish flick from 1982 that was released in its native Spain as Los Ritos sexuales del diablo. This one grabbed my attention as soon as I realized it was directed by Jose Larraz who was also responsible for Vampyres, a 1974 film that was one of the best entries in the early 70s lesbian vampire craze. Unfortunately, Black Candles doesn't (forgive me for this) hold a candle to the other Larraz film, with a meandering story that cribs from Rosemary's Baby and with sex scenes so frequent the story grinds to a halt every time one of the characters is in the mood.
One such scene takes place before the film is even a minute old and ends with a man named Drew dying of a voodoo induced heart attack. Drew, it seems, is part of a satanic cult and his propensity for shooting off his mouth has cost him his life. Drew's sister Carol and her boyfriend Robert arrive in England to visit the home of Carol's late brother. They are greeted by Drew's widow Fiona, a strikingly evil looking woman whose propensity for black candles and demonic lithographs signal to the audience, if not to Carol and Robert, that she is part of the satanic cult that killed her husband. It's never really made clear what these people get out of the whole satanism thing, and even less reason is given for Robert suddenly joining their ranks midway through the film. From here on, Robert and his new friends spend the rest of the film messing with Carol's head and performing satanic orgies before coming to an ending that is a complete cop-out.

The dubbing is horrendous, despite the fact that most of the actors appear to have been speaking English during filming. The fact that there is no true ambient sound adds to the disembodied nature of the voices, a trait that I've found lends unintentional atmosphere to some European horror flicks from this period, but here it was just distracting. Black Candles starts with promise then proceeds to crawl, and even as a fan of grindhouse era horror I found myself looking at my watch. Incidentally, Larraz also directed a film that was released here in the U.S. as The House That Vanished which played for years on a triple bill with Don't Look in the Basement and Wes Craven's infamous Last House on the Left.

The second feature is Evil Eye, an Italian flick from 1974 that was originally known as Malocchio. Peter Crane is a rich American party boy living in Italy. Peter begins having strange dreams of what could very well be one of the satanic orgies from Black Candles. He soon finds himself ripping people's throats out with his bare hands, though the act of murder seems like a dream to him the next day. Other strange things start happening as well. When Peter's car breaks down he's ushered into a house by a woman we soon learn is dead. The occupants of the house claim to know Peter, but he has no recollection of them. Objects tend to move of their own accord when Peter is around, with things sliding across tables. And did I mention the scene where someone vomits a frog before dying? This second feature is a mess, but it's an entertaining one. The period fashions and hair styles, particularly on our star, are often hilarious, and the strange goings on held my interest all the way through. It's a shame the ending is such a cheat.

The trailers, of course, are half the fun, so make sure you watch the disk in its entirety by clicking on "start the grindhouse experience" from the main menu. This plays both films back to back along with trailers at the beginning and between features. Most of the standard exploitation genres are represented here, including martial arts (Legend of Eight Samurai and Sister Street Fighter), sexploitation (Pick-Up), and horror (Don't Answer the Phone and Prime Evil).