Mark of the Devil

BLUE UNDERGROUND

MORE THAN ANYTHING else, when people talk about 1970's Mark of the Devil, they talk about how gory and extreme it is. The film was the first ever to be rated "V" for violence, and early audience members were even handed promotional barf bags as they entered the theater. But to be fair, Michael Armstrong's previous film, Haunted House of Horror, was much, much bloodier. (Frankie Avalon gets chopped in half in that one, for Pete's sake!) No, when people are talking about the gore in Mark of the Devil, they're talking specifically about one notorious scene, in which a young accused witch gets her tongue ripped out.

Even that scene works more via the power of suggestion than by what is actually shown, and by today's standards, it earns little more than a shrug. Still, though, Mark of the Devil (whose original tagline, "Positively the most horrifying film ever made," might've been pushing it a bit) is still pretty good, as far as witch-hunt movies are concerned. Not the best, maybe (that would be Witchfinder General), but certainly right up there-and without question it certainly remains the most well-known.

Reggie Nalder (The Manchurian Candidate) is the power-hungry and overzealous witchfinder in a small German town. (A town, I might add, with a fast-dwindling female population.) He finds his power usurped, however, with the arrival of the big kahuna witchfinder (Herbert Lom) and his eager apprentice (the great Udo Kier, in his breakout performance).

It becomes apparent quickly that Nalder's been keeping shoddy records, so Lom takes over and sets up his own one-man court, passing judgment over the witchiness of any young woman who stands accused.

Meanwhile, young Kier, though he worships Lom's wisdom and strength, makes the mistake of falling in love with an accused witch he believes to be innocent.

Then a whole bunch of people-including puppeteers!-are tortured, that woman has her tongue ripped out, Nalder tries to get his old job back, and Kier learns some things about Lon he doesn't care to know.

When you get right down to it, most witch-hunt movies are pretty much the same, whether they take place in England or Salem or Germany. What Mark of the Devil has going for it is that it looks particularly good, and the actors are always fun to watch. And yes, the numerous torture scenes can be pretty gruesome at times (if not as over-the-top as most claim).

The Blue Underground edition includes a director's commentary and interviews with four of the principal actors-including a mildly bitchy Udo Kier, who tells a few stories out of school that the producers probably wish he'd kept to himself.