Hot Nasties

Apparently the spate of Satanic cult-themed horror movies from the 1960s lingered a few years, judging by this truly awful 1976 hardcore porn example of the genre, titled "Deadly Love". I wasn't entirely surprised to discover that Troma released it theatrically, back when the Troma Team were pornographers before discovering a more lucrative "so bad it's (supposedly) good" formula. (I liked their hardcore "The Secret Dreams of Mona Q" at this time, much better than their R-rated junkers.)

Without its explicit porn content, this unwatchable Adult movie would just be an unwatchable horror movie. Inept in every technical department, notably poor lighting during the sex scenes (a sin if you dig porn, obviously), horrendously sloppy editing, lousy acting, badly post-synched dialogue and an idiotic script. I almost forgot the most annoying musical score imaginable.

Here's the basics: Our doctor "hero" (one-shot actor Peter Cane) opens the film proper in his morgue to examine a female corpse. A creep outfitted like an old-fashioned magician, actually the Devil, suddenly appears and makes Pete a proposition: if he will become his slave for a year, he will be granted this woman as his, with her being brought back to life. This establishes a main theme of necrophilia. Pete f*cks the corpse, she indeed opens her eyes and is back alive while he's going at it, and they fall in lust/love. But he has no intention of fulfilling his part of the bargain, and the Devil, not believing in love existing, gives him a new arrangement. Sort of like a Witness Protection program, the Devil arranges for the doc to start a new life elsewhere, with his reanimated lover/wife (unappealing blonde porn actress Heather Leigh). If their love for each other lasts five full years they win, otherwise the Devil of course takes possession of both their souls.

(Parenthetically, I've seen six of Leigh's output of seven porn movies, only having missed a voodoo Macumba movie she made for Carlos Tobalina, about as low as you can go.)

Lots of poorly staged sex footage accompanies the genre's usual depiction of a Satanic cult -this one headed by a Count who also is visited by the Devil for another deal -granted sex with his virginal maid (not very attractive brunette Helen Lang, despite her overwrought mini-bio in IMDb) who uses a huge dildo to pop her own cherry first. She also claims to be the Devil's Daughter, but that potential subplot (and sequel??) goes nowhere.

As we all know all too well, the Devil is a trickster not to be trusted. So when the 5 year deadline is coming soon, he has minions seduce both the doc and his wife in a couple of lousy sex scenes. Fortunately, both unfaithful lead players confess their infidelity to each other and all is well -the Devil has been foiled again. But the viewer is not so lucky. When the doc goes down on his wife, there's a yucky "fantasy" sequence thrown in representing him miniaturized, going on a fantastic voyage inside her womb, sort of a SPFX version of those gynecological closeups some porn fans seem to dig.

The count invites the couple to a party where his death cultists hold a ritual supposedly to help them contact their dead loved ones (necrophilia perhaps) but what we get is a plump woman with big boobs writhing on an altar as the cultists make love around her. The count's maid (aka Devil's Daughter) shows up and calls our heroine a traitor who should have stayed dead, and with crude makeup effects that reminded me of those Crepe Erase commercials hosted by Jane Seymour, you know, the "Before" photos, she turns into a wizened old corpse. Necrophilia has its drawbacks, but the doc's love is so great he even pledges it to this makeup FX corpse, and Voila! She turns back into his blonde wife -the Devil has lost (darn it!) and they seal the happy ending with a smooch. A quote from the bible's Song of Solomon: "Love is strong as death" appears on screen over their lips-locked freeze frame. Words for any card-carrying Necrophiliac to live by.

For the record: Playboy's Susan Kiger shows up only doing her sexy soft-X snake dance, which is shown twice, once as a come-on before the opening credits, and then for real while the creepy widow with horned-rim glasses is seducing the doc. Her footage, with lousy editing, looks like it was added to punch up the movie -it is not integrated into the story progression.