Video Review: Incubus

A pretty, young blonde woman, who looks like she faded in from an Ingmar Bergman movie, comes upon a strapping but half-drunk man sipping from a country well reputed to have miraculous healing powers. With a beguiling glare and seductive words, she entices him to follow her. Entranced, the man stumbles after her as she leads him across a meadow, through the woods, and down a length of beach, always staying just out of his arm's reach. The seductress lures him into the water where, taking advantage of his drunken state, pushes his head under the surf and drowns him.

This is the tantalizing opening sequence of Incubus, an interesting, low-budget film made in 1965 and which has gone virtually unseen since. It had been considered one of the most sought-after "lost" films of the paranormal/horror/fantasy/sci-fi genre. The film has recently been rediscovered, has been restored, and is now available on VHS and PAL video.

Incubus is an unusual film and worth seeing by fans of the genre for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is a starring performance by a pre-"Star Trek" William Shatner. More intriguing is that the film's dialogue is in Esperanto, an "artificial" language. Esperanto was invented by Dr. Lejzer (Ludovic) Zamenhof in 1887 in an attempt to create a supplementary universal language. Apparently ignoring the fact that a majority of the Earth's population speaks some form of Asian language, Esperanto combines elements of Latin and the European romance languages, and in fact sounds mostly like an odd combination of Spanish and Italian. Incubus may be the only feature film made in Esperanto.

Whether the filmmakers' choice to use Esperanto (there are English subtitles) was strictly as an experiment or there was some other underlying reason, the peculiar, unfamiliar yet familiar sound of it contributes to the surreal quality of the film. Shot in black and white, Incubus has an eerie yet lyrical feeling that is reminiscent of some of the best episodes of "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits." In fact, the director of Incubus, Leslie Stevens, was producer of "The Outer Limits."

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