After stealing some incriminating documents, Carlo (Ettore Ribotta) attempted to blackmail a crime boss. The crime boss sends a couple goons, (Sergio Gibelli and Pasquale Basile) to try to kill Carlo. Carlo is wounded and seeks help from his friend and local monk, Father Remigio (Piero Vida). He tells Father Remigio that he told his girlfriend, Alma (Alma De Rio), about the documents and the blackmail scheme. She then stole the documents from Carlo. The gangsters don’t believe that Carlo no longer has the documents and are therefore trying to kill him. Father Remigio decides to visit Alma and appeal to her to return the documents. She refuses believing that she can get a fortune for them. To try to appeal to Alma’s better angels, Father Remigio then tells Alma a story about his life before he became a monk.
During his youth, Father Remigio’s name was Pejo. As a young man Pejo and his friends, Frija (Bella Cortez), Gianni (Mario Zakarti), Maga (Anita Cacciolatai), Jenny (Lilli Parker) and Gugo (George Ardisson) were basically juvenile delinquents. They would spend their time drinking, drugging, driving fast and assaulting people. One day they were cruising around causing trouble when they came upon an old, isolated castle. Believing the castle was abandoned they go inside and make themselves at home.
Eventually the owner of the castle (Sir Christopher Lee) appears and asks them to help find his dead lover’s corpse. He tells them that he will give them his castle and everything in it if they find her missing body. The gang thinks this is a windfall for them and they go off exploring the castle only to come to believe they are trapped and being stalked by the devil.
“Challenge the Devil” AKA “Katarsis” AKA “Sfida al diavolo” was released in 1963 and was written and directed by Giuseppe Veggezzi. It is an Italian horror film with gothic elements. The movie was released in 1963 as “Katarsis” but not long after that the company responsible for its distribution went into bankruptcy. The film was then purchased by Eco Films. It was then re-edited into a shorter version with some new scenes and re-released in 1965 as “Challenge the Devil”. The movie then faded into the woodwork and stayed there for decades. Eventually it was rediscovered and included in a 9-disc set distributed by Severin films.
It is a really strange movie for a lot of reasons. There’s a bit of expressionistic flare to it, but not enough to make it really better. Then there is Christopher Lee’s performance. Great for what it is but he’s not there long enough to save it from its monotony. Everything takes forever and there isn’t much of a payoff. Other than Lee, the highlights of the film are an unimpressive glass maze and a fake spider. I’m not sure if the original film was better or not but I would have like to have seen the original 1963 film to at least see if any of the expressionistic aspects where also included in the edited-out portions of the film.
The movie is a conglomerate. Part of the original film was braced by the new footage. This makes the movie rather choppy. Not that it was any good to begin with, but now even the expressionistic touches seem hammy. There is also some song and dance numbers in the beginning that add nothing to the film other than making it even more boring. It makes the film a combination of crime drama, musical, horror film and morality tale. None of which work.
I’m afraid that the movie, as is, would only appeal to Christopher Lee completists.