Falconeer After seeing the enjoyable "Coming of Sin" and the horror classic "Vampyres," I decided to give this one a try, despite it's low rating. What a difference a decade can make. This ugly, artless "Rosemary's Baby" rip off, possesses none of the beauty and artistry as the stuff from the 70's. Instead we have synth music, big hair and tons of tacky sex scenes, possibly to make up for everything else this movie is lacking. A woman, played by an actress who can't seem to stop pushing her petrified hairstyle back with her hand, (a pointless gesture as nobody in this crap has hair that moves.) She arrives with her husband at the estate of her brother, who has died mysteriously. She finds that her sister-in-law is not what she pretends, and she begins to suspect that she is a devil worshiping witch. Cue the 'special herb tea' ala 'tannis root' and the naked old people at Satanic sex rituals, and the old shtick about the wife being the last to know etc..I know the 80's was a time of filmmakers copying earlier, more successful films, and there have been some good ones. But "Black Candles" is really a waste of time. And I forced myself to sit through the entire thing, just so I could say I had seen it..only to find the worst, dumbest, and most incoherent ending I have ever seen. So unless you need to see a woman having sex with a goat, there really is absolutely no reason to waste your valuable time. Just revisit "Vampyres" from this same director, which is a horror classic.

Scarecrow-88 Along with her Latin professor beau Robert(Mauro Ribera), Carol(Vanessa Hidalgo) returns to London to visit her dead brother's wife, Fiona(Helga Liné)regarding his will. What she soon discovers is that her brother could very well have been a victim of witchcraft and that Fiona could belong to a Satanic cult. When John falls prey to Fiona's seduction, eventually joining the cult of his own free will, will Carol be able to escape? Notorious for it's displays of a Satanic cult's sordid activities, José Ramón Larraz's BLACK CANDLES seems to be about an innocent's potential danger, as she pursues the real truth about her rather athletic and active brother's heart attack. You get plenty of soft-core sex, as the three leads often engage in spirited acts of love-making(Ribera has the privilege of having sex multiple times with both Liné & Hidalgo). As mentioned, a member of the cult(..the one having sex with Fiona's husband when the voodoo doll needle action took place)willingly copulates with a goat as Carmen Carrión(..as the lusty maid Georgiana)and her stable hand grounds keeper husband and lover watch. The film also features a sinister "reverend" who serves as the leader of this clan of Devil worshipers(..and gets to have sex with Helga and Vanessa as well). The film isn't really complex with any depth involving Satanism, just the exploitive nature of a clan of wealthy British aristocrats enjoying all the debauchery that their religion provides(..it's established that these people became rich due to selling their souls, enjoying the fruits by conducting ceremonies to Lucifer). ROSEMARY'S BABY is an obvious inspiration, shades of that premise(..except for the "baby" part), the practice of Satan worship by normal-looking people, hiding their religion from the outside world(..it's also mentioned that these covens are everywhere, establishing their "threat"). Besides the infamous goat sex is an unfortunate victim's anal stabbing by a sword(..Georgiana's husband who threatened to expose the coven)..we realize that this coven will resort to whatever measures are necessary to keep their secret worship just that. The film is essentially soft-sore pornography, with the devil worship an excuse to display deviant behavior. Hidalgo fulfills the Mia Farrow role here, spending a vast amount of time either naked or in her undergarments..very little time is Hidalgo wearing a wardrobe of any kind. The real star here is Helga Liné, embracing her role with relish, easily one of her best performances displaying a middle-age seductress who peeps on Carol and Robert having sex, moves in on her sister-in-law's man(..stealing him away with her impressive feminine wiles), and converts new members to Lucifer's flock because of this overwhelming power she has at her disposal.SPOILER:The incredibly insipid conclusion, using the clichéd "it's all a nightmare" scenario with Carol awakening to find that all we have witnessed before was fictional, is an absolute cop-out that feels forced on us as if director Larraz had to include it due to outside influence.

The_Void I didn't go into this film expecting much as I've never heard a good word said about it. Black Candles is basically just a variation on the same sort of plot that worked a lot better in the earlier Spanish horror film 'Satan's Blood', as well as a whole load of other films. It starts out interestingly, as we are introduced to the central characters and we start to get an idea of where the plot is going. There seems to be a correlation between devil worshipping in Europe and having loads of sex, and that's something that director José Ramón Larraz (who made a whole load of trash films, including the sleazy 'Vampyres') seems keen to capitalise on, as the actors spend a good half of the film without any clothes on. The plot is, of course, very simple and starts off with a man dying suddenly while having sex after a woman sticks a pin in a voodoo doll. We then get introduced to his sister and her husband, and they travel down to stay with the dead man's husband; her sister-in-law, and it transpires that she's into devil worship (Shock! Horror!) Everything about this film is completely amateurish! (Which is odd as Vampyres was quite professional for a sleazy slice of Eurohorror. Obviously Larraz didn't get better at film making as he went along!). The acting is terrible; sometimes even cringe-worthy, which is quite shocking since I'm certainly used to watching films with less than great acting. The scene setting is frankly lazy, and Larraz makes practically no attempt to build an oppressive atmosphere or lift the film out of the pits in any way. This would normally stamp out any chance of a decent rating for a film; but Black Candles still deserves a few points as it's actually quite funny, and luckily the director's laziness doesn't extend to the sex scenes; which are actually quite erotic, mostly owing to the fact that the women are nice to look at. There are a couple of nasty scenes too; a sex scene with a goat…which I didn't enjoy too much and a death scene that involves someone having a sword shoved up his backside! Overall, I can't recommend going out of your way to see this film; its obscurity isn't undeserved - but it's not terrible in spite of the fact that everything about it is trash, and that can't be said for every film like this one.

moondog-14 Once more using very nice location photography (this time in England) we have another amateurish Euro porn horror movie. Horror in this case is just an excuse to show uninteresting ritualised sex. Along the way we have a touch of incest and the suggestion that it is all a premonition revealed to the heroine in a dream.There are, very very dim, echoes of Rosemary's baby - except there is no actual baby.All in all a dim film.