BA_Harrison Based on a book I've never read (Aleksei Tolstoy's The Family of the Vourdalak), Night of the Devils deals with the supernatural creature known as the wurdulac (also spelled wurdalak, vourdalak or verdilak), a type of Eastern European vampire that is compelled to drink the blood of its loved ones, thereby converting the whole family.Lumber importer Nicolas (Gianni Garko) encounters such monsters in a Yugoslavian forest. After pranging his car, he sets off on foot to find help, eventually meeting a family who live in a house in the woods, where he is invited to stay the night. Nicolas is intrigued when his hosts barricade all of the doors and windows at nightfall; he eventually discovers that the family is plagued by a wurdulac that comes a-calling once it is dark.With a very measured pace, this isn't going to be for everyone, but fans of atmospheric Euro-horror will be delighted by the creepy vibe throughout and some genuinely tense moments, the best being Nicola's frantic escape from the woods in his car (attacked by wurdulacs and mocked by ghoulish wurdulac children), and the gripping finalé, which packs a neat downbeat twist.Meanwhile, those who enjoy a spot of gore and nudity will be pleased to know that are some juicy moments of splatter (a woman's face exploding, a beating heart removed from a body, severed fingers, and several bloody stakings, all courtesy of FX man Carlo Rambaldi) and a fair amount of T&A (ravishing Agostina Belli, as Nicola's love interest Sdenka, sheds all for her art, while Teresa Gimpera has her top torn open by one of the vampiric kids).N.B. The wurdulac also appears in Mario Bava's classic horror compendium Black Sabbath, a film I've yet to see (I know, I know... and I call myself a horror fan).

MARIO GAUCI Considering that I only acquired a major affinity for "Euro-Cult" fare following my attendance of the "Italian Kings Of The B" retrospective first held during the 2004 Venice Film Festival, it is small wonder that I had been largely underwhelmed by what I sampled from this particular fount of movie lore beforehand; curiously enough, among these had been two distinct adaptations of Tolstoy's "The Wurdulak", namely an episode in Mario Bava's omnibus BLACK SABBATH (1963) and the picture under review!Being about to revisit the former on account of Bava's recent centenary, I opted to re-acquaint myself with Ferroni's feature-length version as well – having already done similar duty with two films based on the same tale (also Russian in origin) which had inspired Bava's BLACK Sunday (1960). Incidentally, in my comments relating to the Maestro's take on "I Wurdulak", I had surmised about how padded Ferroni's rendition would be in comparison: however, he works around this factor, so to speak, admirably by updating the plot to our times (while retaining the essential Gothic feel and, thus, accentuating its inherent eeriness!) and bookending it with scenes inside a clinic, to where the disoriented protagonist (in this case, Gianni Garko) had been taken after barely escaping with his life from the clutches of the undead family unit at the core of the narrative.There is no doubt that Ferroni had watched Bava's version – as its numerous shots of characters peering ominously through windows can attest – yet he opts to dilate what is perhaps its most chilling moment (the 'afflicted' child pleading with his mother to be sheltered from the cold, dark night and the woman being unable to resist her instincts lets him in, despite knowing full well that her offspring had just been laid down into the ground!) by having the mother merely go out to look for her in this case!! Other elements which tend not to work here are: the personification of the witch (who is the cause of the hero's getting stranded in the quasi-deserted Yugoslavian village to begin with!) and her face-off with the patriarch (himself – though reasonably authoritative – clearly no match for horror icon Boris Karloff, his counterpart in BLACK SABBATH) whose resolution is, thankfully, still left ambiguous; also, the fact that the family members get all giggly when, as vampires, they descend en masse upon the beleaguered Garko. That said, his somewhat hysterical characterization is poles apart from that of Mark Damon in the original – who remains decidedly (and, perhaps, unrealistically) cool throughout his ordeal! Even so, while there is a poignancy to Garko's murder of Agostina Belli – who he had thought had joined the vampiric ranks and was now seeking to add the hero to their fold in view of her feelings towards him (and suggesting how psychologically scarred he had been by the whole experience) – the sequence is rather clumsily handled overall, as the girl should have made it immediately apparent to him that she had not 'turned'!The passage of nearly a decade between versions allowed for greater emphasis this time around on gory make-up effects; indeed, I recall having counted the film's entire ghoulish vibe (appropriate though it may be) as a drawback upon first viewing! Incidentally, even if I had long bemoaned my erasing of that preliminary copy, I realize now – via a side-by-side comparison of two prints floating about (another one, which I also own, is English-dubbed, subtitled in Japanese and has its few moments of nudity digitally-covered!) – that it was missing a surreal nightmare sequence at the very start!! By the way, director Ferroni – whose penultimate work this proved to be and whom I learned, from the accompanying Gianni Garko interview, was virtually deaf! – had previously helmed a key entry in the Italian Gothic Horror canon, i.e. MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN (1960). Interestingly, too, he died on my 5th birthday (17th August) in 1981…a date also shared by the original Italian release of BLACK SABBATH itself!

ElijahCSkuggs Story about a man who breaks down and seeks shelter with a less than ordinary family with an extraordinary dilemma. Let's just say things do go bump in the night for this family of the woods.Night of the Devils unfortunately is vastly unseen. It has lots of things going for it, like a cast that is truly gung-ho and some pretty good writing. The atmosphere is dark and ominous which gives the film a really great feel.The film does drag in parts where some scenes will go on for a tad too long, but sometimes this becomes a good thing, because it will strengthen the mood of the film. Also the film struggles with its music at times. The music itself is good, and fitting, but at the same time the timing wasn't used very well. Instead of letting the scene play out and remain questionable they'd throw in music where it'd make you realize what would take place. Minor issues that barely damage the viewing experience as a whole.Overall the movie was a really good slow-burn flick with pretty strong performances, an eerie vibe and awesome fx work. Though plagued by a decent amount of predictability it still ended up being a very recommendable movie to horror fans who can dig slower films.

Mirko I've seen this movie many times and it is very good and scary. Even i like the story of Aleksey Tolstoi, which this movie is based of. This is one of the best atmospheric horror-movies. Agostina Belli is so beautiful and a much more believable Sdenka than Susy Andersen was in Mario Bavas Black Sabbath. I love this twist ending much more than the ending of Bavas Wurdelak. In Germany we've a third version of this story as an audio play and a third different ending. So far as i know, none of these three endings is true to the original story. This film is a must have for everyone, who likes vampire-movies. Why did this great movie never got an official DVD-Release yet? I can't understand it...It is a shame that the only version i could get worldwide is an DVD-R, a bootleg from Midnight Video. It's an English version with Japanese subtitles. I really hope that some day there will be an official release and that this film will get the attention it deserves! By the way, the story of A. Tolstoi, which this film is based off, was written and first released in 1847, so it is 50 years older than Bram Stokers Dracula(1897). Sadly, that there are only 2 filmed versions of this wonderful story until today yet. Filmmakers should better make an wonderful new interpretation of this stuff as the 1000st. waste version of Dracula. Neither this movie nor Bavas Episode Wurdelak in Black Sabbath could come close to the original story by Tolstoi. Another interesting thing is that the village Tolstois story plays in really existed in the 18th century. It was called Kisolova and many people died there by an unknown disease.