1973’s The Loreley’s Grasp was made by the same people who made 1974’s remarkably bad Night of the Sorcerers. The only reason I watched the earlier movie is because it was paired with the later film on the same Shout Factory disc. I set my expectations extremely low going in, and only watched this so I could be done with the disc.
To my considerable surprise, Grasp is much better than Sorcerers. That’s not to say it is especially good, but it is competently made and not the worst way to spend 90 minutes of your life. Not exactly glowing praise but, once again, I’m setting the bar so low here that one would have to dig it out of the ground to clear it.
Grasp is a monster movie with more than a few similarities to the story of early real-life serial murder Countess Bathory, whom legend says bathed in the blood of her female victims in belief it would preserve her own youth. Hammer made a movie in 1971, Countess Dracula, where Ingrid Pitt played that character. When Hammer made that movie, they had begun ramping up the gore in the fare and started having full-blown nudity. Grasp is similar to that film in both regards.
Almost everything about this film can be summed up in the first couple of minutes outside of the opening credits. The first shot is an impressive wide shot of a genuinely old village. If there is one thing this film has going for it, it is its use of seriously old European locales. So, seeing this, I said to my wife, “At least the scenery is better this time.” My accidental comic timing couldn’t have been better since, at that exact moment, there was an abrupt cut to a topless woman. Then she gets mauled to death by a rubber suited monster that has crawled in through her second-story window. Really, these first few minutes are the perfect encapsulation of the picture.
The locals believe a bear killed the woman. Either that is some seriously twisted reasoning or there is an area of Europe where bears climb through windows one or more stories above street level, with the express intent of killing people. If the latter is the case, then add this to my list of places I won’t be spending a vacation.
There’s only one guy brave and competent enough to hunt the creature, and that is some beefy guy who always seems to be dressed in Eurochic fashions of the time, regardless of how impractical his attire would be for the task. I could not stop wondering how much hunting he gets done in tight slacks and a glowingly white jacket. It looks like he also wears a lot of corduroy, which seems a bad choice of fabrics when your goal is to be as quiet as possible. This may explain why I have yet to see any article of clothing made of corduroy and colored in a camouflage pattern.
Whatever is threatening the town is exclusively killing young women, so our hunter spends all his time patrolling the grounds of the local girl’s school. The student body is never shown in actual classes. Instead, they are always wearing sheer teddies or lounging around the pool in bikinis. I suspect not much is being taught here at Hugh Heffner’s School for Sexually Frustrated Girls.
The hunter is distracted from his work by a mysterious woman he repeatedly sees being all coy and alluring in her sheer, black gown as she runs around a swamp. To see a woman wearing such a garment and running in slow-motion through a swamp is like the most bizarre Summer’s Eve commercial ever.
It is in this regard the film is most similar to Sorcerers. If one is going to make a movie with a flimsy plot that begs to be porn, I don’t understand why the filmmakers didn’t just make all-out hardcore pornography. Even the soundtrack seems readymade for that type of film.
There’s a whole lot of other nonsense here that does little more than add camp factor, though not to the extent of Sorcerers. There’s a mad scientist that injects some sort of magical elixir into a severed hand, which transforms into something monstrous and scaly when exposed to light “that is like moonlight” (whatever that means). Our hero will confront the Loreley in her lair where there are a few women that appear to be similar to her, and I wondered what their backstory was. There’s a mob of angry villagers armed with the requisite pitchforks and rakes. In movies like this, I always wonder what they hope to accomplish with the rakes.
My main takeaway from watching The Loreley’s Grasp and Night of the Sorcerers on the same collection was bewilderment as to how somebody could make a competent movie and then seem to completely forget how to make a film only a year later. I can’t recommend either movie but, if one is interested in this set, I recommend Sorcerers for those who are looking for high camp and Grasp to those who want a more conventional film. For most viewers, however, I would recommend taking a pass on this set completely.
Dir: Amando de Ossorio
Starring…well nobody much, really. But if there are any fans of Silvia Tortosa, they may want to seek this out
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray (paired with Night of the Sorcerers)