Devil Times Two — Devil Times Two( Blu Ray/ DVD)
Devil Times Two purports to be a lost/ cursed film from the 1970’s. It’s an Italian affair set in a run-down/ derelict convent and its surrounding autumnal countryside, where two mysterious/ ghostly women keep attacking people, getting closer & closer to the convent to open the gates of hell. The film blends moments of decent eeriness, nudity, and bloody gore with long blocks of rather tiresome dialogue. Here from SRS Cinema as either a Blu-ray or DVD, with just behind-the-scenes footage/ trailer for extras.
Devil Times Two - Quando le Tenebre escono dal Bosco- to give its full title is from the year 2022. It was directed by Paolo Del Fiol- who, between the early 2010’s and the present day, has had seven credits to his name. Four of these are anthology credits, and three features. His other two features are A Melty Kiss Lost in the Abyss (2016) a horror film regarding five women with mental health issues who take a revolutionary sound wave therapy, and Apocalypse Tape 1990 ( 2026), which says it’s the world's first AI horror film- an "Extreme Splatterfest"- a true love letter to the most ferocious, transgressive, gory and sexually extreme horror cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. So, certainly a filmmaker with some interesting ideas.
As I mentioned in my intro, this is presented as a lost/ cursed film. The version we have here is meant to be the last-ever copy of the film recorded on VHS from Italian TV in the 80s, so we have ad breaks, and throughout the picture we have the name of the network imprinted at the bottom of the screen. It looks good enough, I guess, as 70s film with a washed out quilty/ light glitches- though there are a few things that do pull you out of it- like a woman with breast implants and a few other things.
Anyway, the film rolls in at just under the two-hour mark, and it starts off promising enough. We see a pair of walkers moving through the woods- he keeps getting glances of two women, but his female partner sees no one. One is tall/ heavily made up in a strappy dress and large breast implants & the other is an Asian woman in a kimono- this part of the film has a Jean Rollin vibe- initially creating, well, a feeling of haunted/ erotic unease- though as things go on we get gore & intense sexual encounters.
We are then introduced to two priests driving in from Rome to look over the convent that sits near the woods the walkers encountered. One is aging/ grumpy, and the other is slightly younger- asking way too many questions. Anyway, there are just two nuns left at the convent, as we find out the rest left after an event twenty years ago.
As we move on, more folk are attacked in the woods by the ghostly duo. We get a lot of talking ‘n’ walking in the woods from the two priests & nun, all pushing towards a gory showdown in the convent between good & evil- with weird hand-fisting, blood flowing, etc and nudity- some from a larger/ older women.
Devil Times Two is certainly a plus-and-minus film. On the good side, the 70’s feel/ tone is done well enough, the moments of unease are effective, and the gore has some moments of impactful-ness/ shock. On the bad side, the runtime is way too long, with the lengthy dialogue scenes becoming very trying. And a few of the clearly not from the 70’s elements are frustrating.
On the extras side, we get around six minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, the film's trailer, and a trailer reel.
Paolo Del Fiol is a director who certainly shows a lot of promise, and I’ll be interested to check out the upcoming Apocalypse Tape 1990. Devil Times Two will appeal to those who enjoy the fake-cursed film genre, as well as gore/ sleazy/ nuns & priests encounting evil.