IMDb > Incubus (1965)
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Overview

User Rating:
6.1/10   742 votes
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Director:
Leslie Stevens
Writer:
Leslie Stevens (writer)
Contact:
View company contact information for Incubus on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
November 1966 (France) more
Genre:
Horror more
Plot:
On a strange island inhabited by demons and spirits, a man battles the forces of evil. full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
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User Comments:
Ingmar Bergman Meets `The Outer Limits' more (57 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

William Shatner ... Marc
Allyson Ames ... Kia
Eloise Hardt ... Amael
Robert Fortier ... Olin
Ann Atmar ... Arndis
Milos Milos ... Incubus
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
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Runtime:
78 min
Country:
USA
Language:
Esperanto
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono
Certification:
USA:Unrated
Filming Locations:
Big Sur, California, USA more
Company:
Contempo III Productions more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Just one year after this film came out, as its prints were being destroyed, William Shatner was cast in "Star Trek" (1966), cinematographer Conrad L. Hall got his first Academy Award nomination, actor Milos Milos murdered the estranged wife of Mickey Rooney and then killed himself, and actress Ann Atmar committed suicide. more
Goofs:
Factual errors: The eclipse proceeds too fast, holds too long at totality, then ends too fast. It becomes way too dark during totality. more
Quotes:
Amael: I warn you, Kia, that quiet, modest man, who seeks no honors, no rewards, that gentle person who seeks only peace, that man is a hero!
Kia: He is a mortal man!
Amael: A great hero, Kia... great and good.
Kia: Then he has a soul worth fighting for! There are no heroes burning in the fires of Hell! No Martyrs and no Saints! Don't try to stop me, Amael.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in Blade: Trinity (2004) more

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User Comments

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21 out of 22 people found the following comment useful.
Ingmar Bergman Meets `The Outer Limits', 20 June 2003
Author: Eugene Kim (gene_kim@earthlink.net) from Arlington, Virginia, USA

It's tempting to jokingly call this the best William Shatner movie in Esperanto I've ever seen, but it deserves better than that - it's a delightfully weird low-budget horror film that might best be described as "Ingmar Bergman Meets `The Outer Limits.'" The reference to the 60s TV series is apt, since several of the creative forces from that show were behind this film: writer-director Leslie Stevens; future Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad L. Hall, and composer Dominic Frontiere (although I suspect they simply borrowed his "Outer Limits" themes to score this film). In fact, "Incubus" looks, sounds and feels so much like an episode of the "The Outer Limits," there were times I half-expected it to fade to commercial; a flash of nudity reminds us this isn't a TV show.

In "Incubus," a seductive female demon - a succubus - named Kia becomes bored with luring morally corrupt men to their eternal doom and sets her sights on a virtuous soldier named Marc, played by a pre-"Star Trek" Shatner (who guest-starred in an "Outer Limits" episode titled "Cold Hands, Warm Heart"). The bucolic out-of-time setting reminds me of the medieval Sweden of Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," and Hall's black & white cinematography is starkly beautiful. The Esperanto dialogue lends an exotic flavor with its vaguely recognizable European word roots. It also dresses up dialogue that might have been too over-the-top in English (in his DVD commentary, Shatner can't help chuckling when Kia declares, "There are no heroes burning in the fires of Hell!"). I'm reminded of the old joke that a movie seems more "artistic" if it's in a foreign language with subtitles - I guess Esperanto, originally intended to be a universal language, effectively makes "Incubus" a "foreign film" to just about everyone.

Shatner, as the young, handsome, dashing hero, is unmistakably Shatner, even in Esperanto. Allyson Ames is frostily beautiful as the evil Kia, while Ann Atmar is sweetly vulnerable as Marc's sister, Arndis.

I don't mean to over-praise "Incubus." It's a very well done little film, comparable to the original "Carnival of Souls" - if you don't expect too much, you may be pleasantly surprised at how much there is. It's definitely worth a look.

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Does anybody know why they chose to do it in Esperanto? debtfull
Incubus' Catholic Theology ne-19
Esperanto Zorro-3
Incubus placxas al min...sed... amadeus5521
What a good film! mike-2302
New Incubus article/write up jh87
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