Challenge the Devil (1963) User Reviews

KATARSIS (Giuseppe Veggezzi, 1963) *1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 3/10 · 5 January 2011]

This is definitely Christopher Lee's most obscure European genre effort and, in retrospect, one of the weakest from any phase in his prolific career – in fact, I would even venture to name it the worst entry in the Gothic Horror cycle emanating from Italy! Incidentally, the copy I watched was culled from a recent late-night screening on Italian TV – its first ever broadcast (where the on-screen title was the alternate one SFIDA AL DIAVOLO) which, given the dire results, is not surprising! Truth be told, the genre icon's presence (or its three stages, since he goes from the reclusive pathetic owner of a decaying mansion – his fair hair unintentionally evoking Shakespeare's Hamlet, in whose celebrated 1948 film version Lee had actually appeared in a bit-part! – to a dark Mephistophelean figure and, finally, revealed to be the previously imperceptible victim of a mugging) within the film hardly amounts to 10 minutes of its 76-minute running-time!

The film starts off as a lame chase thriller with pious undertones, is stopped dead in its tracks by a slew of pointless musical numbers, then turns into a hedonistic drama on the lines of (but a long way after) THESE ARE THE DAMNED (1963) – with the best-known member of the younger cast, Giorgio Ardisson, actually the one to ham it up most relentlessly! – before settling into some typical haunted-house antics (with some cob-webbed interiors and scuttling creatures notching up a few points for Cocteau-like atmosphere). The mix could have actually proved quite interesting but, since director Veggezzi (whose name was unfamiliar to me – and it did not take long to discover why) displayed remarkable incompetence throughout, the end result is almost on a par with the notorious work of Ed Wood!

A Horrendous Mess rather than a horror film..

[georgeuriah · 3/10 · 16 December 2010]

This film must be one of the most difficult C.Lee's movies to find and I was (un)lucky to see it in an after midnight screening in an open-air cinema under the title "La Sfida Al Diavolo".It follows the story of a group of teenagers who like wild parties and wind up stranded in a castle in which C.Lee appears as the castle keeper dressed in medieval style. Meanwhile, a subplot involves a suitcase and a spy ring and guess what, Lee appears again dressed in suit! I can't remember much, (it's been 10 years or so), but the overall impression was that this movie was destined for wider audiences (for example, there's a scene in a nightclub where singer Isabella Ianetti sings "t'hanno visto domenica sera"!!) and somehow the scenes in the castle were added afterwards. The plot is incomprehensible and totally absurd, Lee has very little screen time and from time to time the viewer has to suffer a ludicrous voice-over! The few people in the theater were laughing all the time, since no one could take seriously this movie. I myself, thought it was a horrendous mess, however, I certainly would like to see it once more, for collector's sake.

Christopher Lee fans might like this but...

[chet19 · 3/10 · 23 September 2021]

...no one else will. It's a bizarre film that is disjointed and never comes together. Entirely separate scenes that have nothing to do with each other. And it shows! First, two hit men have to kill a guy for stealing some documents. The hitmen fire their guns, and the intended victim jogs away and for some unknown reason, the hitmen just give up and don't follow him.

He ends up at a church, where he tells one of the monks that he is innocent. The monk goes to visit the guy's girlfriend, but first we have to see a 15-minute scene of a couple dancing. Then a singer does a song for another few minutes. NOTHING to do with the plot. So the monk tells this lady a story about how he became a monk. Via flashback, we learn that the monk used to be a debaucherous, drunken womanizer, and he went on a trip with 5 friends. They got lost and ended up in a castle. They found food and wine and gorged themselves, then danced like drunken fools for 15 minutes of screen time. Then Christopher Lee shows up. He is the master of the castle and he offers the group all his riches if they help him find a mysterious woman on the castle grounds and bury her. They see some women stuck in cobwebs and find secret tunnels. They leave the castle in the morning. Seriously. That was it.

The meanest trick the Devil ever pulled was unleashing this unfathomable and surreal piece of rubbish on the world!

[Coventry · 2/10 · 20 October 2022]

Words almost fail to describe my enthusiasm when I stumbled upon a copy of this "Katarsis", aka "Challenge the Devil". A fully restored version on BluRay is available in the fancy boxset "The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee". It's quite expensive, but hey, an ultra-rare gothic Italian movie from the early sixties, and starring the almighty Lee can't be bad, right? Well, unfortunately not, and even a film like this is obscure and forgotten for a good reason.

All the main issues of this film, and they are quite plentiful, can basically be brought back to one major and incomprehensible default. "Katarsis" - seemingly - didn't have a script. During the credits, and nor here on IMDb, there isn't anyone listed as writer. So, what I imagine, is that director Giuseppe Veggezzi (who apparently never did anything else in the film industry) gave instructions to his cast like: "Just do something. Whatever. Improvise, people!".

The absence of a script would explain a lot, though. "Katarsis" is - hands down - the world champion of useless, endless, and irritating padding footage! Although barely 80 minutes long, minimally 20 minutes of those are pure filler. Boring dance acts, entire songs, random party footage... all lasting for several long minutes. Even the process of going up a flight of stairs is stretched eternally. Ironically enough, the group going up the stairs also says: this seems to take forever! Even worse, however, is the unfathomable and surreal narrative structure of "Katarsis". It makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.

It starts with two hired assassins going after a man. They shoot him, and the wounded man seeks refugee in a monastery where he knows one of the monks. The man tells the monk the killers were after him for documents that his ex-girlfriend stole. The monk goes to the nightclub where the ex-girlfriend (a hideous woman) works. Out of the blue, the monk starts telling her why he became a monk via a flashback. Apparently, he used to be a ruthless thug, and together with five others, they broke into a castle and stumbled upon an old man. Hey, there we finally have Christopher Lee! But he's gone again after five minutes... At the request of the old man, who may be the Devil himself, they roam around the castle in search for a woman. And, surprise, the six hoodlums turn into remorseful young people.

Seriously, what is this?!? Craziest. Trash. Ever.

I'm nevertheless giving "Katarsis" one point extra, solely because Christopher Lee has three different faces in hardly five minutes of screentime. Oh, and the little twist-ending about Lee's character real identity is reasonably ingenious, but it doesn't save anything.

A bit of a mess.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 6 April 2024]

When you read through the IMDB trivia for this film, you no doubt will understand much of why I hated the story. It seems that the original production company ran out of money and the film was sold to another company. They in turn chopped the movie to pieces and added a lot of new material. The sum total of this is a story that seems disjoint and dull.

The story begins in a nightclub. Many of the women in the place are striking but not in good ways. They look much like some of Fellini's weird characters or those from a John Waters film. THen a monk enters the place and tells a story...a not so clever way of joining the two bits of movie.

It seems a group of six jerks are driving about the countryside in their tiny convertibles causing all sorts of trouble....drinking while driving, running people off the road and just acting like folks who need to be taught a less. A bit later, they arrive at a castle and begin treating the place like garbage. An old man in a strange period costume (Christopher Lee) arrives and he blathers a bit. Later, he reveals himself to be the devil.

The story is dull and confusing and lost my interest very quickly. Inexplicably, in reading through the reviews some people liked it. There's no accounting for tastes.

Tame with nothing else happens

[jordondave-28085 · 5/10 · 8 December 2023]

(1963) Challenge The Devil/ Sfida Al Diavolo/ Katarsis (In Italian with English subtitles) HORROR/ ART HOUSE

It opens with a guy waiting to pick up another guy named Carlos from Beruit from the airport. It turns out Carlos is a professional killer, brought over to Italy to assassinate a guy named Carlo. Carlos does get shot while attempting to run away but manages to seek refuge toward a monastery requesting to see a monk named Pejo Renigio (Piero Vida). And while Carlos is relapsing, he then tells him about a deal that has gone wrong that has something to do with some incriminating documents, and that a lady by the name of Alma Del Rio stole and kept them to prevent him for sell them for four million dollars. The monk, Pejo decides to go down and see Alma himself for the purpose of persuade her to change her mind. It was at this point he tells her the reason he became a monk and it has something to do with what happened when he was rowdy, hanging around with two other guys and three different girls riding around on three different cars. Causing mischief until they decide to break into a castle with a lone man (Christopher Lee) living in it, requesting the group to search for his diseased wife. If anyone want to see a movie which not much happens this happens to be one of those movies.

Pre-Psychedelic Haunted House Romp

[profh-1 · 3/10 · 9 July 2022]

6 drunken wastrels invade a seemingly-empty castle for a party, but find an old man who claims to have sold his soul to the Devil to prolong the life of the woman he loved. He offers them all the riches of the castle if they can find her now-dead body and give it a proper burial... but, this leads to what seems unending hellish torment, as the owner of the castle may be possessed by The Devil himself!

I came away from this feeling like it was at least 5 years ahead of its time, more the sort of movie some film-makers who'd done too much drinking, drugs & sex would have knocked out. The location work is very nice, there's lots of excellent, spooky photography, and the eerie music is very fitting. The problem is, the story itself would have probably have worked better as an episode of some TV anthology like "THRILLER".

The history of the film is quite crazy. It actually started out at 90 minutes, but was then acquired by a different company, who cut 30 minutes out and then filmed 19 minutes' worth of entirely-new material as what seems a totally-unrelated framing sequence, with the original "haunted house" story presented in flashback! Even the 60 minutes of the "haunted house" seems too long and stretched out, which is a shame, as with a better script or MUCH-tighter editing, this might have had the making of something pretty cool.

I was actually reminded of no less than 3 later (and all better) films. First, "DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS" (1966), for the way a group of idiots barge into Dracula's castle and find a table with food and drink already waiting for them (I wonder if THIS film might possibly have inspired that scene in THAT one?). Then there's "HORROR HOUSE" (1969) with Frankie Avalon, which I saw on a big screen way back, and, the more-recent and rather infamous "HALLOWEEN: RESSURECTION" (2002), with more idiots stumbling around a dark house. "KATARSIS" (the original Italian name of this thing) makes more sense on that score, because it's easier to believe all this crazy stuff going on in a full-sized CASTLE rather than a mid-sized suburban house.

I'm sure the main draw here is Christopher Lee, who plays 3 different roles in under 10 minutes of screen time, but sadly was dubbed into Italian by another actor (and it appears this was never dubbed into English by anybody, so get ready to read subtitles-- heh).

It's really a schiophrenic experience, between the castle scenes, the "crime" plot added 2 years later, and the long nightclub scenes, which includes a pair of dancers, a cute singer (who oddly enough reminds me of a young Markie Post!) and an overweight and not-pretty solo dancer who's trying to blackmail someone. Sonia Scotti, the cute singer, who's completely out-of-place in the film, I would have asked out to dinner given a chance.

As part of "The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee" box set, Severin Films did a FABULOUS job on this deservedly-obscure film. As I used to joke about the Ralph Bakshi-produced episodes of "SPIDER-MAN" (1968-70), this probably makes more sense if you're on drugs while watching it.

A Challenge to Watch

[zardoz-13 · 3/10 · 15 December 2022]

If you've never seen director Giuseppe Veggezzi's egregiously awful, Gothic-tinged movie "Challenge the Devil," featuring British horror icon Christopher Lee, you've missed nothing! Only die-hard Lee completists will want to suffer through this atrocious epic. Not surprisingly, Veggezzi never helmed another film, and it is easy to see after you've seen this schizophrenic saga. Basically, three boozing couples careen recklessly around in their convertible sports cars on the highway, assaulting a motorist at one point, before converging on a brooding medieval castle where they indulge themselves in an all-they-can-eat and drink buffet, while the Devil (Christopher Lee of "Horror of Dracula") skulks in the shadows. Essentially, Lee appears for all of ten minutes of the film's modest 78-minute runtime! Nevertheless, the British horror icon received top billing despite the fact that his performance amounts to little more than a cameo. Future Spaghetti western star George Ardisson co-stars as one of the six who wind up in the castle. The troubled production history of Veggezzi's film accounts for its narrative incoherence. According to IMDB., the production company went belly up not long after the original 90-minute film was finished. After Eco Film appropriated it, they removed not only the opening 30 minutes but also replaced it with new footage featuring two plainclothes gunmen, a priest and a cabaret dancer. This new footage is related only remotely to the original plot and serves strictly as the backstory for a priest when he was a hellion prior to taking his vows. Furthermore, although originally released in 1963 as "Katarsis," Veggezzi's film was re-released in 1965 under a wholly different title "Challenge the Devil," aka "Sfida al diavolo," with a reduced runtime of 79-minutes! Worse, the producers dubbed Lee in Italian and provided voice-over narration which adds nothing to the film. Clearly, "Challenge the Devil" qualified as a challenge for its audience.

Challenge the Devil

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 15 December 2023]

The first twenty minutes of this movie explain how Peo (Piero Vida) became Father Renigio after his younger years of vice. As a criminal who goes by Carlo hides in his church, Peo goes to speak to the man's exotic dancer girlfriend Alma Del Rio and tell her how he once hid in a castle and met Satan.

An old man (Christopher Lee) had opened his castle for him and several of his friends, asking them to help find the dead body of his wife, but they were so high that they decided to have a bongo dance line instead.

Shot under the name Faust '63 and originally called Katarsis, this feels like if Jerry Warren and Jess Franco made an Italian Gothic movie together and made a goofy-eyed spider as one of the monsters. Its production company, I Films della Mangusta, went bankrupt shortly after filming. The movie was bought by Eco Film, who added the new footage. Director Giuseppe Vegezzi dropped out of directing movies after this experience and even attempted suicide, which is why the first twenty minutes feel like a totally different movie, as they were added to pad the time.

Somehow, the music from this movie by Berto Pisano made its way into Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror.

At one point, this was a lost movie. Now, you can watch it on streaming whenever you want.

Castle of illusion.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 8/10 · 18 April 2010]

"Katarsis" tells a simple story of six Italians stranded in the castle of illusion.The owner of the castle is Mephisto himself played by Christopher Lee.Three men and three women drink,dance and behave loudly.Suddenly Mephistopheles appears.The fun is over and the nightmare begins...Extremely obscure and moody Gothic romp which begins as a spy thriller and ends in a truly nightmarish fashion.The labyrinth of mirrors welcomes our sextet of protagonists.This is a Gothic tale of Faust,curses,ghosts and spiders that will have a cathartic effect on the lives of six unlucky Italians.The sequence of orgiastic dance is fun to watch and Christopher Lee appears for about ten minutes of screen time.The script is badly written,but I had a blast watching this ultra-obscure and unknown Italian horror flick.8 out of 10.

An obscure film that's not worth your time

[miss_toucan · 1/10 · 16 February 2022]

Let's face it- Christopher Lee was a great actor, but he did star in some pretty awful movies. This is one of them. It starts out with a guy getting shot by someone who wants to kill him. Frankly I thought that i was watching the wrong movie as based on the plot description, the first 20 minutes are something completely different. There was a storyline that was a bit all over the place and thrown in were some lengthy and totally unnecessary song and dance numbers. Then one of the characters starts telling someone about how he became a monk, and a different story starts. It's quite bizarre as the person who is telling the story seems to be a normal, intelligent man but in the story he tells, he's like a big oaf and an imbecile which made no sense at all as it was the same character but a few years earlier. There's another guy who just laughs out loud for absolutely no reason whatsoever which is pretty annoying and silly.

This story is long and boring and uneventful.

A difficult movie to watch as it's so bad and boring!!

Don't bother. There are so many movies out there for you to watch that are at least a little bit interesting or entertaining.

I have nothing good to say about this movie at all.