Erotic Witchcraft / La Goulve 1972 (Where to Find & Facts on the Film)

Marie-Ange Saint Clair: La Goulve.

Erotic Witchcraft (La Goulve), 1972 is the most mysterious film reviewed in my blog and that I've seen for all those years that I've been exploring obscure Eurocult cinema.

But I've found some interesting information about it during my extremely thorough research. And here I will share it with you, as well as tell you about what the film feels like (spoiler: it's one of the best films I've seen).

Let's get down to business.

 

Historical Facts and Rumors About the Film

Erotic Witchcraft (La Goulve) is an obscure mystic horror film, shot in 1972 by a French director Mario Mercier, who is better known for his later picture—A Woman Possessed (La Papesse), 1975.

La Goulve has never been released to home video officially, so it is available to public only in low quality on pirate VHS cassettes and online as VHS rips. Since 2011 we also have a rip with English subtitles, thanks to user Goupil66, whoever he is or was. Apart from being interesting because of its obscurity, it's just a great film too.

According to this review on IMDb, it was banned before the official release, because one of the actresses got scared by the completed work and complained about this to French authorities, who confiscated the master tape and banned the films because of breaking moral standards. Fortunately someone managed to take a low quality copy from it, which we can enjoy after almost 50 years since then.

But this article offers a statement of the producer of La Goulve—Bepi Fontana, that the film was running in cinema in Quebec for 11 weeks, and then banned thanks to Office Catholique (I'm not sure what this organization is or was): Erotic Witchcraft is portraying too much of erotic violence commited by means of unholy magic, which of course looks very offensive and frightening to the religious society. By the way, Mercier's next film—La Papesse—faced the same problem.

One of the readers of my blog, Denis McDuff, reached out to me and shared that he had seen La Goulve as a teenager, when he was fourteen, in 1974. It was screened as a double feature with the main film being The Legend of Hell House. Denis attended the screening with his father at Cinéma St-Denis in Montreal which was a family theater. Denis believes the theater management had made a mistake in rating the film: for about a week it was available for viewers under eighteen years old!

 

The closing titles credit Claude Déplace as the advisor on occultism. I found out that Claude Déplace was a pretty well-known esoteric guru in France who had his own occult sect that practiced rituals involving gathering naked around a bonfire at night in the woods, searing own skin with a smoldering stick and likely many other weird things. Unfortunately, I don't know much about it, but I wrote about what I discovered more in detail in my review of Mario Mercier's next film—A Woman Possessed / La Papesse.
 

Maïka Simon: Agnès
 

Anne Varèze: Nadine (Raymond's cousin and victim).
 

The article also mentions that Bepi Fontana added some elements to the final cut to make it sell better. Eventually, Mario Mercier considered the film being spoiled by this:

Mercier never forgave Bepi Fontana for having distorted his film... and [Pete] Tombs, who had recently found a version of the film in 35mm couldn't release it on DVD for this exact reason.

Additionally, here is an interview with Mario Mercier where he talks about his films, though, unfortunately, doesn't reveal details:

And here you can look at more screenshots of a restored version. I could not find any information about what and where the restored version is, and if the pictures were taken and painted manually from the same VHS rip, or they were taken from a real, existing good quality source, hidden from simple mortal cult cinema fans. Here is a couple of them:

Plot Summary

A little boy meets a magician and is being taught witchcraft by him during years. When the magician gets old and dies, the boy is already a young man, having troubles with dating girls. In order to solve his problem he applies his magic skills to women in a way inappropriate for a gentleman, and with the help of an attractive, but creepy and dangerous entity from other world—La Goulve.

Hervé Hendrickx: Raymond, the young sorcerer.
 

 

Why It's Recommended Here

A relaxing otherworldy mystic vibe. Many directors of that era, exploiting witchcraft topic, succeeded in varying degrees in dragging a viewer into a bizarre hypnotic condition. This film is one of the best examples of success with achieving this.

The second half of the picture feels like a psychedelic dream about a merciless black magic spree gone out of control, accompanied by a creepy soundtrack, amplifying the impression. Even the low quality of the copy, resulting in unrealistic colors of the image on the screen, only adds weirdness, making the watching experience special.

There is also enough female nudity and lesbian erotic scenes.

La Goulve—the magic entity—is particularly charming. She was played by Marie-Ange Saint Clair, who can also be seen in a silly erotic comedy—Le bordel, 1ère époque; 1900 (José Bénazéraf, 1974, France). In Le bordel... she is credited as Marion Saint-Clair, and I couldn't find any information about her personally or any other films with her apart from these two.

 

Things I Didn't Like

However, there are a couple of short, but not enjoyable moments:

1) Sacrificing a bird during a ritual. Looks too graphic, making you wonder if the bird was really murdered for filming the scene.

2) A woman dancing on a few little snakes, stepping with her feet right on them.

In my opinion this violence was completely unnecessary, and I would not enjoy the film less if these scenes were absent.

 

Where to Find It

Previously, I had a direct download link published right here. However, then I thought that it would be safer to share the film privately upon request. So, just contact me at genesinglemail@gmail.com and I will send you a direct link to the VHS rip with English subtitles (I don't ask for money in return or anything similar).

If you have more information about this gem, please share it with me.

Despite being obscure, Mario Mercier's Erotic Witchcraft is a notable example of Cinéma fantastique. I higly recommended to all who has a serious interest in European underground cult movies as well as to anyone who has a thing for unpopular weird art.

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