INCUBUS (1966)

         Let’s be clear regarding a painful fact: Leslie Stevens’ Incubus is a terrible movie.  Everything about it is awful.  Even for a cheap horror film, it’s shoddy, pretentious, nonsensical and – worst of all – boring.  It doesn’t warrant expounding upon, but I will note that it’s one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen.  Every syllable of its dialogue was recorded in a made-up language known as Esperanto.  Consider yourself warned.

         That’s not to deny there are a few good things to be drawn from watching it.  The only Captain Kirk the world has ever needed, William Shatner, was the star.  Better yet, Conrad Hall, ASC was the cinematographer.  Even though you’d never connect such drek with the man who won the Oscar for Best Cinematography only one year later (for Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood), his black and white work is a witness to the evolution of a great artist.  I’m always fascinated to see the earliest efforts of the all-time greats, to trace their progress in the years before they made their names.  Incubus provides a good example as pertains to Hall.  If you can keep from laughing at the narrative, here and there you’ll see flashes of his brilliance whose recurrence was no doubt minimized by budgetary and directorial constraints.

         Give it a look on a slow night or when you’ve had enough of the same old Netflix menu.  And if you don’t happen to have a translator handy, do what I did: Watch it with the sound turned off.

         Chin up to everyone out there trying to make it.  Despite the laughable nature of this movie, look at how quickly – and impressively – fortunes changed for the vaunted Mr. Hall…!