...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 fine secret tunnels. They leave the castle in the morning. Seriously. That was it.
Plot summary
A group of dropouts find an old man (Sir Christopher Lee) in a castle. The old man subsequently turns into the Devil and seizes them.
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Christopher Lee fans might like this but...
A Horrendous Mess rather than a horror film..
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.
Castle of illusion.
"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.