''The Night of the Devils'' ( it, La notte dei diavoli, es, La noche de los diablos) is a 1972 film directed by

Giorgio Ferroni Giorgio Ferroni (12 April 1908 – 1981) was an Italian film director. Life and career Giorgio Ferroni was born in Perugia on 12 April 1908. Ferroni began his career in film with short documentaries during World War II. He directed his first dra ...

. It is loosely based on the

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (russian: Граф Алексе́й Константи́нович Толсто́й; – ), often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy, was a Russian poet, novelist, and playwright. He is considered to be the most ...

's novel ''

The Family of the Vourdalak ''The Family of the Vourdalak'' is a gothic novella by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1839 in French and originally entitled ''La Famille du Vourdalak. Fragment inedit des Memoires d'un inconnu''. Tolstoy wrote it on a trip to Fran ...

''.

Plot

The patriarch of a wealthy family fears that he will show up one day in vampire form. Should this happen, he warns his family not to let him back in his house, no matter how much he begs them.

Cast

Production

''The Night of the Devils'' was an Italian and Spanish co-production financed by Eduardo Manzanos Brochero's Copercines and two Italian companies: Filmes and Due Emme. The latter company was founded in 1971 by Roberto Maldera who also had a main role in the film, and Luigi Mariani. ''The Night of the Devils'' was shot in five weeks starting in late 1971 to early 1972 near

Bracciano Lake Lake Bracciano ( it, Lago di Bracciano) is a lake of volcanic origin in the Italian region of Lazio, northwest of Rome. It is the second largest lake in the region (second only to Lake Bolsena) and one of the major lakes of Italy. It has a circu ...

. Director Ferroni was 63 when directing the film and nearly deaf and had to shoot the film with the assistance of a hearing aid.

Release

''The Night of the Devils'' was distributed theatrically in Italy on 29 April 1972 where it was distributed by P.A.C. It grossed a total of 156,686,000

Italian lire The lira (; plural lire) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was first introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually f ...

in Italy. It was released in Spain on 25 June 1973.

Reception

In a contemporary review, Nigel Andrews reviewed a dubbed 88 minute version. Andrews stated that despite "the brief surrealist promise of the opening scenes-a close-up of a face crawling with larvae cutting ingeniously to Niccola's head enveloped in the serpentine wires of an encephalograph", ''Night of the Devils'' had "all the usual defects of a low-budget horror quickie-careless direction, mechanical performances, some obtrusively unconvincing day-for-night sequences" find that the film "provides little in the way of style to compensate for a story which staggers dully from one bloodthirsty set-piece to another."

References

Footnotes

Sources

External links

* 1972 films Spanish vampire films Films directed by Giorgio Ferroni 1972 horror films Films based on Russian novels Italian vampire films Gothic horror films Films about witchcraft Films shot in Italy 1970s Italian films {{1970s-horror-film-stub