Let's face it, the average revenge flick--where someone suffers some heinous outrage in the beginning and then exacts some equally heinous retribution in the end--is junk food for the soul. It satisfies us at a visceral level, the same way a salty potato chip quenches a savage craving but offers nothing of substance. The average revenge story teaches us nothing except "an eye for an eye", and last time I checked, that strategy hasn't done much for the human race.

The rape revenge flick takes violence to new depths of heinousness--as well as subliminal thrills--by peppering it with the junkiest junk food of all visuals: sex. If you can't guess, I'm not a fan of rape/revenge flicks... which Demoniacs clearly is from the opening scene.

Full disclosure: I grew up on all those cheesy, thrilling action-revenge flicks of the late 80s-90s and loved every single one. But it wasn't the violence that appealed to me so much as the cartoonishly fun way revenge was presented. In many ways a Schwarzenegger revenge flick is a lot like a Grimms morality tale, so unrealistic that we can enjoy it from a safe distance because that stuff never happens to real people.

Demoniacs opens on a bunch of pirates who wreck a ship for a couple trinkets worth of treasure, and if that isn't bad enough, they chase down the 2 female survivors and have their way with them in very explicit ways. The story is about these 2 victims who then find a demon trapped in a century-old prison and make a bargain to use his power for 1 night of revenge. It's implied that their souls will be his after. So here we have a rape/revenge flick blended with a Faustian deal with the devil, blended with pirates, ghosts and amazing visuals (some of Jean Rollin's absolute best).... but underneath all the candy it's still just rape/revenge flick, right?

Well not really. And I gotta credit film expert Stephen Thrower for opening my eyes in his excellent mini-doc "Vengeance and Purity" included in the recent Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray remaster. Demoniacs isn't just an eye-for-an-eye story of revenge, but more importantly it's about the battle between innocence & savagery. The girls represent innocence which is violently destroyed, and seemingly they descend into the same violent savagery that destroyed them. That would be the stereotypical path, and flaw, of all rape/revenge flicks: evil begets evil. Clap, cheer and go home satisfied with your dose of potato chips. But...

MILD SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Thrower points out something that we may miss in all the ensuing carnage. The demon-girls don't actually immediately descend to violence themselves. Rather, it's the pirates' own parnoia that starts to drive them toward self destruction (Macbeth anyone?). The demon-girls, despite their menacing appearance, strangely never stop representing innocence & purity (notice even the soft lavender & peach colors in which they're dressed, hardly the colors of vengeful monsters). So rather than this story revealing itself to be just another tale of violence-begets-violence, we see that it's a powerful standoff between purity & vengence. A true tale of good vs evil. Will their loss of physical innocence result in the corruption of their spiritual innocence? We want them to kill their attackers in awful ways, but wouldn't that mean we're just subscribing to violence ourselves?

MAJOR SPOILER BEYOND THIS POINT

The thematic climax comes long before the cinematic climax. And for that reason we can easily miss it. But if you're paying attention, the real climax of the story comes when the girls are faced with a dilemma: 2 other innocent bystanders are near dead. The demon-girls cannot save them, but they learn that the demon can. However, this would require the girls to forfeit the bargain and return their power back to the demon--giving up their revenge. And this is exactly what they do, proving perhaps for the first (and only?) time in a rape/revenge flick that purity can still win, in a sense. The demon says so much in a rare, touching monologue coming from a demon, when he says something like "You have forfeited your revenge, but perhaps your generosity is worth something."

SPOILING THE LAST SCENE BEYOND THIS POINT

The cinematic and visual climax comes after that, in the final scene when the girls, now powerless, are once again hunted down and brutally raped by the pirates for a 2nd time. This is the price that that innocence must pay in this world, it would seem Rollin is saying. Those who remain 'good' are not allowed to have violent vindication, so give up on that. So what's the point? Well this is where you really have to be on your toes to grasp the visual payoff. As the film closes, what's the final image we get? It's positively one of the most gorgeous shots I've ever seen in a film. The last shot is of one of the girls, having been violated for the 2nd time and near dead if not dead already, tied to the sinking flotsam of a wrecked boat as the tide comes in to swallow her up. But if you notice, she's in a divine pose of crucifixion. Just like any marble statue of Christ towering above a church, she is the divine martyr who "wins" despite the physical outrage. Visually the shot is composed and lit in a way that gives her a supernatural transcendence, and ultimately that's the payoff. What a great film, masquerading as cheap horror. This is another example of how Jean Rollin the poet subverts his own genre to give us something that even the French New Wave art-house directors couldn't touch.