User Reviews

Malcolm Terris stars as Paul, who alongside his girlfriend Olivia (Lisbet Lundquist) are involved in a night-time car crash. For all Terris' many fine performances over the years he is perhaps best known, in some quarters at least, as 'Co Pilot' in the 1979 Doctor Who story 'The Horns of Nimon', whose death scene inadvertently lead to the involuntary tearing of the backside of his trousers! No such indignities here, but a whole host more creepy goings-on in Jose Larraz's effective but confounding British (ish) horror yarn.

Olivia is dissatisfied with her lot, being Paul's 'other woman', so when the two of them take refuge in a dank old mansion after the crash, rather than run away screaming from the place, she becomes strangely taken with it. Julian (Karl Lanchbury) and sister Rebecca (Sybila Grey) appear to run the house, and are also at the head of many grubby gatherings involving those shabby old bed-fellows, sex and drugs - in fact, it is the heavily administered narcotics that are responsible for Olivia's reluctance to leave. Lanchbury is a dead ringer for rising Hammer star at the time, Shane Bryant.

Amongst the suggestions of cult, debauchery and murder along the way, little is specified, and events become rather murky, both in comprehensibility and realisation. And yet, this isn't unusual for Director Larraz, who was also responsible for cult horrors 'Vampyres' and 'Symptoms (1974)', both of which had a similar style.

There are also some very unusual side-steps in this already curious production. Both Paul and Olivia take a backseat from the narrative (for various reasons), and we spend time with the perverse siblings and their orgies. And a mad, terrifying Auntie chained to a bed. When Olivia returns to the main storyline, it is to help bring the confusing proceedings to a very final end. Lying in a hospital bed, her doctor and nurse morph into very familiar figures.

Foggy and bizarre but definitely worth seeing.

The first time I saw DEVIATION it messed with my head. The second time I saw DEVIATION it made more sense and gave me some inspiration for a story idea of my own I've been toying with. The third time I saw DEVIATION I realized that one of the things working against the genuine enjoyment of this film is how it'd been handled, or rather not handled as the case may be. Probably due to soundtrack rights more than anything, DEVIATION has only seen one home video release that I am aware of, which is a grubby, washed out, somewhat tattered full frame English language transfer who's color is about all turned sepia.

And yet the film has some wonderful Larraz moments: brief periods of intense, life-altering (or ending, depending on what character) brutality that sort of leaves you twitching after the shovel has stopped being hacked about, dreamy orgy scenes where girls in blue sunglasses lie about giving various partners their turns, a lesbian seduction & abandonment, and a really nasty scene that may have influenced John Boorman's DELIVERANCE (1972) where a somewhat despicable pig-like loser is forced to lay a hippie chick at the end of a switchblade.

Like Larraz' VAMPYRES and BLACK CANDLES the film often changes gears abruptly after long periods where not much seems to happen, which may be the result of the crummy looking transfer going around: With widescreen photography and proper colors this film could easily have been a "Video Nasty" flavored rival to Nicholas Roeg's PERFORMANCE, which is what I think served as Larraz' primary inspiration. It's advertised as a sex & drugs & rock and roll hedonistic horror romp -- which indeed it sort of is -- but is more of a psychological thriller about an inbred, incestuous English family living outside of the norms & influence of the modern world. A somewhat mismatched young couple happens upon them after an very peculiar road accident and is drawn into their web of indulgence, madness and murder.

Jose Larraz was of course a Spaniard by birth but (as documented in Pete Tombs' "Immoral Tales") became enamored by the droll sleepiness of the British countryside, which he transforms into hedge-rowed, claustrophobic nightmare landscapes with his films. Being an early effort this one may seem a bit timid compared to later movies more plugged with his own brand of excess (EDGE OF THE AX, REST IN PIECES, THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED) and it's somewhat slow, deliberate pace can easily be mistaken as aimlessness. But what he is really doing is indulging himself in the mod trappings of British hipster society and weaving a little morality play around the inherent madness of British culture.

I switched on the Spoiler Warning button due to the ending so if you don't want it ruined stop reading; The ending is all too familiar to fans of Larraz' work, where what was seen becomes a question rather than the conclusion to a film. Even VAMPYRES concludes on a note of ambiguity (and it's beginning is it's ending, compounding the matter) but here his little gag surprise twist actually works for a change. Compare how this film holds up against his controversial & undeniably sensational BLACK CANDLES (1980) and you'll see what I mean -- and in fact the two films tell more or less the same story, as does his 1978 film THE COMING OF SIN; Young British couple finds themselves trapped in a web of sin by otherwise respectable deviants living outside of the norm of society, one is absorbed into the morass and the other used as a sort of focal point for the morality play, with an ending that is supposed to suggest that it all may have been a dream or delusional vision by a repressed hedonist at heart.

If I like this film better than BLACK CANDLES -- and I do -- it is only because this is an actual movie with actors and performances and camera angles and a payoff rather than just a carnival of flesh & brimstone. First-timers to Larraz Land should probably first go by way of VAMPYRES or SYMPTOMS, if you can find it, but like DEVIATION the latter has been shamefully ignored by a present-day media industry that may not be willing to take a chance on a small, grim, nihilistic little project like this with no real heroes or good guys and a head trip ending. Larraz deserves better, he didn't make that many films and they all deserve to be seen again. Good luck finding it.

7/10

For his early films, José Ramón Larraz moved to England and delivered the sort of psycho-sexually flavored genre efforts many British directors seemed incapable of conceiving (except for people like Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell at the start of their career, with 'Performance' being a fine example). A film like 'Vampyres' (1974), at the time, even earned Larraz a reputation of being a feminist filmmaker, which is a fairly odd side-effect when essentially creating an on-screen lesbian vampire bloodbath. His second feature, 'Deviation' dates back to 1971 and turned out a strange and unsettling little film, very much worthy mentioning as an early entry in thrilling '70s Euro-exploitation cinema. Larraz, directing under his pseudonym J. R. Larrath, manages to concoct a mildly surreal and fairly unnerving atmosphere without either reverting to more typical & meaningless dream-like imagery (like his fellow Euro-colleagues Jess Franco and Jean Rollin often tried their hand at; with what I've seen from him so far, I place Larraz on a higher pedestal as a filmmaker) or blood-soaked stagings (like exploitation movies in general were starting to dictate). 'Deviation' does contain a fair amount of weirdness, nudity and bloodshed, but in a somewhat more subtle manner. Not seldom so would Larraz's visual flair often lean more towards the Italian giallo films from the '70s than it would be in sync with the at the time prevailing British horror cinema. 'Deviation' can easily be placed between movies like Wes Craven's 'Last House On The Left' (1972) and Don Gronquist's 'Unhinged' (1982), coincidentally two American films, yet it still has that tangible European flavor to it (not in the least shaped by Stelvio Cipriani's splendid original soundtrack compositions).

The plot (spoilers): One dark night, Olivia and Paul are driving home when a deviation sign leads them onto a road into the woods. When they have an accident, they are invited by Julian and his sister Rebecca to spend the night in their mansion. Paul is convinced he hit someone on the road, while Olivia doesn't believe him. Julian is a taxidermist in his spare time and he, uhm, doesn't exactly stick to animals. Paul will soon learn he did run someone over, but won't live long enough to tell anybody about it. Meanwhile Olivia is kept drugged & dazed and because of her state willingly participates in psychedelic, nightly orgies organized by Rebecca and Julian. When things go from bad to worse and Olivia finds out they murdered and skinned her lover Paul, she manages to fight back and kill the two siblings.

José Ramón Larraz loves the London countryside, a mood that can best be described as oppressive and the near-constant threat of psychosexual violence.

Paul (Malcolm Terris) and his mistress Olivia (Sibyla Grey, also from Whirlpool) break down outside the home of taxidermy enthusiast Julian (Karl Lanchbury, keeping up his maniacal streak of Larraz villains after Whirlpool) and his sister Rebecca (Lisbet Lundquist, who was also...yes, you get it now).

If you break down in the middle of the night in the foggy woods of England, let me give you some advice. Don't go in the house.

Olivia quickly passes out and Paul decides to snoop around and becomes part of the orgy happening in the house before he's quickly dispatched after daring to get aroused around Rebecca after she forces him to have sex with one of her female followers at gunpoint.

Yes, there are some true issues in this house.

Then, despite being warned that everyone in that house will try to kill her, Olivia doesn't even worry about where her lover has gone. She smokes some weed and then gets hooked on heroin after the brother and sister keep trying to seduce her.

Rebecca scoring some heroin and then decimating an old pharmacist who becomes attracted to her is just one of the many strange things that happens, but Olivia says that being hooked on smack is better than the boredom of dating Paul. And then she sees one of his tattoos framed up on the wall, she learns that she better escape.

You want another reason to love this? Stelvio Cipriani rips off Black Sabbath in the main theme for the movie.

Larraz made some wild movies that haven't been seen enough. Let's fix that now.