Satan's Wife is far less about Satan's wife than it is about her daughter. But she's not Satan's daughter, and Satan's Wife's Daughter would be a terrible name for a movie. So Satan's Wife it is. (And for what it's worth: according to google translate, the text listed above means "A Shadow in the Shadows," which would be a good/bad title for a film too.)
Carlotta and Satan are not married in the traditional sense. The gist of the whole thing is that a group of four or five women made a marriage-ish pact with Satan long ago. Exactly why is anyones guess - the only thing I know for sure is that the ceremony involved a lot of dancing. But it hasn't seemed to help any of the ladies out - one woman has resorted to a life of prostitution, and Carlotta is in the process of a nasty divorce from her (non-Satan) husband. Plus, her daughter Daria is starting to show signs of being, well... evil. All of the women seem to regret their pact with the Dark Prince, and actually try to reverse it at one point. It's kind of interesting, because pretty much everyone in the film is a regretful Satanist - other than the possessed daughter, there's no one taking the pro-Satan side of the argument. Satan himself is relegated to a pretty small role - he's just this vaguely menacing but kind of normal looking dude who just shows up every occasionally and gets dramatic camerawork and special lighting. I'm not sure if he ever actually *does* anything.
It's Daria who is the big star of the show. She's doing the typical teenager things (being an asshole to her mom, talking back at school), but is also demonstrating some knowledge of the dark arts and being able to tell the future - if she says someone is going to die - they're going to die! Oh, and she also has a touch that can burn flesh when she wants to. Her mother knows it's more than teenage hormones and tries to get the old gang back together on her daughter's behalf. Will they act in time to save Daria? Tune in to find out!
I guess my biggest issue with the film is that it's pretty boring for a film about a Satanic teenager. You hear "late 70s Italian possession flick" and expect some craziness, but other than some awkward/inappropriate nudity which at least fulfills the WTF factor in an icky way (more on that later), Satan's Wife is a slow film with not a lot going on. There just isn't enough momentum or a compelling conflict to hook you. You pretty much know that Daria is possessed by Satan right off the bat, but it takes mom pretty much the entire film to get the gang together to figure out what to do.
Daria's evilness is vaguely creepy but not particularly noteworthy. She's got a good evil-eye but never really does anything overtly supernatural other than the scene where she burns a kid with the touch of her hand. Probably the most creepy part of the film (and this has *nothing* to do with tension, good filmmaking, or supernatural powers) is the fact that she has a couple of topless scenes. And is playing a teenager. And, as I figured out after the fact, is actually a teenager. You just assume that nudity = 18, but I guess that wasn't the case in Italy once upon a time. So... yeah.
Satan's Wife is kind of a bad looking film too - it's dark and unexciting and doesn't have any standout visuals or style. That is certainly not helped by the fact that the DVD I got from Netflix was clearly just a ripped VHS copy (complete with tracking lines and everything), but I feel like even a pristine copy of this film would still look pretty plain.
There just isn't a lot going on here. It just kind of plods along, paying lip services to the ideas of Evil & Horror but never doing a heck of a lot that is Evil or Horrifying. Ultimately, Satan's Wife was a pretty big letdown.
I would not recommend this film.
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