Available from Mondo Macabro | Review by J. Robert Nevets | Buy at amazon.com
DON'T DELIVER US FROM EVIL can be quickly described as a variation on the "bad seed" story. The movie combines Satanism with the true story of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, a couple of young girls who imagined being part of a "Fourth World" and killed Parker's mother in 1954. This is also the story that Peter Jackson depicted in HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994).
Overall, DON'T DELIVER won't disappoint rabid fans of wicked young girl movies, but it's much more art school, particularly with the slow pacing, than the typical exploitation film. While not very visceral in terms of gore or nudity either, the film was banned in France for its blasphemous content – particularly towards Catholicism – and is only now being released in the US thanks to Mondo Macabro. Beyond the blasphemy and some reportedly fake (but hard-to-watch) scenes of animal cruelty, DON'T DELIVER US FROM EVIL will seem tame to most audiences today; however, it is well-written and well-acted, way above the level set by most exploitation films.
The story revolves around the implied love story of two pubescent girls, Anne (Jeanne Goupil) and Lore (Catherine Wagener), who go to a Catholic boarding school, but pledge their lives to Satan. The girls steal various religious items for their own black mass, kill birds, flirt with and show their underwear to older, frustrated men (who react the way most older, frustrated men in movies react to flirty young girls in panties), and set houses on fire. All of their cruelty builds – although Anne and Lore do take plenty of time out to read from forbidden and erotic books like THE SONGS OF MALDOROR by Lautréamont and from the poetry of Baudelaire – until they commit the ultimate sin: murder. Believing that they'll soon be caught, Anne and Lore come up with a plan that makes for one spectacular ending!
First-time writer and director Joel Séria does an outstanding job with almost no budget and only one professional on board – the cinematographer Marcel Combes. Séria, with a background as an actor, was able to pull together a good cast. Séria hired experienced actors – except for the lead! He chose Goupil, an art student, from the first audition without even a screen test! His instincts were correct as she is phenomenal as the cunningly cruel Anne.
Mondo Macabro provides a great transfer of the film and has loaded the DVD with extras including interviews with Goupil and Séria and a featurette about the film and the Parker-Hulme murder.
