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4K Ultra HD Film Review | Horror | Arrow Video

Incubus (1966) • Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD [Arrow Video] — Esperanto gimmick does more harm than good to an early William Shatner horror film

On a strange island, a pure man battles a female demon’s attempts to seduce him.

Barnaby Page
Frame Rated
Published in
10 min readJan 11, 2025

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OOne of only a tiny handful of films made completely in the constructed language of Esperanto, Leslie Stevens’s Incubus premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival two days before I was born in 1966. I was going to say that I hope I’ve stood the test of time better, but in truth the problem with Incubus isn’t that it’s dated (though it is)… the problem is the Esperanto.

Not that the language itself is at fault. Subtitling makes it no more alien than any foreign language, and in fact, if you’re at all familiar with any Romance tongue, it’s not difficult to recognise quite a few words; Esperanto is pretty guessable-at. “Director of photography”, for example, is “cefa fotografisto” (the resemblance of “cefa” to “chief” and cognate terms is clear) while…

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Barnaby Page
Barnaby Page

Written by Barnaby Page

Barnaby is a journalist based in Suffolk, UK. By day he covers science and public policy; by night, film and classical music. He has also been a cinema manager.

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