Incubus is a fairly well known property, unfortunately its mainly known as a joke or the answer to a question in movie trivia game. As one of the few who has watched the film I think that's unfortunate, its by no means a perfect film but it does do some things very well. I watched Incubus for the first time on Halloween during the COVID-19 pandemic, I stumbled upon a promotional video for a marathon of public domain horror on Twitch. I joined the stream just as Incubus was starting. I was pleasantly surprised, I had known its terrible reputation but still had fun watching it.
Its reputation isn't entirely wrong, its more that it's reputation has been exaggerated over time. If you're unfamiliar I've included an upload of the film above for you to enjoy, but I'll also summarise here. Incubus was the creation of Leslie Steven's the showrunner for the original The Outer Limits, the film was produced in the 1960s, it had a very rough production and reception. The film stars William Shatner before he became known as Captain Kirk, its a black and white atmospheric horror movie, set in the vilage of Nomen Tuum, a vaguely Medieval rural location with a church and a well. The plot is concerned with corruption and damnation and the Incubus of the title is both metaphorical and literal.
Oh, and they decided to use Esperanto as the language of the film and Stephen's resisted dubbing into other langauges. None of the cast or crew were familiar with the language so they aren't fluent in it. William Shatner famously despises this film and is the source of some of the most negative stories about it including an allegation that a group of Esperanto speakers were so incensed at the bad pronounciation of the language that they gave him death threats, including throwing bricks with threatening messages throug his window. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you believe that incident or not.
The odds were stacked against it, at one point after production but before a general release the reception to the film was so negative that the film stock was burnt and the film was considered lost until a print with hard subtitles was discovered in France in 1996. The version with English subtitles had to mask the French subtitles and write over them. In further bad news one of the cast members Milos Milos who played the Incubus took his own life and the life of his partner shortly the premiere. All of this created a mountain of issues that prevented the film being taken on its own merits.
One positive aspect of this nightmare of a production was that the film entered the public domain, which meant that once the French print was discovered and shared it found a small lease of live amongst collectors of obscurities and curious Esperantists and has slowly grown in popularity ever since. I'm not calling it a cult classic, its still far too obscure for that label and many of the people who do collect are still doing "ironicly" though the film had a positive reception on the Twitch stream and it motivated me to watch the film again at a more reasonable time frame.
So, having watched the film without the distraction of making jokes at its expense I think it deserves a chance. The Esperanto dialogue isn't good but it isn't incoherent, the main issues are pronounciation since they just used some reading materials and didn't get anyone from the UEA Universal Esperanto Association to check and feedback. If you'd like to see films where the Esperanto dialogue was supported by an Esperanto association I'd recommend the detective story La Angoroj (literally the Anxious ones but usually translated into Anguish or Anxiety) or some scenes from Antoni Ribas's The Burned City. I'm an Esperanto speaker but I wouldn't say I'm fluent and while I had to resort to the English subtitles for clarification on occasion there were times when I could follow the spoken dialogue.
I also do think the decision to shoot in Esperanto was to the film's advantage and its a shame they rushed and cut corners on that aspect. The use of the langauge gives the film a sense of ambiguity, the village could be anywhere in Europe, and the shooting of backgrounds and establishing shots further cement this out of place and out of time vibe. And it helps to cement the antagonistic forces in the film as difficult to understand and predict. If it was shot in English it would lose much of its emotional impact and the plot would have to do the heavy lifting of carrying the audiences interest. And I think it would struggle as while there are nuances within the plot since it concerns temptation and the struggle for the soul of the Marc (Shatner) the protagonist this means the steps of plot repeat as the temptations seek to wear down Marc's resolve.
The extra ambiguity helps to mask this and keep you alert, trying to figure out what the angle of this sequence will be and how it will be resolved. The music is also a positive point in the films favour, I don't remember full tracks but parts of the score have stuck in my mind and they work to unsettle you and work well towards building up tension for the climax of the struggle.
