Commander's log, Stardate 24092013.2:
"I don't understand what I'm looking at..." Gort droned as he tilted his head to one side, trying to find a better angle."Me either..." replied Steve the Engineer, hanging bat-like from the ceiling. "It's like there's a giant spider hanging between her legs."
"No. It's hairier than that. It's like a small rodent..."
I turned around and walked back out of the Mothership's recreation deck.
Review
If you're looking for truly epic B-movie insanity, there is only one country you can always rely on. Italy has produced some of the most insane films ever committed to celluloid, running the gamete of every genre, but united only by the appearance of some terrifyingly overgrown 70s genital topiary. Never was this more the case than in mysterious auteur Luigi Batzella's (AKA Paolo Salvay) opus Nuda per Satana.
On a dark and stormy night, the worst doctor in the world drives to an inadvisable house call in the middle of nowhere. Swerving to avoid a ghostly figure in the road, his car grinds to a halt. As he climbs out to see what he nearly hit, he hears a second car make the same error and skid out of control. He finds the damaged vehicle with an unconscious girl hanging out of the driver's door. This is where his medical 'talents' come into play. He slaps the girl a few times, shouts at her and, when she doesn't wake, abandons her in the car while he heads for a nearby house.
"We have lesbian bathing, lesbian dream sequences and an implied sexual assault by a spider"
There he finds a cackling butler with a knife through his neck and a doppleganger of the girl in period dress professing her undying love for him while dragging him to bed. Meanwhile, the real girl wakes up absolutely determined to find the doctor she barely knows and heads to the house where she meets a dark, mysterious, powerful gentleman who may as well be carrying a pitchfork and twirling his beard. He proceeds to make her clothes vanish with a look in a way that would make Patrick Stewart proud. We're convinced Ricky Gervais has seen this movie.
From there we have random lesbian bathing scenes, extended lesbian dream sequences, an implied sexual assault by a spider and our heroine running around in a nighty that barely reaches her naval. The film flails wildly between gothic horror, Triangle-lite timey-whimey shenanigans, avant-garde arthouse cinema and softcore porn. It all culminates in what we must say is the worst ending to any film we have ever seen. I mean, we are pretty much experts on the travesties committed by deus ex machina at this point, but never before have we seen a film that resorts to such a pathetic final showdown.
That, in itself, would make this a film worth seeking out, but despite its faults, the movie has a tonne of atmosphere and a few good ideas that would be done much more effectively decades later without a notion Nude For Satan existed. A lost classic? Maybe not, but there's a lot here to enjoy and cringe over in equal measure.