Oh, where to start with the 1963 Italian film?

A criminal named Carlo lands in Italy and soon finds himself being pursued a group of gangsters.  An extended shoot-out leads to Carlo being serious wounded.  Carlo stumbles into a church, where he is met by a monk who used to be an friend of his.  Carlo explains that he has been blackmailing a Beirut crime lord and now the crime lord’s men are after him.  Unfortunately, Carlo gave all the evidence to an exotic dancer and now he needs the evidence back but, obviously, he can’t show his face in the streets.  The monk goes to a nightclub and, after watching several different cabaret acts that have nothing to do with the rest of the film, he finally gets a chance to talk to the dancer.  The dancer is also an old friend of his but hasn’t seen him since he became a monk and she demands to know what led to this development in his life.  The monk tells her the story of his past, in return for her giving him the evidence.

In the distant past, the monk was a part of a motorcycle gang led by wannabe gangster Gian (Mario Polletin) and a failed poet, Gugo (Giorgio Ardisson).  One day, Gian, Gugo, the future monk, and their respective girlfriends decided to break into an apparently deserted castle, where they decided to have a wild party.  Of course, to them, a wild party meant playing the bongos and drinking wine.  However, it turned out that the castle wasn’t totally deserted.  There was an old man (Christopher Lee) living in the castle and the old man explained that the love of his life had died years before and that her body was somewhere in the castle.  If Gugo and the gang found her body and brought her to the old man so that he could give her a decent burial before his own death, the old man would give them the castle.  The greedy and drunken gang agreed but they soon discovered that the castle was full of secrets and the old man was not quite who he claimed….

Challenge The Devil is a thoroughly disjointed film, one with a plot that is almost impossible to follow.  Some of that is because of the film’s troubled production history.  Originally, the film was titled Katarsis and it was simply about the gang coming across the castle and meeting Christopher Lee.  However, after the film was shot, the production company went out of business and the film’s new owner decided to re-edit the film and tack on the scenes involving Carlo, the dancer, and the monk.  None of the new scenes fit with the style of the old scenes and, indeed, all of the nonsense with Carlo and the dancer means that the film’s main story doesn’t even get started until after about 20 minutes of filler.  Of course, it should be noted that even the original version of the film doesn’t look like it was that good.  This was director Giuseppe Vegezzi’s only feature film and he shows very little natural ability when it comes to framing shots or creating atmosphere.

But what about Christopher Lee, you may be asking.  He’s fine.  I mean, Christopher Lee is imposing and his physical presence is so strong that he even makes an impression in a bad film.  But Lee only gets a few minutes of screen time.  For his part, Lee said that this was one of the film that he did for the money and he never actually saw the finished product.  I don’t blame him.  This one is for Lee completists only.