One of the great oddities of film from the 1960s (or, indeed, ever) is a modest little horror film by the name of Incubus. Emerging in 1965, it was shot in Big Sur, and tells the mythic tale of a young soldier returning home to become the target of a female demon. His innate goodness, however, winds up seducing the demon instead, and the titular male demon vows revenge, specifically targeting the soldier’s blind sister. This is already a somewhat odd tale for a mid-sixties American horror film, and the fairy-tale setting is even more unusual. But the real oddities are yet to come. The lead is played by a William Shatner (in his last film before Star Trek). And all of the dialogue is in the artificial language Esperanto.

Why Esperanto? Why indeed. Phil Hardy cites director Leslie Stevens (the creator of The Outer Limits) as describing the language as “at once imaginary and universal, out of time and space.” There is no doubt that film’s effect is precisely that. The world the viewer moves through is completely alien, even if the settings themselves (forests, seasides) are very familiar. When I called the film a fairy tale, I did so advisedly. This is one of the most fairy tale-like horror films ever made (and horror partakes of that form of storytelling more than just about any other genre). This is thus a tale of no place and every place, of no time and every time. It takes very little time for the viewer to get past the strange spectacle of Shatner spouting Esperanto (doing so very naturally, I might add) and be swallowed up by this strange world.