Satan's Slave (1976)

A Norman J. Warren movie that is considerably more coherent, if a bit less loopy than Terror, Satan's Slave (a.k.a. "Evil Heritage") tells the mildly horrifying story of an old English estate where there are Satanic shenanigans going on.

We begin with a Satanic ritual going on, complete with a nude girl on an altar, a dude in a goat's head mask, and the promise of reincarnating a dead witch. Then, we're suddenly taken to a country estate, where an American cutie is being wooed by an English-type fellow, who suddenly turns into the Second Earl of Rapesbury and tries to have his way with her before smashing her head in a door. Yipes!

And now we're in a flat with the lovely Catherine (Candace Glendenning) and her boyfriend lying in bed. For the count, we've now seen three nude women in less than ten minutes. Not that I'm counting, of course. But she's cute. And young Catherine is leaving with her mum and dad to go visit her Uncle and cousin who she's never met, right around the same time as her birthday, and she's having weird premonitions about it- none of this should be seen as foreshadowing!

We expect the trip to go poorly and indeed it does as dad gets a sudden pain in the head that causes him to drive the car into a tree. As Catherine runs for help, the car explodes and she basically sees her parents burn to death. The Uncle Alexander (played with real aplomb by Michael Gough, who was Alfred in the Tim Burton Batman films) and her cousin Stephen (Martin Potter), who we've already seen smash the noodle of a bird he was trying to rape, along with Stephen's long-suffering wife (Barbara Kellerman), take Catherine in and try to get her to relax. Of course, seeing your parents burn to death before your eyes can be troubling, but no harm, no foul after all.

Unfortunately, our little drama queen starts having nightmares about naked witches being whipped by priests and naked girls on altars being fucked with crucifixes (okay, sexy nightmares), and starts thinking that all of this might have something to do with the deceased witch Camilla, to whom she is related. Some of this might sound familiar from Vertigo and the Blood Splattered Bride.

At any rate, the plot thickens as Catherine and Stephen, the Lord Douchemere, start doing the old rumpy pumpy and she develops feelings for him. She wants him to leave for London with her, in spite of there being no obvious chemistry between them, or between him and human beings. Also, there's her boyfriend back home, but luckily he's walked off a roof and gone splat unbeknownst to Catherine. Nevertheless, this is all clearly leading to a Satanic ritual climax of some sort, and it's not clear that she will realize this before it's all too late.

Warren does a good job of holding this all together, whilst indulging in his taste for graphic bloodletting and female nudity. It's not a particularly fast-paced movie and the midsection drags considerably, but there are a few creepy scenes and a nice twist ending. Since it's available in a Crown International boxset containing twelve movies for about six dollars, it's well worth picking up.

Prime Evil (1988)

My stomach dropped a bit when I saw this one was directed by Roberta Findlay; an exploitation old hand who went from making porn with her husband to horror with her husband to losing her husband in a tragic helicopter accident and then back to making porn and horror on her own until her death, Findlay has maybe one decent film to my mind: Tenement, which isn't exactly that decent. Admittedly, though, I haven't seen her entire body of work, so maybe there's a Juliet of the Spirits in there somewhere.

This aint it. This one has to do with some monks in the 1400s who decided to play for the other team and started worshiping Satan with the pretty lame promise that, for each relative they sacrificed, he'd give them 13 years of immortality- maybe nobody explained to them that "immortality" is supposed to last more than 13 years- anyway, they're still around and serving the Church, which must be really behind in its records not to notice. The leader of the Satanic Priest pack is Father Seatan (hammed up like crazy by William Beckwith) the sort of Priest who seriously would arouse suspicion, even if he weren't 600 years old. In a surprising plot twist, however, he seduces women who are neither prepubescent or male- the Church might look at this as progress.

Luckily, a few Catholics are on to him and they send a nun to infiltrate the devil cult, which is really, really easy- she just has to burn her habit, smash a porcelain Jesus with a hammer, and voila! it's smooth Satanic sailing! Then the question is whether she'll get the cops to stop the sacrifice in time or get pulled out of the cult too early- nuns being inexperienced at pulling out. The cops are idiots, frankly, one of whom uses sophisticated insults like "fart breath" to show he's been on the streets too long. As we know from many a hip hop song, the cold, hard, dirty city can turn anyone into a poopy head.

There's also this girl Alexa, who is the descendant of the cult and being seduced by Father Seatan. Played by Christine Moore, she does a decent job, which isn't easy with dialogue like a scene in which she explains that she doesn't like sex because her father's buddies used to take pictures of her in fake-sex poses with a little boy. Ewwww! She's unfortunately got a friend who's horny all the time and who has the best line of the film: "Don't cha wanna get poked?!?"

There's also a hulking moron stalking around and kidnapping women, and Satan himself, who is naturally a rubber puppet that looks cool enough that one assumes it was the entire justification for making the movie. Is there a justification for watching the movie? Well, the direction is workmanlike, Beckwith is fantastic in a Shatner sort of way, and the whole movie is funnier than it's intended to be, so yes!

Terror (1978)

Yeah, I know- I suck at blogging regularly. This is because I am lazy and booze makes me lazier.

Okay, 1978's Suspiria homage Terror is good bloody fun in a totally daft and illogical sort of way. But, let's be honest, Suspiria is also good bloody fun that's totally daft and illogical.

The film begins with an effective credit sequence featuring creepy pictures of people in pain and somewhat prog rock organ music. Then, bam, we get a mob of angry villagers with torches hunting down a woman and preparing to burn her as a witch. Before they can get that done, though, she screams, "Master, help thy servant!" and the lot of them get lit up instead. They finally get her burned up, but she shows up in a noblewoman's house, vows to curse her bloodline, and lops off her head!

And then we discover it was all a movie made by some 70s hip young people in the old house where it really happened. They're all English, so they call each other "dear" and "love" constantly, but otherwise they're the usual drug-taking, sexually promiscuous, ready-made victims. However, two of them were actually related to the cursed bloodline and the story was true. And the curse is real!

Before too long, Ann, a cute bird from that cursed line who's been hypnotized for a party trick picks up the sword and tries to carve up a fellow- sorry about that, love! And then another bird wandering in the woods gets a bit of the old stabby stabby and is left pinned to a tree. I suck at British slang as well as blogging.

What follows is a mild parody of the world of 70s filmmaking with a good amount of stalking and slashing. The slashing part is surprisingly gruesome and lovingly detailed; director Norman J. Warren was somewhat known for his love of the red stuff. And he uses it well here. The film is rather light on sex, but there is a nice bit with a "punk rock" stripper that sets the film firmly in 1978. There's also a mystery afoot because we don't know if Ann's bonkers and killing people, there's someone else doing so, or it really is the witch's curse.

Actually, I'm not entirely sure what was going on with all the bits in the movie. The film goes from supernatural mumbo jumbo to typical slasher film and then, suddenly, back to supernatural mumbo jumbo with everything in a sound-stage coming alive and attacking a character. There's also a woman stalked by a levitating car- seriously. All of this is great, but who was doing the stabbing? Why is the witch who shows up the same woman as the fictional movie-within-a-movie? What the fuck was going on with that levitating car? And, seriously, if this is a bloodline curse, why do all those people not related to the family get killed?