Die Sadisten des Satans

Satan's Sadist (1969)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This biker flick pretty much put Independent International on the map and today it still holds up quite well. The story is pretty simple as a biker gang led by Anchor (Russ Tamblyn) take people hostage inside a restaurant. He kills three but two (Gary Kent, Jackie Taylor) get away and head out in the desert to hide. Naturally the biker gang must go after them and soon both sides realize that Anchor really is beyond crazy. Once you become familiar with the work of Adamson you'll begin to realize that he rarely turned out an "good" movie but this one here is perhaps the best I've seen at least from a technical point of view. The performances, direction and cinematography are actually pretty good here, which might make some people think this isn't an Adamson picture but he had quite a bit to work with here and the end result works. Tamblyn is extremely fun as the psycho biker as his laid-back approach makes for a good, cold villain. Kent makes for a good hero and Taylor is at least easy on the eyes. The supporting players feature some familiar faces including John "Bud" Carlos as an Indian biker, Adamson regular Regina Carrol play a sympathetic biker chic and Kent Taylor appears briefly as the restaurant owner. We even get Richard Dix playing a one-eyed biker. The film pretty much goes all out in terms of exploitation as we get some fairly violent death scenes, several mild rape scenes and of course you can't be a biker flick without a good number of fist fights. One of the highlights of the film happens when the bikers first appear inside the restaurant and the folks inside try to fight back at them. This leads to a pretty well-directed sequence once Anchor has three people on the outside and he plans on raping the cop's wife. The film starts to wear thin towards the end but this is something that happened with a lot of exploitation movies. Those wanting nudity will find plenty of it here as the women were clearly hired more for the size of their breasts than anything else. The most outlandish thing about SATAN'S SADIST is the fact that it has a soundtrack featuring six films by a group called The Nightriders. This group isn't going to make you forget The Rolling Stones but the songs actually fit the film rather nicely.