Satan's Playground

With SATAN'S PLAYGROUND, Director Dante Tomaselli takes the bleak nightmare world of his last effort, HORROR, and fuses it with a more linear story line. It's a supernatural monster movie with a crazy, demonic twist. Within its kitchen sink of terrors are the legendary Jersey Devil, a lunatic family, and human sacrifice.

1980's cult horror icons Ellen Sandweiss and Felissa Rose play sisters Paula and Donna, who, along with Paula's baby and Donna's husband and autistic son, find themselves up against the aforementioned dangers. Also along for the ride is Edwin Neal, who pretty much reprises his bat$h!t role from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Tomaselli makes use of the Pine Barrens, swooping his camera around a la EVIL DEAD. People seem to either hate this movie utterly, or see it as a masterpiece. In reality, it's somewhere in between these extremes, deserving none of the hyperbole of either side. Still, it is worth seeing...

I consider myself a fan of Mr. Dante as a writer and director. I enjoyed both desecration and Horror. Did they have good acting? Not really. Were they scary? Desecration had some creepy parts, but overall no. So why did I like these movies? because they were surreal. They were on crack and they knew it. This is what made the movies enjoyable to watch. Satan's playground is much more straight forward and this leaves all of Dante's bad dialogue and bad actors nowhere to hide. The movie isn't scary. There is only one really moment of gore. This movie is just plain bad. The married couple in the film look like father and daughter and I thought they were for the first half hour.

I wanted to give this movie a chance, even after the texas chainsaw massacre like start.

Four characters with baby in car driving through middle of nowhere, with nothing engaging to say.

When they break down & we get to the action it did start promisingly however after the initial victim departs it all goes swiftly downhill & i lost interest fast. The title is a misnomer, you only get to see devil worshippers in one scene & thats your lot, theyre not integral to the storyline at all. The continuity is poor & wardrobe lacking (i thought county cops in tennesee wore brown or green uniforms, surely black is a City cop outfit?) The one saving grace is a great performance by the Mrs Leeds character who holds your attention & the film together.

I could go on but why waste time? Late night film fare, to fall asleep to. Is the Jersey Devil supposed to be invisible??? I think they blew most of the budget on the door knocker !

It seemed like a stereotypical dysfunctional family, presumably Italian-American, on a trip through the woods in New Jersey. They break down and, like the back roads of Texas, they come upon things they should have left alone.

Felissa Rose seemed more like the daughter than the wife, but I'll play along. If Frank (Salvatore Paul Piro) can get a wife like that, there is hope for me.

Major screams from Felissa Rose, putting her at the head of the class as a Scream Queen.

Creepy, bloody, suspenseful fun makes for a good scary pic with some very weird characters.

Okay, I first heard of this film with the return of Ellen Sandweiss who was in Evil Dead and despite any other cinematic features she may have been apart of, E.D. was the last I had saw her. And no, it's not that I think Ellen's actings skills are superb, it's not because she was raped by a tree (although that was dope), but it's because I find her attractive-

Okay, so movie on, I do agree with the previous reviewer on how there was/is a certain buzz about this film and so I went to my local crap-busters to see if they had a copy in stock. Luckily, they did and so I rented it and went home to see what was all the hype about.

Basically, in a nutshell, the movie is about all the crazy things that happen in the Pine Barrens of S. New Jersey. You got a retarded psychopathic family, satanists, and the Jersey Devil or more appropriate-The Jersey translucent bat.

I like abstract, atmospheric, dark ambient stuff but a film like this fails in comparison with "The Wendigo."

The things that I liked about the movie was the part of Grandma Leeds (played by Irma St. Paule) sniffing cocaine (infact, her performance throughout was rather good), the stupid hiker guy who got his throat slashed by the Jersey translucent bat, and the guy who played Sean,the retarded son (he did a good job on acting retar; oops, "special" with the drool included), and of course the appearance of Felicia Rose (Mama-Mia).

What I didn't like about the movie was noticing that something wasn't all too there with them before they found the Leeds. Ellen's character was a bit slow and out there. The only normal guy in the movie was the pops (the big Jersey Italian guy) before he got cranially reamed by a mallet, the cop who just appeared out of nowhere at the Leed's house because he had a complaint about devilworshipping kids whipping people on their front lawn, when the cop gets slashed and killed in his patrol car (which was parked down the dirt road from where the station wagon was), Ellen lifts her head from the cover later and notices the cop car but not paying attention to when the guy was getting killed (wtf), and the slow, weird motions of the characters like when Felicia's running (yes, I know it was suppose to be abstract), and the retarded, psycho looking fat heffer of a girl with gray eyes smiling all crazy, and last but not least everybody at the hospital near the end acting all unattached to the survivor.

Now, first off if I'd seen a psycho looking girl with gray eyes smiling all crazy in the woods, I'd know something's up and if I went into some old torn down shack of a house where it looked crazy and humanly impossible of living in, that would be point two.

Question 1: And did you notice that nobody has cellphones at all? Question 2: What do you think happened to the baby?

By looking at a movie within the first 3 minutes, I know if it's good or not and I like things to be realistic especially for a (it could happen type of movie) and this failed miserably for my expectations.

Of course, there's people all in the woods of the great pine barrens Satanists, hikers, other girls with car trouble, the Jersey translucent devil bat, hence Satan's playground.

One thing that I think I understand in a sub level is grandma Leeds is a witch, the Jersey translucent devil bat is her familiar/demon, and the satanist perform rituals on her lawn because that's what we just do, lol. The hints to this is because in dialog with Sean, she said that she had 13 kids who all were bad. Whatever, I like Wendigo because for me it's more grounded and it brings the darkness more to realistic level.

But don't take my word for it, what I might hate would be genius to you and vice versa.