Satan's Slave

This is actually quite a bright spot in the late 70's Brit Horror Film Industry breathing its last few gasps. It comes in a few different versions, some bloodier and sexier than others. It actually works in either the softer or hotter versions. The grue-- including a nude woman threatened with scissors, a head crushed in a door, a gory fall of a ledge, a woman slashed with a jagged piece of glass, and a nail driven into an eye-- is lively, but the central story about the traumatized heroine being cared for by her malevolent uncle and his murderous son is strong enough to stand on its own. There are also the expected scenes of black mass and nude female worshipers. The film plays nicely on our expectations and manages to surprise. With all the garish colors and hazy turn of events, we're never quite certain if everyone is off their rocker, the heroine especially possibly going off on some flight of fantasy triggered by the accident and exacerbated by the legend of the ancestress witch. Plus, characters you expect to play a pivotal role die suddenly, it's hard to tell who is trustworthy and who isn't, and Martin Potter as the cousin vacillates so perfectly between being a morose companion to the girl and a frenzied monster to everyone else that I found myself just as lulled in by him. The violent scenes are shocking and unpredictable, while the talkier sequences have a weirdly cold atmosphere to them. For me, this one gets unfairly written off far too often.

But thats fine since the ladies are all very pretty. The eyes of the main actress are worth watching the movie. The slow pace of the movie makes it very relaxing.

SATAN'S SLAVE

Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Techniscope)

Sound format: Mono

While visiting her uncle's country estate, a young girl (Candace Glendenning) becomes involved with satanists who believe she's the reincarnation of an ancient witch.

A key work from cult director Norman J. Warren (TERROR, INSEMINOID), SATAN'S SLAVE combines gratuitous nudity and horrific violence in a censor-baiting concoction designed to compete with the gore and cynicism of its contemporary American/European counterparts. Tellingly, SATAN'S SLAVE was written by David McGillivray, a film critic-turned-scriptwriter whose collaboration with another Brit maverick (Pete Walker) resulted in some of the most memorable exploitation movies of the 1970's, including HOUSE OF WHIPCORD and FRIGHTMARE (both 1974). McGillivray's scripts were always distinguished by their tongue-in-cheek attitude and gleeful subversion of accepted morés, and SATAN'S SLAVE is no exception. Sadly, despite its lip-smacking excesses, the movie is a disappointment.

In fact, much of the film's problems can be traced directly to McGillivray's screenplay, a skeletal mixture of witchcraft and paranoia, driven by dialogue rather than action, which coasts along on auto-pilot in between bouts of skin and sadism. Cast for her waif-like beauty and startling blue eyes, Glendenning (in what appears to have been her final appearance in a theatrical feature) fits the bill as a stereotypical heroine, but she emerges as little more than a colourless wimp, and her one-note performance is a liability. Second-billed Martin Potter gives an equally lacklustre performance as Glendenning's cousin, a psychopathic brute who subjects a pretty young girl (Gloria Walker) to a terrifying ordeal in the opening sequence (more of which later), before turning up as a resident in the home of Glendenning's enigmatic uncle, played by Michael Gough. SATAN'S SLAVE may not have been Gough's finest hour, but he rises to the occasion with predictable flair, delivering his fruity dialogue with Shakespearean relish and acting everyone else off the screen; his obvious talent and lack of pretension has earned him the devotion of cult movie fans worldwide, and with good reason.

Warren uses the widescreen format to visualise the gulf between the characters, and to exploit the landscape and décor of Gough's isolated residence. In fact, the film's threadbare production values are clearly bolstered by its primary location, a Gothic-style mansion located within the Surrey countryside, filmed in all its autumnal splendour. But the movie's rough-edged beauty is frequently tempered by scenes of horror and brutality, visited mostly on female characters who are often stripped naked before suffering the kind of cruel indignities which characterised exploitation cinema of the period. The downbeat ending is also typical of the era, though die-hard horror fans will guess the outcome long before the on-screen characters.

During post-production, Warren was asked to beef up the sleaze quotient for a number of European and Asian markets, so the director prepared a variant edition at odds with his original vision: The rough foreplay between Potter and Walker in the opening sequence (preceding Walker's murder) was extended by having the killer run a pair of scissors over his victim's naked body (the original version develops in a different way and features alternative dialogue, which means the 'new' material can't simply be edited back into the print), and a brief flashback was added to a later scene, in which Potter is seen stabbing an unidentified woman to death. The BBC dispatched a film crew to cover the production for a documentary entitled "All You Need is Blood: The Making of SATAN'S SLAVE", which they subsequently refused to show, though it has since been issued on video.

The strange atmosphere of this film seems to lead many to find it boring, but I disagree and in fact find it unsettling and, well, really absorbing. Some of the over the top T and A (I wonder if the rest of the cast was there at the same time as the nudie cuties, these scenes feel like awkward inserts) but at any rate the acting is very good overall. I like the sicko relationship between Francis and the brother. The fact that the mystery has been given away before the final double reverse is actually quite interesting, and puts you in the place of Candice. I wish they had done a final reversal at the end and had Gough get it, but still, I like this sick little film quite a bit.

Perhaps because of the success of ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and THE EXORCIST (1973) and, to a lesser extent, THE OMEN (1976), the 1970's were a time in which the genre of horror in film was saturated with movies about evil Satanic cults, demonic possession, and incarnations of the big cheese Satan himself. Dozens, if not hundreds, of very low-budget movies revolving around this theme were made in the western world during this era, some with more success than others. It is within this period that SATAN'S SLAVE (1976) was made as a pleasant little contribution from England. While the budget is not as microscopic as that of some of its peers, this flick did not have the sort of funding possessed by the more successful examples of the genre.

This movie is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst of its type. It has a reasonably interesting story, attractive characters, at least one sleazy psycho guy, and plenty of nakedness and blood. Since its about an evil Satanic cult, there's also a few cool ritual scenes with daggers and baphomets and robes, along with an attractive young blonde being offered up to the dark lord. What more can a viewer ask for, right?

One of the coolest parts of this movie is the opening sequence, if only because of the eerie off-key piano music and bizarre artwork--there was a certain look attributed to Satanism in the 1970's, and this movie definitely gives the audience that feel. It then transitions to an outdoor scene with a bunch of goat-headed cultists performing the sacrifice of a naked blonde woman upon the altar for the generic reasons that Satanic cults typically do such things in movies of this nature.

From there, we are introduced to Patrick Bateman's wealthy British counterpart, Stephen Yorke (Martin Potter), who romances a young woman. Things are going well for our anti-heroic psycho and it looks like he's about to score a bit of crumpet (if you know what I mean) when suddenly his companion changes her mind for some inexplicable reason. He isn't about to give it up, however, and suddenly clothes are torn and rape seems almost imminent. She does flee the immediate scene, only to have Stephen smash her skull in the doorway before she can exit the manor.

Finally, we meet our heroine, pretty Catherine Yorke (Candice Glendenning), who has spent the night with her long-term lover John (Michael Craze). The two discuss the trip she is about to make out into the country for a week with her parents, to visit a long unknown uncle. Oh yes, and we also find out that Catherine is psychic. No specific psychic powers, mind you--just the generic extra-sensory perception that operates as the plot deems necessary.

Catherine leaves London with her mother and father and they travel by car into the countryside. As they approach her uncle's estate, her father has a flash headache and steers the car directly into a tree. When Catherine is sent for help, the car explodes into a fireball, incinerating her parents and leaving her in the care of her uncle Alexander (Michael Gough).

From there, things go from bad to just plain weird. While Uncle Alexander remains the cool center around which everyone else revolves, his "secretary," a young woman named Francis, does everything she can to maintain Stephen's affection and attention despite the fact that he only has eyes for his cousin. Catherine, meanwhile, has repeated psychic flashes of witchcraft and other assorted Satanic activity around the area, only to end up falling in love with the cold-hearted Stephen and having incestuous relations with him.

Eventually the secrets of the evil cult are revealed, much to the surprise of Catherine but not so much to the surprise of the audience. There are a few twists, but given the age of this movie, expect numerous clichés.

This is a super-cheap movie and there's absolutely no reason you should be paying full price for it. I personally got mine with one of those Mill Creek boxed sets in the dump bin at a local department store. It's not too bad for what it is, all things considered.