Enter the Devil

This film begins with a man named "Ozzie Perkins" (Happy Shahan) driving through an isolated part of Brewster County, Texas when his tire is shot by an unidentified man with a high-powered rifle which causes the car to veer off the road. Not realizing what exactly happened Ozzie gets out of the car and believing it was a simple blowout decides to walk along the deserted road in search of a gas station. It's during this time that he is offered a ride by a man in a pickup truck. What Ozzie doesn't count on is the fact that this man belongs to a Satanic cult and that he is about to be sacrificed that very night. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a solid, no-frills horror film which managed to keep the mystery going up until the very end. On the flip side, however, it could have used a bit more suspence or horror but that's just my opinion. In any case, while definitely not a great horror film by any means it was good enough for the time spent and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

This is actually not as bad and absurd as it may seem. The story makes sense, and sects are a phenomenon that humanity has suffered from through all ages, for good and for worse, adding constantly a touch of mystery and terror to history, as life would be too commonplace without it. Here the mysterious sect is a band out in the wilderness of the Texas deserts close to Mexico, and there are quite a few Mexicans involved. Things get serious as a professional lady anthropologist is connected in the case, they try to save her by sending her away in time, but it is too late, and she is too curious.

These films and stories of satanism always end in the same way, Dennis Wheatley wrote a number of novels about it, and they never depart from the same pattern. Neither does this film. It is intriguing, fascinating and partly exciting, but afterwards you just brush it off your clothes.

A coven of delusonal religious fanatics conducts brutal human sacrifices in a spooky old silver mine along the Mexican border. Among those parties interested in solving the growing number of missing persons reports and "accidental" deaths in the area are a female anthropology professor working on a book about obscure religions, a tough Texas deputy (co-writer David Cass), a nosy coroner, and a sheriff who wants to quell the negative local rumors until he can get himself re-elected. The culprits are mostly migrant workers who have perversely blended several old religions together into something new and sinister. We are never told any specifics regarding exactly what this cult of killers really believe, or exactly why they do the things they do, but ENTER THE DEVIL is an unusually creepy film nonetheless. Clad in hooded robes, the cultists walk along the rocky terrain in single file at night, carrying flaming torches and chanting in Latin. Their eerily lit cave hideout is a memorable locale for their barbaric rituals. This forgotten low-budget movie has a homemade, semi-documentary feel and an uncomfortably gritty realism, especially with so much time spent on getting to know a lot of ordinary people leading fairly ordinary lives. It is to the director's credit that the film never becomes truly boring in spite of its slow pacing and the down-to-earth nature of most of the character interaction. The fact that the story appears to be taking place in the real world, populated by plain simple folks, somehow makes the horrific parts all the more chilling. In a sick scene that was cut from U. S. prints, a woman is bound with barbed wire and burned to death until we see her body actually fall apart. It all happens fairly quickly and of course it isn't as sadistic and dragged-out as it would be in a movie made today, but it's still pretty disturbing. Modern viewers are liable to be put off by the lack of action and the rather unemotional ending, but this probably scared the bejeebers out of a lot of young people at drive-in showings in the '70s. It's no classic, but it's not bad either. A/k/a DISCIPLES OF DEATH.

Here is a movie that deserves to be seen again, an ultra low budget independently produced regional horror effort made out in the dusty hills of New Mexico about a coven of migrant workers who worship Satan. Contemporary social commentary aside this is a surprisingly gritty and grim little film made all the more authentic, convincing and haunting by it's low rent, jury-rigged feel. With a cast made up of stock actors, stunt performers, non-professional local color types and a couple name brand character actors, ENTER THE DEVIL has the feel of a very personal effort by someone who had a specific vision in mind. By limiting what it tries to accomplish the film succeeds where many others of a similar vein feel silly. Check out THE DEVIL'S RAIN for an example of what I mean.

Half of the film concerns a youngish state trooper's efforts to track down a missing person. His investigation leads him to an area hunting lodge & silver mine operation where the local bigots gather to drink beer, shoot things, and pat the Latina serving wench on the fanny. Meanwhile a pretty state employed anthropologist stops by to continue her studies into the somewhat pagan customs of the local Mexican workforce. Bodies are found, ominous accidents + close-calls befall the interloping Caucasian types, and the serving wench earns the wrath of her own people by apparently just being present to be manhandled & groped at by the bigoted hunters. It isn't easy being pretty some days.

All of it is actually rather unremarkable up until a segment about halfway through the film when the inquisitive trooper follows reports of lights out in the desert & the sound of chanting voices by the area loon, who as usual is the only person who really has a grasp of what's at hand. The trooper (David Cass, a former Burt Lancaster stunt double who co-wrote the film & served as 2nd unit director) eventually stumbles upon the horrible secret of this migrant cult in a scene that stops the film cold -- A fetching young lady being dragged into the desert by the coven who lash her to a post with barbed wire and proceed to burn her alive in the most stomach wrenching witch burning scene since CONQUEROR WORM.

It's not that it's unduly graphic, but like CONQUEROR WORM's burning the implied suffering and sadism of the incident is out of proportion with anything the film shows viewers up until that point. It is gruesome, horrifying, grimly realistic and concludes with the sight of the trooper gagging and coughing his way out of a billowing cloud of smoke from the burning body, which in itself will leave viewers feeling queasy for hours. The film also eschews any kind of erotic angle to the incident: There is no Sadean fantasy at work here, only stinging barbed wire, hammered nails and burning, cracking flesh. Try to find an uncensored imported print with gibberish subtitles, the domestic North American prints were all trimmed to secure a PG rating for a good time at the drive in. Yee haw.

After that the film settles back into the routine as the pretty anthropologist starts to get that sinking feeling that the disappearances, deaths, mysterious lights and Gregorian chanting hooded ominous figures out in the evil cave of Satan may be related. Gee, do you think? We get further police procedural footage including medical examination lingo, local political intrigue and an annoyingly predictable twist ending that anybody familiar with this kind of stuff will be able to dial in before the 3rd reel is loaded. The film then proceeds to climax with a bizarre display of xenophobia as the state trooper brigade closes in with their M-16 automatic rifles blazing as they gun down the coven en-masse. Pretty twisted idea of fun: no wonder this one generated cult interest.

So here is a sleeper of a movie that has been left behind by the sands of time -- the only way to find it are on expensive & rarely found prior rental tapes or dubiously sourced public domain releases by underground companies. Nobody seems interested in trying to revive this one which is a shame, it's a startling little bit of regional horror and one of the least silly examples of the Satanic Coven fad that was so popular during the early - mid 1970s. Watch it as a double bill with the excellent RACE WITH THE DEVIL, which remains the watershed effort from the idiom. The two will serve to compliment each other even though the low budget and seemingly aimless pacing of the first 3rd of ENTER THE DEVIL may annoy those easily bored. But once you get to that burning scene this film is perhaps even more unsettling, and nobody ever said that art had to be pretty.

7/10

The best of this low-budget film is its scenery : the desert is an unusual place to celebrate some kind of (black) sabbaths which resemble a Christian procession of penitents that still takes place in Spain ; filmed at night ,holding their torches against a starless black sky ,it's rather impressive in an unpretentious small production ;so are the scenes with the sidewinders.

The female character ,a professor who studies ancient satanic rites on the Mexican border, is in it to provide the movie with a decorative victim;the sheriff is obsessed with the elections and his deputy has a crush on Mexican babes.The screenplay is basic ,to put it mildly.