Satan's Black Wedding

"Satan's Black Wedding" doesn't quite have that irresistible "what the hell am I watching?"-factor that Nick Millard's much more famous effort "Criminally Insane" had but hell, if Millard can't put a smile on my face anymore you can honestly pull the plug on me. Just check out his unique editing style, the guy can't splice in a shot realistically to save his life but that's why we love him. Who cares if two actors talking to "each other" don't even appear to be in the same ZIP code, it's all just part of the charm. Especially if one of those actors is the otherwise completely unknown Ray Myles, who gives a genuinely excellent performance as some sort of half-vampire, half-satanist (have your cake and eat it too). Lead Greg Braddock is somewhat less impressive, but his amazing underacting is a spectacle in its own right. He walks into a room covered with blood with a look on his face like he just found out the supermarket is all out of his favorite shampoo. My sister died a gruesome death, I am...mildly irritated? Nick Millard is a huge cinephile though, and occasionally this almost shows here. Some shots in this movie are actually quite stylish, there's some "Nosferatu" influence in there but it's tough to be classy if your vampires have plastic fangs. But still, I was sorta into this from time to time. The cinematography looks good, the music is repetitive but creepy nonetheless, this really is quite above Millard's standards. It's not quite as entertaining as some of his other work, but it's almost what you call accessible. If only it had an actual ending instead of just stopping at a random moment, that would have helped it even more.

Satan's Black Wedding (1975)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining film has a brother investigating his sister's suicide. He eventually tracks down the killers to a church, which is being used by vampires for Satanic rituals. This is a very cheaply made film running just over an hour and while there's nothing too original going on here it does remain interesting throughout. If you don't expect The Exorcist or Rosemary's Baby then you should get a few minor grins out of this film. There's some nice, if cheaply done, gore scenes to keep things moving. Outside of that we get some really hammy performances, which lead to a couple laughs.

I had never heard about the 1976 horror movie "Satan's Black Wedding" from writer and director Nick Millard, but given my fascination with horror cinema, of course I opted to sit down and watch the movie, as I happened to stumble upon the movie by random luck here in 2024. I virtually had no idea what I was in for here, but I didn't really harbor much of any grand expectations to the movie given its age and the fact that I had never heard about it.

The storyline was a rather scrambled mess, as it was lacking an overall red thread to lead the audience through the movie. It felt like director Nick Millard had shot many different scenes independent of one another and sat down to edit it into a cohesive movie. The end result wasn't particularly thrilling.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. Nor were I particularly impressed with what I witnessed, as most of the performances were so wooden and rigid that it looked like a first take for a read for an audition. Some of the performers were seriously lacking talents to deliver a convincing dialogue, and the movie suffered terribly from that.

The blood effects in "Satan's Black Wedding" are insanely poor and laughable, it is brightly colored orange paint and doesn't even remotely resemble blood. And then there were the God awful teeth that the vampire creatures had, they looked like the kind of toy dentures that I had as a child in the early 1980s; it was pretty bad.

The editing in the movie definitely also leaves much to be wished for. The editing was pretty brutal and abrupt, with many scenes just ending by a rough cut and then straight into the next scene. And the music in the movie was equally poorly edited and cut in scenes.

My rating of "Satan's Black Wedding" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars.

Director Nick Millard's SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING is an interesting little curio of its era. Right off the bat it must be stated that if you're looking for a slick, professional-looking production, then you'd better not bother with this one. Otherwise, it could cause severe cranial blistering.

For those not expecting much, there's a minor miracle at work here, in that, in spite of its heinous cheapness: cardboard sets, thrift store costumes, Walmart vampire teeth, "actors" gathered from some local park, etc., Millard somehow created a bleak horror movie with an unsettling atmosphere of dread and doom.

You'll watch agog, wondering how in the hell something so obviously shabby and inept could possibly give you the shudders!

Watch and be amazed...

SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING (1976) is an hour-long American indie vampire flick I found on Youtube streaming in a good quality print. It's a surprisingly brisk little effort that begins with a woman being messily dispatched by a female vampire. Her brother attends her funeral and investigates her death, only to discover that she's not really dead but instead determined to destroy her own family.

Not a huge lot of plot ingredients in this micro-budgeted production, but the story of a defrocked priest engaging in devil worship works quite well. The vampire scenes are liberal on the bloodshed if you're okay with the joke shop fangs, and it's short enough to never outstay its welcome.