Satan's Black Wedding

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.

Nick Millard's previous film, Criminally Insane, about a fat lady killing anyone who gets between her and her food, was a no-budget classic but this one misses the mark. The atmosphere is creepy enough and there's fang-baring and bloodletting but the film ultimately fails to deliver the hellacious conclusion it hints at. Lead Greg Braddock is so wooden he could be replaced by a bookcase. The scenes where he talks are stultifyingly boring. Ray Myles on the other hand brings a malevolent energy to his role as an undead priest and the film noticeably improves whenever he's on screen. Fans of Andy Milligan might dig the general depravity here but I found it a pretty hard slog.

"Satan's Black Wedding" is in no way a good movie. But, It isn't all that bad of a no budget film. Sure, there are many grade B through Z horror films that are good and bad, but this one is actually entertaining in a strange sort of way. Don't Expect "The Omen" or "Rosemary's Baby" with this one, but check it out if you can find it.

The storyline isn't anything to original as it starts with a woman slitting her wrists and bleeding to death. Go ahead a few days and we are at her funeral with her brother and few others. Her brother, whom is a Hollywood actor, decides to check out the place in which she did herself in. When he gets there he discovers that the police scene hasn't been changed and that there is blood all over the place. The police detective doesn't believe this to be a suicide thus starting the brothers search for what actually happened, leading him into a dark world of vampires with silly looking teeth.

First I should say that the special effects are definitely grade Z. No gore but an extreme amount of blood. The vampire teeth are just hilarious as they look like something that you could buy from Wal-Mart. The movie did have some nice atmosphere with a halfway decent soundtrack minus a few moments where the pitch got way to high and it hurt my ears. The acting was also silly going from mediocre to just plain bad. Especially during a love scene that is about as boring as watching the grass grow. Last, but not least, check out the very end of the movie at the "The End" screen and listen to the music fade off horribly. It was just hilarious.

I got to recommend this to anyone that loves 70's low budget cinema. Definitely worth the time. 7/10

A woman writing a book called "High Satanic Rites," about vampirism in modern-day Monterey, California, commits suicide while under the power of an evil priest. The woman's brother, Mark, sticks his nose in the police investigation and more dead bodies show up, drained of blood. Mark's ex-girlfriend, his sister's research assistant, lends a hand and falls in love with him again. Mark confronts the priest in the basement of a church, where 180 years ago some nuns were praying and conjured the Devil. The Foul One used to enjoy watching Mark and his sister playing near the church as children. Now he wants to initiate both of them into the vampire's coven. Mark tries to escape from the priest and his vampire slaves, but crashes his car and dies.

The fade out of this daffy and very poor horror flick is memorable: Mark, bloodied and disfigured from the accident, stands before an unholy altar to wed to his dead, vampirized sister.

SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING originally played in theaters on a double-bill with the more well-known CRIMINALLY INSANE. Both films are a real endurance test for even the most hardened Z-movie enthusiast. Director Philip Miller is really Nick Phillips, who also directed CRIMINALLY INSANE.

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...