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.

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...

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.

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 (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.