Explotation Cinema: Satan's Slave / Terror

Satan s Slave
A young girl moves in with her Uncle Alexander after her parents car mysteriously explodes. After being taken in by her cousins, she soon begins suffering strange visions. But what she doesn t know is that her planned role in the house is more sinister than she could have expected.

Terror
British director, James Garrick, throws a party in celebration of his latest horror movie. Three hundred years earlier, the diabolical witch, Mad Molly, placed a curse on his family after they burned her at the stake. The descendants and party-goers soon begin dying in brutally inventive fashion Product Description

Terror

Satan's Slave

Satan's Slave completely lacks the edgy, tense, paranoid atmosphere of foreboding doom that marked Warren's later work and the lighthearted nastiness, and the result is a tedious experience indeed, with a sub-standard Michael Gough performance, several sequences that make little sense and a central premise that just seems corny to our modern sensibilities. The opening credits should give you your first warning that something's astray, because no fewer than FIVE directors of photography are credited, which is probably why the overall look of the film is so muddled - for every sequence that assembles a degree of low-budget atmosphere, there are several that have the over-lit, barrel-scraping feel of a cheap public information film. In all, a mournful disappointment and a missed opportunity.

Terror

Terror delivers the wares. It's not for all tastes, but the effective atmosphere (Warren had obviously seen a few Dario Argento films, which helps) and the well-staged scenes of death and paranormal mayhem in the last half of the film are worth the price of admission alone. It's certainly beyond comparison above the 'typical' British horror films of the day and the wide screen photography, coupled with fittingly garish colors courtesy of (one assumes) outmoded film stock, looks superb. There's also a glorious cameo from Milton Reid, one of those "I know his face, but what's his name?" actors if ever there was one, and a decapitation set-piece that curiously plays like a low-budget homage to David Warner's grisly death in THE OMEN, whilst pointing the way forward to the lift-shaft carnage in that film's sequel. This is a solid-gold champion example of the kind of film that would never get made nowadays, anywhere, and will undoubtedly bring back fond memories of late night horror double features down at the local flick pit for Horror viewers of a certain age.
August 4, 2008

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