Films That Witness Madness

review

SATAN'S SLAVE AND TERROR

Hammer casts a awful long shadow over British horror cinema. For many, the prestigious genre studio typifies British horror: Dracula and Van Helsing, Frankenstein and his Monster, brooding melodramas, and more lesbian vampires than you can shake a stake at. Given the attention lavished upon Hammer throughout the years, it's no surprise that a few worthy directors have slipped off the radar. The sad state of British horror on American DVD has done little to alleviate that wrongdoing. While a few directors like Pete Walker have been rescued from their relative obscurity - outside of the U.K., that is - in recent years, more often or not the very best directors and very best films have yet to see a decent release - if any release at all - on this side of the pond. Where are films like MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY, TEN RILLINGTON PLACE, THE DEVILS, and WHAT BECAME OF JACK AND JILL?? Viewers hesitant to dive into British genre cinema because of the stereotypical Hammer ambiance would eat those titles up in a heartbeat.

In the 1970s, British genre filmmakers were still playing catch-up with the Americans. Subject to much stricter censorship than the average American director, the few directors who were pushing the boundaries of acceptability in the U.K. found their works chopped up and watered down to the point of absurdity. The violence present in most of the early films of the decade was theatrical; the sex, usually lesbian in nature, filmed in soft lighting with plenty of gasps and over acted orgasms. None of this had the bite of the American independents. A few directors, like the aforementioned Pete Walker showed the talent and balls necessary to go head-to-head with the American market but, largely, British genre cinema was a much tamer venue than either the American or Italian markets. But, as the decade rolled on, things started getting a little rougher.

Norman Warren is one of those directors I just spoke of. While not as talented as Walker, Francis, or Fisher, Warren's sensibility was much more American than British, combining copious amounts of sex and gore with a very black sense of humor. A new two-feature DVD of Warren's work by BCI might help make a few fans.

The first feature, SATAN'S SLAVE is an entry in the surprisingly popular sub-genre of British horror, the Satanic cult flick. Similar enough in style to BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, DISCIPLE OF DEATH, and THE DEVIL'S MEN, SATAN'S SLAVE tells the story of a young woman who moves in with her uncle and cousin after her parents die in a car explosion. Stricken by strange visions and terrible premonitions, the girl slowly comes to the realization that her stay might not be a long one. While not as balls-to-the-wall bloody as Warren's other films, SATAN'S SLAVE does manage a few good jolts, such as a nail file to the eye and a protracted slashing with a piece of broken glass.

Some have pegged the movie as too slow-moving to hold the audience's interest and, indeed, the film features quite a bit of static scenes and long passages of dialog, generally not a good thing for a film that only features four main characters in one single location. However, these characters are played by Michael Gough, Martin Potter, Candace Glendenning, and Barbara Kellerman - a great cast of character actors - and that makes up for any pacing deficiencies the film has. This is a very well-acted piece that might not be chill-inducing or outright nasty, but manages to tell a well-worn story very, very well.

Unfortunately for fans, the version contained on the BCI release is not what has become known as the "export" version. A standard practice for the British - not to mention Italian, German, Spanish, etc - exploitation filmmakers was to create a harder version of the film for other European and overseas markets and a longer version of SATAN'S SLAVE exists. Featuring three minutes of extra footage, the "export" version of SATAN'S SLAVE contains a different version of the opening bedroom assault and extra violence in two flashbacks (one being half a minute of whipping, the other being a few inserts of a stabbing). While it would have been nice to see this version included on the BCI release, it was not Warren's preferred cut of the film. His preferred cut is what we got and it's good enough for me.

The second film on the release is TERROR, a strange mix of giallo, Argento's SUSPIRIA, and Bava's BLACK SUNDAY. Light on story but high on grue, TERROR is one hell of a fun flick. Extremely hard to take serious with its levitating car gag, copious amounts of stuff flying through the air, and over-reliance on jump scares, it nonetheless satisfies every slasher film expectation with style and poise. And, as with SATAN'S SLAVE, this puppy is incredibly well-acted by yet another great group of character actors including John Nolan, Carolyn Courage, James Aubrey, Sarah Keller, and, in the stand-out performance of the piece, Tricia Walsh.

TERROR concerns the last two members of the Garricks, a family cursed 300 years ago by a witch as she was burned at the stake. Legend has it that the witch will claim the lives of family members until the bloodline has been exhausted. James, a filmmaker, is throwing a party at the family estate to celebrate the completion of a film he made about the family curse. His cousin, Ann, during a party game, is hypnotized. In a trance, she tries attack her cousin with a sword - the same sword used to decapitate one of their ancestors. Waking up from her trance, Ann runs off and, later that night, a party guest is chased deep into the words, where she is stabbed to death by a black-gloved assailant. Later on, Ann returns home where her roommate sees her washing blood off her hands. Is Ann the murderer or is something more sinister at work here?

From this starting point, the film goes absolute bat-shit, jumping back and forth between comedy, giallo, and ghost story with reckless abandon. There are two great comedic interludes featuring Walsh and Peter Attard as they try to finish filming a scene in a soft core comedy called "Bathtime for Brenda" sandwiched between the gore - as well as a scene of a stripper playing dirty with a whip placed in apparently just to satisfy the raincoat crowd. A few of the supernatural attack scenes are laughably awful but they are more than made up for by the absolutely graphic knife attacks, including one on a staircase that makes the similar scene in ALICE SWEET ALICE look downright rated G.

Warren goes overboard with the smoke machine on occasion - all the better to hide the miles of fishing line and cable that yank all that shit off the walls - but manages to evoke many Bava-esque moments, especially during the prologue which sets up the story. He also dips into Argento's well-worn arsenal of tricks with a few great stalk-and-slash set pieces and the wild, painful, and gritty murder sequences - one of which will look awfully familiar to INFERNO fans. There's also an homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE thrown in for good measure. All of this might seem a bit too much genre-hopping and, indeed, had Warren kept the film confined to a single genre, it would have been much, much stronger but TERROR is a fun ride that few genre fans will regret taking.

It's nice to see Warren getting some love. He's been relegated to bottom-tier status for too long and it's rather unfair. He might not have been the most technically savvy director, but he sure as hell knew how to entertain.

Both films are highly recommended.

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