SATAN'S CHILDREN

d. Joe Wiezycki (1975)

Rape revenge films are always mean and tawdry: no matter how satisfying the revenge element is, there always has to be a disturbing attack to set up the story. Here, there's a slight twist on standard exploitation mores: the victim is a teenage boy, a runaway from an intolerable home life who meets an older guy who he hopes will be a friend and mentor but instead turns out to be  the scumbag leader of a gang of scumbag abusers. The scumbags all take a turn with the unfortunate youngster then dump his ripped and torn body in the middle of nowhere, where he is discovered, semi-conscious, by a group of satanists. How lucky can one boy be?

The satanists are all young, hippy-ish and in the thrall of a super louche smoothie called Simon, who gives orders in a slow, quiet voice whilst fiddling with his Zapata moustache. He talks of The Master as if he were the area manager. It's a ridiculously tough group – disciplinary infractions are punished by execution by hanging or, if they're being generous, by burying you up to your neck in sand and covering your hair in syrup to attract the ants.

Strangely for an unconventional cult of sexual freedom and social anarchy they are dead set against homosexuality to the extent that poor Bobby, even as a rape victim, is treated with suspicion and labelled a 'loser' who was 'weak' enough to 'let' himself be abused.

The only way Bobby can prove himself is in the bloodiest terms possible. He escapes, pushes two of the pursuing Satanists into quicksand (actually a hole filled with plaster of paris and washing up liquid), goes home, hits his mean Dad over the head with a bottle and bundles his wicked stepsister into the boot of his car before finding and shooting his attackers and cutting off their heads and putting them in a bag which he presents to Simon as proof of his sincerity, proving himself as a ‘winner’: a bright eyed boy with a bright arsed future. His stepsister (who is more unpleasant than plain evil) is handed over to the group as a kind of cult-warming present, to be tortured and, eventually, crucified.

It’s a remarkable film, really, despite clear technical limitations: the sound often overlaps or gets suddenly cut off; special effects and pyrotechnics are on show; several key scenes lose dramatic intensity by simply being too dark. The cast is made up entirely of students, which occasionally shows, but actually helps create a terrifying vision of a post-Manson USA where disaffected youths are being corrupted, abused, degraded and turned to the dark side all across the country without anyone knowing about it.

ENTER THE DEVIL

d. Frank Q. Dobbs (1972)

Slightly sluggish but intermittently interesting movie set in the Texas desert close to the border with Mexico. A laid back deputy with a little blond moustache and a taste for the Senoritas investigates the growing number of tourists, rock collectors and spelunkers who have gone missing in the area, little suspecting that they are the victims of a bloodthirsty satanic group who dispatch their sacrifices in a number of unpleasant ways: by sword, by rattlesnake, by barbed wire, by fire, oh, and by crucifixion, always by crucifixion.

There's something terribly cinematic / dramatic about a cave at night filled with a hooded, robed coven, especially when they are carrying flaming torches and chanting ominously in Latin, which is just as well, as these scenes are shown more than once and go on for ages. 

A sudden and surprising death ups the ante for a bit, but it shifts into a lower gear until a fairly predictable revelation and a bloody massacre conclude events. The last word belongs to the County Sheriff, who says he is going to seal up the devil's cave once and for all: 'maybe dynamite will put an end to all this foolishness', he drawls. Foolishness? A game of Knock Down Ginger is foolishness, the deaths of twenty people in the name of Satan is a different thing entirely.