Satanist, The (1968)

Directed by:

Zoltan G. Spencer

“Perhaps I am mad. Maybe you can help decide whether my story really happened or is the product of an incurably sick mind.”

Challenge accepted!

Heeding his doctor's orders for "absolute rest" (well, sort of) excessively-hairy writer Joe leaves the big city to stay in a rented home in a small town. You see, while he was working on his latest novel he suffered from a nervous breakdown. Now he's to take a long break from writing whilst avoiding a "strenuous social life." Joe and his wife Mary (Mary Bauer) decide to use this opportunity for a second honeymoon. As soon as they walk in the door, Joe whips out his typewriter (cheater) while Mary whips off her clothes. Seeing how he's obsessed with his career, Mary has to put the cover back on the typewriter, take away his papers and basically drag his ass into the bedroom to get a little lovin'. What a honeymoon!

While out driving through the hills a few days later, the couple accidentally hit a sophisticated-looking woman riding a bicycle. Miraculously, she hops back up, dusts herself off, smiles, introduces herself as Shandra and immediately invites them to her home for drinks and conversation. Feeling it would be somewhat impolite to turn down an offer from the woman they just mowed over, they oblige.

The couple are first struck by the strange decorations and trinkets at Shandra's home, which start making more sense when she confides in them that she is a "student of the occult." Joe sees flashes of a topless woman in the mirror that he writes off as hallucinations from lack of sleep. Before they go, Shandra gives Joe a book on the occult she thinks he may find interesting and invites them to a party on the Sabbath where they'll be guests of honor. I don't know about you, but if a bizarre-acting and seemingly-immortal Satanist invited me to their party as the guest of honor, I know I'd definitely show up!

While Mary's asleep, Joe sneaks back to Shandra's home and peaks through the window to watch a ceremony that involves a topless "slave girl" (Pat Barrington aka Pat Barringer aka Camille Grant) getting rubbed down with cream and then Shandra transforming into a man and making love to her. What time's that party again? When Joe returns home and goes to bed, he experiences "a most curious and erotic dream" about a blonde succubus sneaking into his bedroom and "draining his life" while his wife is fast asleep next to them. After having this dream for a succession of nights, Joe finds himself feeling lethargic and becoming more obsessed with the occult book. Concerned about the influence their brief encounter with Shandra has had on her husband, Mary decides to pay her a visit and stumbles upon a disciple performing a black magic ceremony in the back yard dressed in nothing but a cape and thong. Joe's missing glasses are being used in the ceremony so she snatches them and runs off.

If you're expecting Joe and Mary to immediately flee back to the big city in horror, think again. Instead, they decide to attend Shandra's black mass, where they join 11 others to make up 13, sip on wine and watch Barrington dance topless for nearly ten minutes. To no one's surprise but their own, their drinks have been drugged. Joe is chained up to the wall while Mary is "stripped and shown naked and unashamed" before the coven. Male cultists then trade off a sheep headdress as they gang bang her on an altar, making her "the bride of the devil." The event is topped off by a "bacchanal of the flesh" aka an orgy and then there's another twist at the very end that's ripped off from a very famous silent horror classic.

As you can probably surmise from my description, this is all clearly very stupid. And there's not enough plot here to sustain 20 minutes, let alone 62, so this has a tendency to drag. And it was made during a transitional period in adult films; while this is filled with T&A and has a few awkward soft-core scenes, full frontal nudity and more graphic sex would become the standard just a few years later so this is comparatively tame. And it was shot without sound, nobody bothered to dub the actors in later so we get lots of lips moving and nothing coming out and horribly-written narration (delivered by "Joe") is added over top. And the sets are cheap. And the music sucks. The list of obvious issues is huge. However, judging this for what it is, when it was made and why it was made (to showcase voluptuous women), I suppose it succeeds. At least it's competently shot and there are a few imaginative bits here and there.

Director Zoltan G. Spencer (real name: Spencer Crilly) was an award-winning industrial and travelogue filmmaker before ending his long career with a string of low budget sexploitation flicks in the late 60s and early 70s. He also made TERROR AT ORGY CASTLE (1970) and The Hand of Pleasure (1971), which I've been told I need to see. There are no actor credits but bizarrely there's a "characters" list. The lone recognizable face is actress / model / dancer Barrington, whose interesting life is profiled on a Rialto Report podcast that I highly recommend. If you have an hour to spare, it's better spent listening to that than viewing this.

This was produced by Spencer's own Satyr IX Productions, was distributed theatrically by Olympus International Films and then disappeared for decades. It was thought lost until a 35mm print was discovered and screened at Exhumed Films' Forgotten Film Festival in 2014. It was then released on DVD by Garagehouse Pictures in 2016.

★★

Films by country: Sweden

SWEDISH HORROR [1950-1990]

When one thinks of Swedish cinema, Ingmar Bergman is a name that probably immediately comes to mind. As far as horror is concerned, the wonderful Let the Right One In (2008) is probably going to be the first title to roll off most tongues... perhaps the only title to roll off most tongues. That's because most of Sweden's genre films were produced after 2000. An IMDb search for Swedish horror produced from 1890 to 1990 brings up only 28 titles over a hundred year span, which is the most of all the Nordic countries but still just a minor contribution in the grand scheme of things. Comparatively, a horror title search from 1991 to 2020 turns up over 500 films! I guess we have digital video to thank for all of that. Sweden's standout contributions made before 1990 almost exclusively came from the silent era, including Prästänkan / "The Parson's Widow" (1920), an early work from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, who'd later make the French / German Vampyr (1933), and Victor Sjöström's haunting Körkarlen / "The Phantom Carriage" (1928) ▼. Technically one could also throw Häxan (1922) into the mix due to it being a Swedish co-production made with Swedish backing, though it was directed by the Danish Benjamin Christensen, had a Danish cast and crew and was filmed entirely in Denmark.

Almost single-handedly carrying the genre torch for the country for several decades was director Arne Mattsson, who started out his career with comedies and ended up having an international success with One Summer of Happiness (1951), which was controversial upon release due to several nude scenes but received critical attention at the Berlin International Film Festival and Cannes. However, most of Mattsson's subsequent genre films were more mystery / crime that occasionally dipped their toes in the horror genre as opposed to all-out horror. They were quite similar in that regard to the Edgar Wallace 'krimi' adaptations made in Germany at around the same time. Mattsson's first foray into this genre was the five film Hillman series starring Karl-Arne Holmsten and Annalisa Ericson as a married pair of detectives. Perhaps especially noteworthy here is Mannequin in Red (1958), which shares some striking similarities to Bava's influential Blood and Black Lace... only it was made six years earlier. Mattsson also did a 1958 remake of Phantom Carriage, the serial killer film Mask of Murder (1985) starring Rod Taylor and Christopher Lee and a few other titles. He's by far the most prolific Swedish genre director from this time.

Of course Bergman himself couldn't resist infusing many of his grim, heavily symbolic psychological dramas with genre elements... but to the extent where I feel entirely comfortable including most of them here? I go back and forth on this. Should I include The Virgin Spring (1960) due to its obvious impact on the genre, particularly Wes Craven's infamous shocker The Last House on the Left (1972) and all that followed? And could a case also be made that a number of his other titles, like 1958's The Magician and 1976's Face to Face, are at least partially horror?

An interesting BFI article theorizes that Bergman was, in fact, a pioneer of the later folk horror subgenre and obviously just as good a case could be made for him also being a pioneer of psychological horror. Many articles have recently been popping up about his films, their impact of the genre and their continual usage of nightmare imagery and other obvious horror tropes; even one going so far as to dub him "the greatest horror filmmaker in cinema." I'm still considering all of this, but I'll be leaving most of his movies off of here for the time being. Once I revisit them I'll make up my mind on a film-to-film basis. One Bergman movie that's a definite inclusion is Hour of the Wolf (1968), which one critic (I think it was Leonard Maltin) noted was "the closest Bergman ever came to making a horror film" and Rotten Tomatoes dubs "Ingmar Bergman's only horror film." Wolf wasn't well-received upon release, but is much more respected nowadays.

While I've read on more than one occasion that horror films weren't very popular in Sweden during this time, the country certainly wasn't entirely all about atmospheric, classy silent epics and Bergman's heavy, deadly seriously, critically acclaimed art house dramas. Rest assured, they've made their fair share of trash as well! One of their first notable B movies was Virgil W. Vogel's "20 foot tall" alien yeti film Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959), which is a fun enough monster movie granted you avoid the re-cut "Americanized" version from Jerry Warren called Invasion of the Animal People.

Though most of the 60s was dominated by more of the same from both Mattsson and Bergman, a storm was brewing over the horizon with director Vilgot Sjöman. His then hugely controversial 491 (1964), which involved youth criminals being forced to partake in social experiment "therapy," featured more graphic sexual content than what was generally allowed at the time, including depiction of male-male rape and even a scene where a woman gets raped by a dog (!!) Of course this isn't as graphically depicted as what would be filmed later on, but it was plenty to get the film frequently banned and censored back in 1964. Sjöman took that notoriety and ran with it; seemingly intentionally courting controversy along the way. One of his next films was the incest-themed My Sister My Love (1966). Then, in 1967, came I Am Curious (Yellow); which was the real game changer. 

Yellow featured full frontal nudity (both male and female) and simulated sex, which immediately got it banned from exhibition numerous places and sometimes prints were even seized by authorities. The film's notoriety in the U.S. turned it into not only one of the highest-grossing films of 1969 but also the all-time highest-grossing foreign-language film up to that time. Though it seems an odd title to single out when discussing horror films, it's not when you see the wave of Euro sexploitation films that followed. Just within the genre, there was Sensuous Sorceress (1970), the filmed-in-London Deviation (1971), The Devil's Playthings (1973) and Dirty Fingers (1973). Bo Arne Vibenius made the most popular one, though, with his revenge film Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) ▲, which had loads of nudity, rape, grisly violence (including an eye gouging that reputedly used a real corpse) and sometimes even hardcore sex inserts added. It became an even bigger cult hit once Quentin Tarantino started singing its praises. However, Laslo Benedek's The Night Visitor (1971) starring Bergman regular Max von Sydow is likely the best genre film the country had on offer in the 70s. 

The 80s saw a few more highlights, most especially Richard Hobert's TV movie Twelve Months of the Summer (1988) and the 20-minute animated short Exit (1990). I also quite enjoyed Peter Borg's ghost tale Sounds of Silence (1989) though many others seem less impressed with it than I was. Rather randomly, Sweden also decided to get involved in the short-lived 80s "hair band horror" subgenre with the hilariously awful The Bleeder (1983), a SOV cheapie centered around an awful all-female metal band called "Rock Cats," and Blood Tracks (1985), centered around the male glam band "Easy Action." Another title that was a frequent presence in U.S. video stores was Jack Ersgard's haunted house film The Visitors (1988).

Of the many titles released here in recent years, Ari Aster's Midsommar (2018); a U.S. / Swedish co-production set in Sweden but mostly filmed in Hungary, is by far the most popular. Sweden also had their hand in co-producing Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009) and The House Jack Built (2018), James Watkins' The Woman in Black remake (2012), Rowan Joffe's Before I Go to Sleep (2014) and Jim Jarmusch's disappointing zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die (2019).

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1950s

- Sir Arne's Treasure (Herr Arnes penningar) (1954; Gustaf Molander)

- Lady in Black, The (Damen i svart) (1958; Arne Mattsson)
- Mannequin in Red (Mannekäng i rött) (1958; Arne Mattsson)
- Moon Over Hellesta (Moln över Hellesta) (1958; Rolf Husberg)
- Phantom Carriage, The (Körkarlen) (1958; Arne Mattsson)

- Woman in a Fur Coat (Kvinna i leopard) (1958; Arne Mattsson)

- Rider in Blue (Ryttare i blått) (1959; Arne Mattsson)
- Terror in the Midnight Sun (Rymdinvasion i Lappland) (1959; Virgil W. Vogel) [co-USA] ▲

1960s

- Devil's Messenger, The (1962; Curt Siodmak, Herbert L. Strock) [co-USA]
- Doll, The (Vaxdocken) (1962; Arne Mattsson)
- Lady in White (Vita frun) (1962; Arne Mattsson)

- Yellow Car, The (Den gula bilen) (1963; Arne Mattsson)

- Morianerna (I, the Body; Morianna) (1965; Arne Mattsson)

- Nightmare (Nattmara) (1965; Arne Mattsson)

- Coffin, the Sadist, The (Träfracken) (1966; Lars-Magnus Lindgren)

- Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1968; Ingmar Bergman) ▼

- Galgmannen (Gallows) (1969; Olof Thunberg) [TV]

1970s

- Sensuous Sorceress (Skräcken har 1000 ögon) (1970; Torgny Wickman)

- Deviation (1971; José Ramón Larraz) [co-Spain]
- Night Visitor, The (Papegojan) (1971; Laslo Benedek) [co-USA]

- Devil's Plaything, The (Der Fluch der schwarzen Schwestern; Vampire Ecstasy) (1973; Joseph W. Sarno) [co-Switzerland, West Germany]
- Dirty Fingers (Smutsiga fingrar) (1973; Arne Mattsson)
- Thriller: A Cruel Picture (Thriller - en grym film) (1973; Bo-Arne Vibenius)

- Breaking Point (1975; Bo-Arne Vibenius) [X]
- In Search of Dracula (Vem var Dracula?) (1975; Calvin Floyd) [co-France / USA]

- Metamorphosis (Förvandlingen) (1976; Ivo Dvorák)

- Terror of Frankenstein (Victor Frankenstein) (1977; Calvin Floyd) [co-Ireland]

1980s

- Sleep of Death, The (Ondskans värdshus) (1980; Calvin Floyd) [co-Ireland]

- Bleeder, The (Blödaren) (1983; Hans Hatwig)

- Blood Tracks (Heavy Metal) (1985; Mats Helge Olsson) [co-UK]

- Ghost Hunters (Spökligan) (1987; Mats Helge Olsson)
- Resurrection of Michael Myers, The (1987; Mike Beck, Richard Holm, Henrik Wadling) [short]
- Scorched Heat (1987; Peter Borg)

- Lethal Film (Livsfarlig film) (1988; Suzanne Osten)
- Mask of Murder (The Face; The Investigator) (1988; Arne Mattsson) [co-Canada]
- Moon God (Månguden) (1988; Jonas Cornell) [TV]
- Twelve Months of the Summer (Sommarens tolv månader) (1988; Richard Hobert) [TV] ▼
- Visitors, The (Besökarna) (1988; Jack Ersgard)

- Forgotten Wells, The (Grottmorden) (1989; Anders Nilsson, Mats Helge Olsson)
- Resurrection of Michael Myers Part 2, The (1989; Richard Holm, Henrik Wadling) [short]

- Sounds of Silence (1989; Peter Borg) [co-USA]

- Exit (1990; Stig Bergqvist, Martti Ekstrand, Jonas Odell, Lars Ohlson) [animated short]

TOTAL FILMS:
41

NOTES:

- Some of Mattsson's listed films may be removed once I see them. Thus far I've only seen Mannequin in Red from his early crime cycle, which qualifies. I'm not entirely sure if the rest do.

- The Devil's Messenger (1962) is an anthology utilizing episodes of the short-lived 1959 Swedish TV series 13 Demon Street.

- I've heard I need to take a look at Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977) for possible inclusion.

- A mysterious title, Las cuatro noches de la luna llena / "Four Nights of the Full Moon" (1963), has turned up on various movie sites. Supposedly it ran out of money during production and had to be turned into a short that was then screened theatrically. And now it's missing. According to what info has been posted about this online, the director (Sobey Martin) is German, the leading lady (Gene Tierney) is American, most of the supporting cast is Spanish and the producers are Swedish. Bizarre. I'm leaving this off of the main list for the time being.

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Any additions or comments? Post 'em below.

Fiend (1980)

... aka: Angst der Verlorenen (Fear of the Lost)

... aka: Deadly Neighbor

... aka: Demonio (Demon)

Directed by:

Don Dohler

A red specter floats through a cemetery and sinks into the ground; possessing one of the corpses. Seeing how shuffling around in a rotting body is no way to go, the "fiend" (Don Leifert) also has the ability to "renew" itself by strangling the lifeforce out of victims, as one poor woman hanging out in the cemetery late at night soon finds out. Now with an acceptable human-like appearance, the "fiend" desires to integrate itself back into society and live a normal life. The only problem is that it must continue to kill to keep up appearances.

It chooses to move into a home in the family-friendly Baltimore suburb of Kingsville. Well, it actually just removes the realty sign from the front yard of a vacant home and then takes possession of it. It gets a pet cat named Dorian (cleverly named after Dorian Gray and played by "Pepper," though it would have been more amusing if they doubled down on the reference by using a gray cat instead of a black one!), opens a music academy (!), starts giving violin lessons out of its home and and takes the new identity of Eric Longfellow, along with a hilariously pretentious and pompous attitude, to boot! As not to draw too much attention to itself, it doesn't associate with the neighbors, has delegated most of the work at the academy to manager, accountant and all-around wimpy pushover Dennis Frye (George Stover) and tries not to kill anyone nearby (at least at first!), opting to travel to surrounding counties to claim victims instead. However, it's still close enough to put those in the suburb on red alert.

Longfellow's habit of both giving music lessons and sitting around sipping wine and loudly listening to classical music late into the evening starts grating on his next door neighbor Gary Kender's (Richard Nelson) nerves. Even though they've been putting up with the noise for months now, Gary's loving-but-smothering wife Marsha (Elaine White) refuses to let him confront him as to maintain the peace. Longellow kills a woman in the woods who's walking home from work then stalks a woman at a grocery store, follows her home and strangles her with a chain. He then starts getting complacent and sloppy. He plots to kill a woman who comes over for violin lessons until he finds out her boyfriend is waiting outside for her in the car. Instead, he opts to kill poor little Kristy Michaels (Kim Dohler), who's out behind his house playing with her Barbies. When her dead body is found in a stream with her neck broken, Gary becomes convinced that the bizarre-acting Longfellow has something to do with it.

Defying his wife's advice, Gary goes to confront Longfellow at his home, where he's put off by his nonchalant attitude about the little girl killed right behind their homes. He also finds an altar in the basement with candles, skulls, shredded pictures and a knife. Gary goes to the music academy and questions Dennis, whom he suspects lied to the police to give Longfellow an alibi but he's unable to get anything concrete. After finding out a local grave had been robbed months earlier and the corpse of one William Dorian (the cousin of the former occupant of Longfellow's home), Gary starts reading up on witchcraft and demonology. Meanwhile, a neighborhood boy named Scotty (Greg Dohler) also grows suspicious of Longfellow and starts following him around. He catches him right in the act of killing and stealing a victim's life energy. Can the neighborhood pull together to stop the fiend?

One thing I always admired about Dohler was his desire to actually make a decent film despite having very little money to work with. Unlike a lot of other cheap movies, which fall back on over-long static takes, medium shots and all manner of lingering filler to save time and money, this one has comparably ambitious camerawork and you get the felling the director thought through exactly what he was going to do for each scene prior to shooting it. Enough raw material was shot, from a wide variety of angles, to put together a fairly slick movie. There's good use of fades and panning shots, effective camera placements and shot framing, some nice scene transitions and little montages of suburban life to establish the setting and such.

Dohler is also sincere and unapologetically old school in his approach. Clearly inspired mostly by classic 50s sci-fi and horror, this one flagrantly defies the early 80s slasher-gore and sex craze as there's no nudity, very little blood and barely even any profanity. Of course there are also obvious issues with the film. Most of the acting isn't great (aside from the very entertaining Leifert), though the cast is at least comprised of likable amateurs who try their best. It gets a bit talky at times and some of the dialogue scenes, especially between the couple, feel redundant and pointless. The special effects and make-up won't blow you away either. However, this is still charming and a lot of fun in spite of all that and even manages to be fairly creepy in spots thanks to the gritty photography and eerie synthesizer score by Paul Woznicki., who doesn't appear to have done any other films.

Dohler takes time out to plug his 1979 book Film Magic: The Fantastic Guide to Special Effects Filmmaking, which the wife inquires about as she's planning on making a Super 8 sci-fi movie with a boy scout den. Actually Film Magic gets plugged three different times in three different scenes! The director also used his own magazine Amazing Cinema to promote the film. Fiend is given the cover and a generous eight pages of coverage in the June 1981 issue. In the article written by Bill George, it states the budget was "less than $60,000" though pretty much every source online claims the budget was actually "6,000" dollars.

Don also wrote, produced, edited and did additional photography. In addition to both of his kids being featured, wife Pam Dohler also has a small role as one of the victims. The associate producers were Stover, Anne Frith (who has a small role and roles in most of Dohler's other projects) and future director Ted A. Bohus (who also has a bit part sitting in a car). The cast includes cinematographer Richard Geiwitz and Tom Griffith, who'd later star in Dohler's NIGHTBEAST (1982), along with most of the rest of this film's primary cast.

This was filmed in Milford and Perry Hall, Maryland over a three month period. Dohler's own home was used for the killer's home. After playing a very limited theatrical release in 1980, it received home video releases in the U.S. (starting with a 1982 VHS from Force Video) and throughout Europe. Retromedia were the first to issue a DVD in 2003 and Blu-ray editions followed in 2018 from Massacre Video and CMV Laservision out of Germany.

★★1/2