Au service de Satan

The action of "Enter the Devil" takes place on a barren Texas wasteland dotted with dirty little towns and mercury mines.A red-robed Satanic cult is kidnapping unlucky victims and sacrificing them in the name of the Devil.Meanwhile a beautiful doctor Leslie Culver is researching the book about devilish cults."Enter the Devil" is a slow-moving and wonderfully dry horror movie set on the desert.There is a brilliantly conveyed aura of utter isolation that kept me intrigued.If you like strange horror/western hybrids give "Enter the Devil" a look.An obscurity that deserves to be seen and appreciated by countless fans of 70's horror.Enjoy your stay in Dry Lake.8 out of 10.

This film begins with a man named "Ozzie Perkins" (Happy Shahan) driving through an isolated part of Brewster County, Texas when his tire is shot by an unidentified man with a high-powered rifle which causes the car to veer off the road. Not realizing what exactly happened Ozzie gets out of the car and believing it was a simple blowout decides to walk along the deserted road in search of a gas station. It's during this time that he is offered a ride by a man in a pickup truck. What Ozzie doesn't count on is the fact that this man belongs to a Satanic cult and that he is about to be sacrificed that very night. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a solid, no-frills horror film which managed to keep the mystery going up until the very end. On the flip side, however, it could have used a bit more suspence or horror but that's just my opinion. In any case, while definitely not a great horror film by any means it was good enough for the time spent and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

This is actually not as bad and absurd as it may seem. The story makes sense, and sects are a phenomenon that humanity has suffered from through all ages, for good and for worse, adding constantly a touch of mystery and terror to history, as life would be too commonplace without it. Here the mysterious sect is a band out in the wilderness of the Texas deserts close to Mexico, and there are quite a few Mexicans involved. Things get serious as a professional lady anthropologist is connected in the case, they try to save her by sending her away in time, but it is too late, and she is too curious.

These films and stories of satanism always end in the same way, Dennis Wheatley wrote a number of novels about it, and they never depart from the same pattern. Neither does this film. It is intriguing, fascinating and partly exciting, but afterwards you just brush it off your clothes.

Here is a movie that deserves to be seen again, an ultra low budget independently produced regional horror effort made out in the dusty hills of New Mexico about a coven of migrant workers who worship Satan. Contemporary social commentary aside this is a surprisingly gritty and grim little film made all the more authentic, convincing and haunting by it's low rent, jury-rigged feel. With a cast made up of stock actors, stunt performers, non-professional local color types and a couple name brand character actors, ENTER THE DEVIL has the feel of a very personal effort by someone who had a specific vision in mind. By limiting what it tries to accomplish the film succeeds where many others of a similar vein feel silly. Check out THE DEVIL'S RAIN for an example of what I mean.

Half of the film concerns a youngish state trooper's efforts to track down a missing person. His investigation leads him to an area hunting lodge & silver mine operation where the local bigots gather to drink beer, shoot things, and pat the Latina serving wench on the fanny. Meanwhile a pretty state employed anthropologist stops by to continue her studies into the somewhat pagan customs of the local Mexican workforce. Bodies are found, ominous accidents + close-calls befall the interloping Caucasian types, and the serving wench earns the wrath of her own people by apparently just being present to be manhandled & groped at by the bigoted hunters. It isn't easy being pretty some days.

All of it is actually rather unremarkable up until a segment about halfway through the film when the inquisitive trooper follows reports of lights out in the desert & the sound of chanting voices by the area loon, who as usual is the only person who really has a grasp of what's at hand. The trooper (David Cass, a former Burt Lancaster stunt double who co-wrote the film & served as 2nd unit director) eventually stumbles upon the horrible secret of this migrant cult in a scene that stops the film cold -- A fetching young lady being dragged into the desert by the coven who lash her to a post with barbed wire and proceed to burn her alive in the most stomach wrenching witch burning scene since CONQUEROR WORM.

It's not that it's unduly graphic, but like CONQUEROR WORM's burning the implied suffering and sadism of the incident is out of proportion with anything the film shows viewers up until that point. It is gruesome, horrifying, grimly realistic and concludes with the sight of the trooper gagging and coughing his way out of a billowing cloud of smoke from the burning body, which in itself will leave viewers feeling queasy for hours. The film also eschews any kind of erotic angle to the incident: There is no Sadean fantasy at work here, only stinging barbed wire, hammered nails and burning, cracking flesh. Try to find an uncensored imported print with gibberish subtitles, the domestic North American prints were all trimmed to secure a PG rating for a good time at the drive in. Yee haw.

After that the film settles back into the routine as the pretty anthropologist starts to get that sinking feeling that the disappearances, deaths, mysterious lights and Gregorian chanting hooded ominous figures out in the evil cave of Satan may be related. Gee, do you think? We get further police procedural footage including medical examination lingo, local political intrigue and an annoyingly predictable twist ending that anybody familiar with this kind of stuff will be able to dial in before the 3rd reel is loaded. The film then proceeds to climax with a bizarre display of xenophobia as the state trooper brigade closes in with their M-16 automatic rifles blazing as they gun down the coven en-masse. Pretty twisted idea of fun: no wonder this one generated cult interest.

So here is a sleeper of a movie that has been left behind by the sands of time -- the only way to find it are on expensive & rarely found prior rental tapes or dubiously sourced public domain releases by underground companies. Nobody seems interested in trying to revive this one which is a shame, it's a startling little bit of regional horror and one of the least silly examples of the Satanic Coven fad that was so popular during the early - mid 1970s. Watch it as a double bill with the excellent RACE WITH THE DEVIL, which remains the watershed effort from the idiom. The two will serve to compliment each other even though the low budget and seemingly aimless pacing of the first 3rd of ENTER THE DEVIL may annoy those easily bored. But once you get to that burning scene this film is perhaps even more unsettling, and nobody ever said that art had to be pretty.

7/10

Back in the early 70's when Charlie Manson and chums had just killed the hippie era cultist horror was in vogue. Race With The Devil was probably the artistic high point of the genre,but obscurities like Enter The Devil and Blood Sabbath are arguably of more generic interest to geeks like myself, dwelling more on the aesthetic aspects of crazy cults. There's a lot of aesthetic and thematic potential in the whole cult set up, hoods and robes, chanting, obscure rituals and fires, then there's the whole issue of singularity of purpose and the subsumed individual, someone can be just about anything on the outside but when it comes to their cult affiliation they become just a piece of the one persona. Other films delve deeper into the themes, but Enter The Devil gets good mileage out of the aesthetic and smartly sets things in the eerie isolation of the New Mexico desert for greater effect. It's simple slow burning stuff for the most part, Deputy Sheriff Ozzie Perkins investigating a disappearance and finding that the plot thickens as he goes, there's a good dusty atmosphere and sense of nagging unease punctuated by short sharp shocks, then things rev up with a nail biting two punch driving the film into its final block. There are clichés at hand, like Mexicans being either goofy or feisty, white guys being mostly horny and bigoted and the female lead being largely ineffectual, but somehow the character interactions work nicely, building up a solid feel of place and time both compelling and gently unsettling. The generally likable acting helps, beautiful Leslie Culver is charming enough as the research professor on hand to explain things, Joshua Bryant a helpful and friendly motel owner and Happy Shahan gruff and decent as the Deputy Sheriff. They all gel pretty well, as do the other players, making the slower moments pretty pleasing and producing a quiet, mundane feel that renders the climax all the more effective. I don't know whether the print I saw was the cut US release that got a PG certificate and re-released on Something Weird DVDR or full length (I think it was a S. African VHS but the run time falls between the two listed on IMDb) but the big shock scene in this is marvellous stuff, not graphic but real mean spirited and unsettling, really blows you out of the comfort zone prior established. The actual climax has its problems, but its short and sweet and shouldn't deter anyone who has managed the rest. Little in the way of bloodshed or action but definitely a good 'un, well worth a look for 70's horror fans.