Satan's Black Wedding

Satan's Black Wedding (1975)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining film has a brother investigating his sister's suicide. He eventually tracks down the killers to a church, which is being used by vampires for Satanic rituals. This is a very cheaply made film running just over an hour and while there's nothing too original going on here it does remain interesting throughout. If you don't expect The Exorcist or Rosemary's Baby then you should get a few minor grins out of this film. There's some nice, if cheaply done, gore scenes to keep things moving. Outside of that we get some really hammy performances, which lead to a couple laughs.

A woman writing a book called "High Satanic Rites," about vampirism in modern-day Monterey, California, commits suicide while under the power of an evil priest. The woman's brother, Mark, sticks his nose in the police investigation and more dead bodies show up, drained of blood. Mark's ex-girlfriend, his sister's research assistant, lends a hand and falls in love with him again. Mark confronts the priest in the basement of a church, where 180 years ago some nuns were praying and conjured the Devil. The Foul One used to enjoy watching Mark and his sister playing near the church as children. Now he wants to initiate both of them into the vampire's coven. Mark tries to escape from the priest and his vampire slaves, but crashes his car and dies.

The fade out of this daffy and very poor horror flick is memorable: Mark, bloodied and disfigured from the accident, stands before an unholy altar to wed to his dead, vampirized sister.

SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING originally played in theaters on a double-bill with the more well-known CRIMINALLY INSANE. Both films are a real endurance test for even the most hardened Z-movie enthusiast. Director Philip Miller is really Nick Phillips, who also directed CRIMINALLY INSANE.

"Satan's Black Wedding" doesn't quite have that irresistible "what the hell am I watching?"-factor that Nick Millard's much more famous effort "Criminally Insane" had but hell, if Millard can't put a smile on my face anymore you can honestly pull the plug on me. Just check out his unique editing style, the guy can't splice in a shot realistically to save his life but that's why we love him. Who cares if two actors talking to "each other" don't even appear to be in the same ZIP code, it's all just part of the charm. Especially if one of those actors is the otherwise completely unknown Ray Myles, who gives a genuinely excellent performance as some sort of half-vampire, half-satanist (have your cake and eat it too). Lead Greg Braddock is somewhat less impressive, but his amazing underacting is a spectacle in its own right. He walks into a room covered with blood with a look on his face like he just found out the supermarket is all out of his favorite shampoo. My sister died a gruesome death, I am...mildly irritated? Nick Millard is a huge cinephile though, and occasionally this almost shows here. Some shots in this movie are actually quite stylish, there's some "Nosferatu" influence in there but it's tough to be classy if your vampires have plastic fangs. But still, I was sorta into this from time to time. The cinematography looks good, the music is repetitive but creepy nonetheless, this really is quite above Millard's standards. It's not quite as entertaining as some of his other work, but it's almost what you call accessible. If only it had an actual ending instead of just stopping at a random moment, that would have helped it even more.

I had never heard about the 1976 horror movie "Satan's Black Wedding" from writer and director Nick Millard, but given my fascination with horror cinema, of course I opted to sit down and watch the movie, as I happened to stumble upon the movie by random luck here in 2024. I virtually had no idea what I was in for here, but I didn't really harbor much of any grand expectations to the movie given its age and the fact that I had never heard about it.

The storyline was a rather scrambled mess, as it was lacking an overall red thread to lead the audience through the movie. It felt like director Nick Millard had shot many different scenes independent of one another and sat down to edit it into a cohesive movie. The end result wasn't particularly thrilling.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. Nor were I particularly impressed with what I witnessed, as most of the performances were so wooden and rigid that it looked like a first take for a read for an audition. Some of the performers were seriously lacking talents to deliver a convincing dialogue, and the movie suffered terribly from that.

The blood effects in "Satan's Black Wedding" are insanely poor and laughable, it is brightly colored orange paint and doesn't even remotely resemble blood. And then there were the God awful teeth that the vampire creatures had, they looked like the kind of toy dentures that I had as a child in the early 1980s; it was pretty bad.

The editing in the movie definitely also leaves much to be wished for. The editing was pretty brutal and abrupt, with many scenes just ending by a rough cut and then straight into the next scene. And the music in the movie was equally poorly edited and cut in scenes.

My rating of "Satan's Black Wedding" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars.

"Satan's Black Wedding" is in no way a good movie. But, It isn't all that bad of a no budget film. Sure, there are many grade B through Z horror films that are good and bad, but this one is actually entertaining in a strange sort of way. Don't Expect "The Omen" or "Rosemary's Baby" with this one, but check it out if you can find it.

The storyline isn't anything to original as it starts with a woman slitting her wrists and bleeding to death. Go ahead a few days and we are at her funeral with her brother and few others. Her brother, whom is a Hollywood actor, decides to check out the place in which she did herself in. When he gets there he discovers that the police scene hasn't been changed and that there is blood all over the place. The police detective doesn't believe this to be a suicide thus starting the brothers search for what actually happened, leading him into a dark world of vampires with silly looking teeth.

First I should say that the special effects are definitely grade Z. No gore but an extreme amount of blood. The vampire teeth are just hilarious as they look like something that you could buy from Wal-Mart. The movie did have some nice atmosphere with a halfway decent soundtrack minus a few moments where the pitch got way to high and it hurt my ears. The acting was also silly going from mediocre to just plain bad. Especially during a love scene that is about as boring as watching the grass grow. Last, but not least, check out the very end of the movie at the "The End" screen and listen to the music fade off horribly. It was just hilarious.

I got to recommend this to anyone that loves 70's low budget cinema. Definitely worth the time. 7/10