Legacy of Satan

This movie looks and sounds like a home movie, except longer and more tedious. The lighting is amazingly bad. Characters' heads cast shadows on other characters' faces a lot. Impressively bad all-synthesizer score. The vampire wears a 1970s pink ruffled shirt and everybody has 1970s hair. But the editing has got to be the worst of the lot. There are long pauses between the lines of dialog. Characters pause and stare at each other or at their own feet for long periods, then hold perfectly still while they recite their lines. Between that and the muffled sound track it's difficult to follow the story. After an hour of utter tedium, there is a silly fight scene which begins when the hero shows up with a toy sword with a glowing blade.

If you were looking for a picture that's so bad there's amusement value in it, _Plan 9 from Outer Space_ would be a better choice.

Check out IMDB's list of the director's other work.

There's nothing really enjoyable about this film. The biggest problem is Lisa Christian, its lead actress. She can't act, at all, and drains the life out of almost every scene she is in, which is most of the movie. On multiple occasions she repeats, in near monotone, the exact same line of dialog she said minutes before. Perhaps that was caused by multiple takes and film editing that wasn't even trying to keep track. (Except the other actors' dialog doesn't seem like it repeats, at least as far as I noticed.) Her character is just banal, extremely selfish and, at times, wildly inconsistent. Her poor husband. In many ways, this was a character study of someone who was pathetically narcissistic. She imagines she's everyone's favorite ice cream flavor but is just spoiled milk. She is chosen to become consort to an equally insignificant but egotistical occultist who worships a supernatural entity they call Rakeesh. Yes, the satanists in this movie don't worship Satan but someone named after Lord Shiva in Hinduism, which is not only not politically correct but just plain ignorant. If you're going to change the name, at least make the source of ultimate evil Krog or something else even slightly intimidating. I don't want to imagine they all worship the guy who wipes up spilled Slurpees at 7-11. Of course, many Satanists use their rites as an excuse to play sex games,...but not this pathetic batch. If you've seen the photos here on IMDB, you've seen the most skin you will see in the entire film. It's purely PG-13 stuff. This was before PG-13, so it's closer to PG than R. The film is kind of short, but I can't tell if that was because it was originally going to feature 20 minutes of nudity (or porn, to go by the rumor) that got cut / never was filmed or just because the mobsters who were funding it said enough is enough. Honestly, though, only losing the lead actors and starting over from scratch could have saved this movie.

The lovely Lisa Christian plays Maya, a sexually frustrated young woman married to the boring George (Paul Barry). Unbeknownst to them, their friend Arthur (James Procter) has gotten mixed up with a Satanic cult, and now this cult considers Maya essential to their plans, luring her & George to their lair by using a costume party as a cover.

Gerard Damiano, the adult film director best known for the iconic Deep Throat, also gave us this decidedly minor horror film that won't be very satisfying to sleaze lovers. (The whole cast actually stays clothed most of the time!). The plot, characters, and performances are all quite insipid, although John Francis still manages to be very amusing as the nefarious cult leader Dr. Muldavo.

The truly tacky makeup effects are courtesy of Tom Brumberger (Don't Go in the House), while other familiar names working behind the scenes include co-composer Arlon Ober (The Incredible Melting Man) and cinematographer Joao Fernandes (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). That music score is HILARIOUSLY awful!

Unfortunately, this is a rather dull affair that possesses an awful lot of padding for a film running a mere 70 minutes. It may be of some interest to very curious exploitation & horror aficionados, but it's not a movie I would really recommend.

Sandra Peabody of The Last House on the Left fame has a very small role as a cult member.

Four out of 10.

Terrible EVERYTHING! Cinematography, Direction, Sound Engineering, Script, Set Design, Lighting, and Acting; terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, and terrible.

It looks and feels like some apartment building somewhere, full of young people, gathered up all of the neighbors, and decided to make a movie.

It is difficult to understand what the point of this film even is! Skip this one over EVERY TIME you have the opportunity to do so!

Seriously! Pull it up on whatever streaming channel has it available just to say to yourself, "nope," and then move on to something else! This film deserves us all doing just that from time to time!

Bored architect turned devil worshipper Arthur (James Procter) lures sexually frustrated housewife Maya (Lisa Christian) into the bosom of a Satanic cult who believe that a union between her and their malevolent leader, Dr. Muldavo (John Francis), is the key to incredible Satanic powers. Maya's hubby George (Paul Barry) has other ideas and, dressed as a jester, uses a magical glowing sword to infect Muldavo's face with a life-sapping omelette.

According to another reviewer here on IMDb, Legacy of Satan, directed by Gerard Damiano of Deep Throat fame, is rumoured to have begun life as a hardcore feature, but was trimmed of its explicit sexual content to make it suitable for release as part of a grind-house double-bill; it's not all that hard to believe, the film definitely having the look and feel of a 70s porno—all grainy cinematography, trippy visuals, and lo-fi synth music, with a decadent, sexually charged atmosphere, a nonsensical plot, and an untalented cast of complete unknowns. The film's short running time and choppy editing also go a long way to support the theory.

However, if there was ever a XXX version, it has long since vanished into the mists of time, and all we have been left with is this dreadfully boring, shambolic wreck of a film, a Satanic horror with no tension, no scares and very little blood. Clearly Damiano considered himself something of an artist, and did his best to bring a hallucinatory beauty to the film through the use of coloured light and strong shadow, but his handling was way too heavy-handed to be effective, the result being a garish mess as opposed to a stunningly creative piece of cinema. Arlon Ober and Mel Zelniker's experimental electronic score proves to be just as much an assault on the ears as Damiano's visuals are on the eyes.