Satan's Playground

I consider myself a fan of Mr. Dante as a writer and director. I enjoyed both desecration and Horror. Did they have good acting? Not really. Were they scary? Desecration had some creepy parts, but overall no. So why did I like these movies? because they were surreal. They were on crack and they knew it. This is what made the movies enjoyable to watch. Satan's playground is much more straight forward and this leaves all of Dante's bad dialogue and bad actors nowhere to hide. The movie isn't scary. There is only one really moment of gore. This movie is just plain bad. The married couple in the film look like father and daughter and I thought they were for the first half hour.

With SATAN'S PLAYGROUND, Director Dante Tomaselli takes the bleak nightmare world of his last effort, HORROR, and fuses it with a more linear story line. It's a supernatural monster movie with a crazy, demonic twist. Within its kitchen sink of terrors are the legendary Jersey Devil, a lunatic family, and human sacrifice.

1980's cult horror icons Ellen Sandweiss and Felissa Rose play sisters Paula and Donna, who, along with Paula's baby and Donna's husband and autistic son, find themselves up against the aforementioned dangers. Also along for the ride is Edwin Neal, who pretty much reprises his bat$h!t role from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Tomaselli makes use of the Pine Barrens, swooping his camera around a la EVIL DEAD. People seem to either hate this movie utterly, or see it as a masterpiece. In reality, it's somewhere in between these extremes, deserving none of the hyperbole of either side. Still, it is worth seeing...

A family in New Jersey drives along an isolated road, and the father is falling asleep at the wheel. His wife (I thought at first she was his daughter) mainly bitches at him, and he falls asleep two or three times since nobody has the sense to replace him behind the wheel. Their station wagon gets stuck in mud alongside a road. They're unable to push it out and don't try to put anything under the wheels for traction. The father walks into the woods to find help for some reason, rather than walking down the road. He comes across a boarded- up house and asks for a phone.

What seems like like hours later, the wife (Felissa Rose) goes off in the woods in the same direction. Somehow she winds up at the same house, and asks for the phone. While she had earlier said that her son was foaming at the mouth in the back seat of the car because he was scared and not because of a seizure, at the house she says her autistic eighteen- year-old son was having a seizure. She also says that her husband has seen a house in the woods - he hadn't. The old woman at the house mentions she has thirteen children, two of them living at home, both of them in their forties and retarded.

A cop stops by the house. He says there had been some kids dressed up in Halloween costumes outside. He hears Felissa calling for help in the basement, but accepts the old woman's explanation that it's a stray cat. Dumb! He returns to his car, an old beater with a blue light on top. He gets attacked by something from the sky, and these minor injuries apparently kill him. Despite the death of a police officer, later in the movie they send out just one officer and one of the victims to check the house!

Back at the car, the sister sees the cop's car parked in front of the station wagon. Why didn't he check the station wagon before going to the house? How did he see the people outside the house when it was far in the woods? How did he return to his car so quickly? This is a movie with lots of writing and continuity problems.

Sis leaves her baby in the car when she checks the police car, and naturally it's gone when she returns. She goes into the woods, also manages to come across the same house, and asks to use the phone. She freaks out there, and scares a teenage girl who stopped by the house to use the phone. Surprising the old lady's palm reading business wasn't more popular at such a popular location!

The autistic son had gone into the woods also and knocked himself out. He too goes to the house, and eventually gets sucked into the ground, like a character in Tomaselli's Desecration, which is more interesting than this movie!

And on it goes. Much of the musical score is quite poor, particularly the instrumental song that is apparently supposed to be playing on the radio. The acting is just execrable, almost all-around. I couldn't say whether this was the casting or the direction of the actors. Ellen Sandweiss is OK, and attractive, but has a small role. There are horror clichés aplenty, like one character finding it easier to jump out what is apparently a third story window, than trying to break through a thin first-story door with a large window in it. The ending is pathetic, a steal from Evil Dead that I suppose is meant as a tribute, but just feels cheap.

Avoid!

It seemed like a stereotypical dysfunctional family, presumably Italian-American, on a trip through the woods in New Jersey. They break down and, like the back roads of Texas, they come upon things they should have left alone.

Felissa Rose seemed more like the daughter than the wife, but I'll play along. If Frank (Salvatore Paul Piro) can get a wife like that, there is hope for me.

Major screams from Felissa Rose, putting her at the head of the class as a Scream Queen.

Creepy, bloody, suspenseful fun makes for a good scary pic with some very weird characters.

I don't know what I have more contempt for: this movie or the people who lionize it. It's by far one of the worst movies of all time. Not because it's acting is bad, the music ques obvious, the story completely ludicrous; but because none of this was intentional. I read how people think Dante's a genius for his camp and retro references and lame excuses like it's meant to be bad.

But unlike post modernist gems, like the demo film in "Dodge Ball" or Austin Powers, this film takes itself entirely seriously. There's no wink, wink, nudge, nudge saying that it's meant to be that way. If you don't believe me, listen to Dante in the interviews. He really thinks his work is visionary when it's actually, recycled clichés not done well. Critics and fans have been seduced by decent music and great production design and cinematography. At the core is bad acting playing out a play school story.

At least the films he so much extols from the 70's and 80's, had a certain level of craft that DT clearly lacks. Spooky lighting, framing and production design cannot in of itself create genuine tension and suspense that the films from 70's had. Don't Look Now, Audrey Rose, The Thing all had wonderfully crafted plots, with good actors and were told in a way that made your insides churn and your bladder weak.

DT's sense of pace and plot are remedial at best. A hammer in the head is a nice way to whack someone but in of itself it's just like saying "boo" when someone comes around a corner. A little shock. But with no build up, it leaves you cold with no lasting experience.

All of SP's kills are staged like this. No build up. As Hitchcock said, it's not the surprise but everything leading up to it. And for God's sake, learn to stage violence or get a decent stunt coordinator and editor. 500,000.00 maybe peanuts to Hollywood but no reason to have kills that kids pretending to play WWF in their back yard can out do.

Further testament to a lousy story is that he cannot seem to cast good actors, in any of his films. Not like they have to be famous but they're loads of unknowns who can act circles around DT's hall of fame lineup. I believe he avoids them because skilled actors will expose his crap stories and his inability to direct them. Bad actors are like cattle - they're all too happy to be alive on a set. In fact, the key to low budget horror is casting good actors.

I believe his fans, like most gore heads are social misfits who can only find a sense of belonging by hailing tripe like SP. You know, the kid who thinks it's cool to like really bad movies. There's a reason none of films get theatrical.