A pizza delivery girl at the end of her financial rope has to fight for her life - and her tips - when her last order of the night turns out to be high society Satanists in need of a virgin ... Read allA pizza delivery girl at the end of her financial rope has to fight for her life - and her tips - when her last order of the night turns out to be high society Satanists in need of a virgin sacrifice.A pizza delivery girl at the end of her financial rope has to fight for her life - and her tips - when her last order of the night turns out to be high society Satanists in need of a virgin sacrifice.
- Awards
- 1 win & 4 nominations total
- Samaziel
- (as Maya Rae Perkins)
Featured reviews
I saw other people's reviews and they say that they found the start great and then it went down hill but I feel the opposite.
During the first 20 i was thinking this was a really cheap student film with an unfunny script but then as soon as Rebecca Romijn shown up I started to appreciate it more.
The script is kinda of wonky too, not so much the dialogue but more like unfinished plots or just completely dropped plots.
It's quite gory but in a campy way so I don't think people would mind.
So even though at times it can feel student-y and definitely more so at the start, I would watch it.
In my opinion it has a fairly fun, light hearted approach to something much darker, there in lies the comedy. Some of the scenes are insane and the lead actors fit their parts well.
It's certainly something different and a fine low budget Horror-Com! Better than most others!
Written by noted horror writer Grady Hendrix and Ted Geoghegan, the film introduces us to Samantha (an all-in Hayley Griffith). She's a twenty-something who dreams of Australia, and somehow thinks taking a job delivering pizzas will get her there. She's in such dire straits that she doesn't have the 5 bucks she needs for gas in her Vespa, plus her co-workers stick the new girl with the "no tip" deliveries. I assume there really are classless people who stiff delivery folks, and it's easy to understand why Hayley bangs on the door of a Park Cities mansion after getting the shaft on a 5 pizza delivery.
It's that knock that transforms Samantha's bad job into a matter of life and death. Rather than interrupting a high society neighborhood tea, she stumbles into a Satanic cult led by Danica (Rebecca Romijn, X-MEN). And guess what? It's virgin sacrifice night! And guess who qualifies? That's right ... it's Samantha, our no-tip pizza delivery gal. After a sequence featuring Danica's husband (Romijn's real life husband Jerry O'Connell) and one of the more gory and impressive practical effects of the film, Samantha manages to escape the hell-house mansion.
Soon she has teamed up with Judi (Ruby Modine), who just happens to be Danica's daughter. Judi's inside knowledge proves quite helpful in finding loopholes for temporary reprieves, although the devil-worshippers stay focused on offering Samantha as their virgin sacrifice to Baphomet. While all of this is happening, there is a power struggle within the coven between Danica and Gypsy (a wild-eyed Arden Myrin), adding one more wheels-off element to this carnival of comedy-horror.
Clearly this is campy, but given the low budget constraints, the film's effects work very well, and Ms. Romijn, Ms. Griffith and Ms. Modine (Matthew's daughter) are quite effective in their roles. It's curious just how incredibly naïve Samantha is for her age, but this movie isn't really about thinking and analyzing. Instead, sit back and enjoy the wildest ride you are likely to get from a Vespa-driving pizza delivery person (and please tip these folks!)
Make no mistake, it's an entertaining horror comedy, with the horror parts, in the sum, being better than the comedy bits. Can't promise a laugh-out-loud moment, because for me there wasn't one. The funniest bits are in the 1st half of the movie. A lot of "Satanic Panic" resembles old-school, starting with, of course, Practical FX (quite a lot of gore & it's good), that retro-type synthwave original score, the very theme of witches and covens, and ending with the poster. So you know, lovers of all this will be more or less happy - I was. The characters are simple and very much clicheic, as is the plot, even though it's going to hide that to the very end at which moment a little voice in your head might say "Well I guess that's that". My point is, I was craving for a climax that would top the prior crazy moments in this flick. No matter the characters, the actors and their performances were quite fine. And fun. Probably a little more fun for horror buffs, because there are some familiar faces. On a side note, in the end I was a little disappointed with the main character, I feel like there could've been more to her story. As for the visuals, the cinematography was fairly simple, saturated, colorful, low-budget but creative. The gore was great though, classic, proven to be great kind of stuff. Gotta love the gore.
Let's put it this way - if I dissect "Satanic Panic" into bits and pieces, there's a lot of flawed ones, but overall it's a great, fun, no-brakes kind of entertainment for anyone who's into horror enough. My rating: 6/10.
Did you know
- TriviaThe chant that the coven is using when attempting to hex Judi is (slight pronunciation differences aside) the Charm of Making from John Boorman's Excalibur (1981)
- GoofsDuring the ceremony, Gypsy scratches the salt line, the line changes positions and the shape of the gap also changes.
- Quotes
Judi Ross: Oh my god. You're like a big retarded baby. My mom and her butt buddies are booty calling Baphoment, and we're gonna hide in here like scared little bitches because they can turn your liver into fire ants. If they find us, they're not gonna kill us- they're gonna do shit that you can't comprehend. And they're not going to stop until you're strapped naked to a barbed wire altar with a fifteen foot beast of Gehenna and his double pronged demon dong walking around your cooch chute like it's a revolving door of ground beef.
- ConnectionsReferenced in The Flop House: Ep.293 -- The Joke Thief (2019)
- How long is Satanic Panic?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour 25 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1