ahairyrice

The Brotherhood of Satan is viewed by some as a great film and by others as much less than mediocre. The difference lies in the mind of the beholder. Literal-minded folk will definitely not appreciate it and will find it slow-moving and boring. Even those who think of it as a classic will agree that it takes a long time for anything significant to happen. However, for those with a metaphysical bent, once the film gets moving, it resonates at a very deep level of the psyche.

Someone raised in a mystical or semi-mystical religion, taught doctrines of transubstantiation, resurrection of the body, the power of prayer, the importance of surrender to the almighty, and the necessity of worship will find striking parallels here though the object of adoration is the Powerful Evil One. God needs the Devil, good needs evil, life needs death, the old need the young in a dualistic world. When attraction is balanced by repulsion in the mind of the viewer, the effect is powerful. Strother Martin in the role of doctor and devil's surrogate is superb.

The use of toys and dolls to symbolize elements that exist on different levels of size or importance is ingenious. This multidimensionality suggests to our subconscious mind that nothing is just what it appears to be. In science fiction and horror, this powerful tool stimulates the imagination. In science it suggests multiple realities, multiple universes.

The sensitive hero, Duncan Mudge, beautifully played by Emile Hirsch, is victimized by a society characterized above all by fear and the cruelty this fear generates. In another lovely film with a similar theme, ("Get Real"), Steven, the main character asks, "What is everyone so afraid of?" Indeed that is the question that lurks at the core of this film. The answer is, of course, that everyone is afraid of being who he/she really is, thus earning the ridicule of everyone else who is suffering from a similar fear. Duncan seeks acceptance and affection, which he cannot get from his uncommunicative father, from a neighbor boy, Perry, whose instincts are in conflict, who is only half eaten by fear. Duncan tries to reach the better other half of Perry and crashed into Perry's ambivalence and is exploited in the process. Another reviewer here has said that Duncan is stupid. Can't Duncan see what is happening, why he is treated so cruelly by his peers? Why doesn't he give up his quest to be himself and conform? Isn't that what all of us do? I am put off by the question so often raised of whether this is a "gay film," or whether Duncan and/or Perry are gay. What bothers me about that is the need to categorize, to fix a label on a person, to commodify him. This provides an escape from seeing and relating to someone else as a complex person in his own right, not someone who fits in this box or that box. This need to classify, to objectify and to control is also a product of fear. I think it was H. L. Mencken who defined Puritanism as "that haunting fear what someone, somewhere, might be different." We are still in essence puritans.

Having been on a long vacation from horror films, I wanted to recapture some of the delights of my youth. I think that only the young, or those with the attributes of the young, the ability to find a clear distinction between fact and fiction, between the horrors currently being perpetrated in the world and the excess of horrors in film, can fully enjoy it. I have difficulty creating that distance. When viewers say that this film is funny, my first reaction is: "Who laughed?" But I realize that those that find humor in it,have the capacity, which I lack, to see the film purely as a creation, as something objective, an art work to be analyzed. I become personally involved in what's happening in a film, identify with the characters, live with them, empathize with them, search for reason for their behaviors. I've lost the capacities I once had to abstract myself as an aficionado of horror flicks must do. If I could have I would have enjoyed the film more . The film gives new meaning to the word "excess." Throughout its guiding principle is: if anything more horrible can happen, it will. It is macabre, gruesome; the plot is out of control; the acting, except for the two young lover, stylized, one dimensional; the cast is composed of corpses, has-been corpses and corpses to be. This is all intentional, and for many this is great fun. I intend to watch the sequel to perhaps recover my lost innocence.