Satan’s Sadists is director Al Adamson’s first biker picture, and it’s the first film of his where we really get to see his cinematic obsessions on full display. It’s full of unpleasant characters, sleazy women, sadistic violence, and an overall anything-goes type of vibe. As part of the biker subgenre, it’s really no better or worse than your average motorcycle movie. As part of Adamson’s oeuvre, it’s a rather important milestone.
Gary Kent (the stuntman/actor who partially inspired Brad Pitt’s character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) stars as a Marine hitchhiking through the desert. Scott Brady and his wife (Evelyn Frank) pick him up and give him a lift to Kent Taylor’s diner where a rowdy biker gang led by Russ Tamblyn show up and begin acting out of control. After the gang kills Brady, his wife, and Taylor, Kent and waitress Jacquline (Angels Revenge) Cole escape on foot into the desert. Tamblyn and company follow in hot pursuit, seeking to silence the couple for good.
It’s fun seeing Adamson’s stable of actors beginning to grow and branch out. We have Russ Tamblyn, John “Bud” Cardos, Kent Taylor, Scott Brady, and of course, Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol (who gets a gratuitous dance scene just because she’s the director’s wife). As a fan of Adamson’s work, I enjoy seeing all these familiar faces, even if the movie itself kind of twiddled its thumbs in places.
It’s interesting that the gang, despite their murderous ways are quite inclusive. One biker (Robert Dix) only has one eye, another wears a hearing aid (Greydon Clark, who also wrote the script), and there’s also a Native American (Cardos in redface) in the group. Naturally, he’s the only one with something approaching a conscience.
Satan’s Sadists is easily the best film Adamson made up to this point in his career. It helps that it’s its own thing, and not one of his cut-and-paste efforts. It’s a wonder what Adamson can do when he’s not trying to cram an entirely different narrative into a completely different movie. Also, it has a concise beginning, middle, and end, which certainly doesn’t hurt.
Even though the bikers initiate a gang rape in the opening minutes of the movie, Adamson handles the carnage in a surprisingly tasteful manner. The glimpses of nudity are fleeting and the shot of the woman’s hand waving wildly in front of the camera is effective. Adamson does the same for the other assaults in the picture, which makes it feel less exploitative than it could’ve been.
The big problem is that the film pretty much runs out of steam before the climactic showdown between Kent and the bikers. It also doesn’t help that Tamblyn is a bit miscast as the heavy. With his cherub face and rose-tinted shades, he resembles Paul Williams’ slightly more statuesque brother. He’s not really threatening and kind of makes for a weak villain.
Satan’s Sadists was partially filmed at the Spahn Ranch, which adds to the OUATIH connection. In fact, the ads tastelessly exploited the Tate murders in their advertising, stating, “SEE: Wild hippies on a mad murder spree! (It’s frightening as the Sharon Tate killing.) Filmed on the actual locations where the Tate murder suspects lived their wild experiences! So true-to-life it’s almost as if the real killers were cast in the motion picture!”
While it’s hard to fault anyone for taking umbrage with the way the picture was marketed, one thing’s for sure, the final product itself isn’t bad. It has enough scrappy charm to scrape by with a marginal recommendation. If anything, it’s worth a look for cinema’s first death-by-toilet scene.
AKA: Nightmare Bloodbath. AKA: Satan’s Cycles.
No comments:
Post a Comment