What do Paranormal Activity, The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, and The Entity have in common? They all ripped off Satanwar to some degree. What? You never heard of Satanwar? Well, let’s remedy that!
After a lot of Dragnet-style narration (you know, the whole “The names have been changed to protect the innocent” spiel and all that), a couple moves into their new house. It doesn’t take long to discover it’s more like a nightmare. The cross on the wall keeps turning upside down, chairs move on their own, bright lights appear out of nowhere, and slime and goo drips out of the major appliances. Since the headstrong couple just paid for the house, they decide they’re not going to leave it. They still stay put even after Louise (Sally Schermerhorn) is groped by a ghost! They do have a heart to heart talk about the situation though, which leads to her hubby Bill (Jimmy Drankovitch) telling Louise, “If he tries it again, tell that ghost that rape, sex, and molestation is my department!”
Satanwar is a scrappy, no-budget horror flick that will have your jaw dropping more often than not. It’s not exactly well made, but it’s certainly entertaining as hell. The opening scenes kind of have a Charles B. Pierce feel to them as both the narrator and Louise take turns dictating to the audience. The supernatural shenanigans scenes are admittedly cheesy, and the special effects are lame. However, the grimy film stock, coupled with director Bart La Rue’s off-kilter direction makes it all unforgettable. The synthesizer score is genuinely effective too, which adds to the overall uneasy feel of the attack scenes.
Although the climactic finale occurs at the hour mark, the movie isn’t quite over. It presses on with a faux-Mondo Cane-type expose on voodoo priestesses. After they writhe around a campfire for fifteen minutes or so, the film finally wraps up. While Satanwar kind of loses steam during this stretch, it’s still totally worth it just for the complete randomness of it all. I don’t know if La Rue was like, “Oh crap, the movie’s only an hour long! Let’s tack some bullshit at the end!”, but it still sort of works.
In short, Satanwar is breezy, cheesy, WTF fun.
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