Satan's Slave (1976)

Written by John Chard on January 19, 2017

Goat's Head Soup.

Satan's Slave is a cult film, a horror pic for those with a bent for occult based euro trash made on a small budget. Plot has a young woman played by Candace Glendenning caught up in a devil worshipping cult run by her uncle Alexander Yorke (Michael Gough).

It's full of the familiar tropes of such movies, plenty of nudity, violence and blood, and of course some interesting attire - gotta love those goat head masks! But it's all so tediously ridiculous and acted accordingly. Yes the violence is cold and nasty, and there's shock value here, including attempted rape, making this one that for sure would have had the censors of the time looking nervously through the print. But the interim passages of dialogue, of which the pic is predominately built, are borderline yawn inducing. Director Norman J. Warren is guilty of overdoing the horror cliche's, and the garish luridness of it all wears thin by the midpoint, but in the plus column is Les Young's intense colour photography.

Cult fan base for it does exist, understandably so since there is a big call for this type of cinema, but with that comes the fact that it's an acquired taste and obviously not for all horror buffs. 4/10