Horror Double Feature: The Brotherhood of Satan & Psychomania

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will be wowed by a gaggle of geriatric devil devotees, Ahna Capri, a gang of undead bikers, and frog worship! It’s The Brotherhood of Satan and Psychomania!

THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971)

If there’s one thing that the middling horror movie The Brotherhood of Satan demonstrates, it is that Old Scratch must have been pretty desperate for worshipping disciples in the early 1970s. In this film, directed by Bernard McEveety, Charles Bateman, his 8-year-old daughter and his hotty gal pal (the yummy Ahna Capri) get stuck in a small town out West that is in the midst of being terrorized by a coven of elderly Satanists. The town’s children have been disappearing, families have been butchered wholesale, and in the blink of an eye, Bateman’s daughter vanishes, too… Although the Maltin book claims that this is a “horrifying little terror tale,” I didn’t find it overly chilling. This is the kind of film that almost demands a second viewing; during the first, you won’t know what the, uh, hell is going on for the first 2/3 of the picture. Scenes seem to peter out without making their point. While a repeat viewing does clear up some of the confusion, many questions remain unanswered. (Can anyone explain to me, for example, that little dolly that suddenly begins to cry?) Strother Martin, as the coven leader, overacts shamelessly, and it works somehow. But as geriatric covens go, while the one here IS a tad creepier than the one shown in the Joan Fontaine film The Witches (1966), it cannot top the one led by Sidney Blackmer in the shuddery horror champ Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and most viewers, I think, will be left with the feeling that this film could have been so much more. There were two things about the movie that I really did enjoy, however: Ahna looks absolutely smashing in her white minidress. Whotta pair of gams!

PSYCHOMANIA (1973)

In the 1973 British film Psychomania, directed by Don Sharp, we are asked to believe that it is possible for a person who commits suicide to return from the dead, if only he/she really wants to enough, AND if he/she has made a pact with a certain frog-worshipping devil cult beforehand. Anyway, Tom, leader of the biker gang The Living Dead, decides to give it a go, and after crashing his hog off a bridge, does indeed come back to life, full throttle, as it were. He convinces the rest of his co-ed gang to follow suit, and pretty soon, The Living Dead is living up to its name, immortally causing mischief and homicide around the countryside! A one-of-a-kind film that must surely have an adoring cult somewhere, Psychomania, also known as The Death Wheelers, is one fun experience indeed. The film is well shot, and features lots of nifty motorcycle stunt riding; while perhaps not in the same league as the amazing stunts in The Road Warrior (1982), they are still pretty exhilarating. Some sections of the movie are downright trippy, and almost make me wish I’d viewed this film “doobied out” in a theatre back in my college days. A freaky fuzz guitar score adds to the mood greatly. And fans of the urbane and impeccably enunciating George Sanders will be interested to see this great actor in his last role, before his suicide a short time later. (As The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film drolly reports, he “did not return on a motorcycle.”) Though never especially scary, Psychomania never fails to amuse and amaze, and certainly deserves all the positive word of mouth that it has accrued over the years. As for the DVD itself that I recently watched, it looks just fine, but is absolutely without frills; not even chapter stops. If ever a horror film warranted a “special edition,” this is the one!

COMING ATTRACTIONS: A jinxed circus! Knife throwing! A carnival full of mutants! A Joni Mitchell look-alike! It’s Circus of Horrors and She Freak, in the Shocktober Double Feature #14…