Satan War (1979) (Fantastic Fest 2024)

When The Exorcist was first released back in 1973, rumours began to spread that the movie itself bore supernatural, satanic properties; after all, how could somebody possibly make, or even want to make, a movie as sinister and shocking as that without calling upon the forces of darkness? In the minds of some, The Exorcist was not merely frightening – it was evil, and could harm you mentally, spiritually, and perhaps even physically, just by watching it.

The idea that a movie can somehow harm or corrupt those that view it is nothing new, and it certainly didn’t start with The Exorcist – yet it was oddly prevalent in the years surrounding its release, and the films accused of being infused with malevolent, occult power all followed a pattern. As well as Friedkin’s classic, films like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Omen (1976), and The Amityville Horror (1979) were purported by some to act as gateways for evil to enter our world when screened; in hindsight, this “cursed film” hysteria was an early symptom of what would become the “Satanic Panic”, a wave of conservative and reactionary religious scaremongering that would sweep the western world throughout the following decade.

The key factor that links all of these allegedly “cursed” or “evil” films is, of course, the devil. The big red man downstairs was clearly on peoples’ minds in the late ‘60s leading into the ‘70s, especially in America; it was a time of massive social, political, and cultural upheaval, and the counter-cultural boom of the era left white, Republican, upper middle-class suburbanites terrified. Some of the satanic cinema of the ‘70s was made with the intent of showing light prevailing over darkness, good over evil, wholesome conservative Christian values over the perversion and sin of an increasingly intersectional and progressive America; others revelled in the vulgar, blasphemous joys of this new age, some even made with the participation of such notorious and controversial figures as the Church of Satan’s Anton LaVey.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this is Bart La Rue’s Satan War (1979), which might be the most convincing piece of evidence out there as to the existence of a “cursed film”. Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this review in no way endorses a belief in the occult… but by the end of Satan War, you might just believe that demons exist, and also that they are now in your home. Lovingly remastered from the previously-missing original 16mm answer print by those crazy folks at the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA, for short), and unleashed upon unsuspecting audiences at the 2024 edition of the Alamo Drafthouse cinema’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, Satan War is not what you would call a normal film – and, for those with less exposure to the brain-melting realm of psychotronic cinema, it might stretch the boundaries of what can be called a “film” in the first place.

What could loosely be described as the “plot” of Satan War is supposedly “based on a true story” (I cannot find a source for this, and for some reason, I’m inclined to doubt its legitimacy), following married couple Louise (Sally Schermerhorn) and Ben Foster (Jimmy Drankovitch) as they move into their surprisingly cheap suburban home – surprisingly cheap, it seems, for a reason. Strange things start to happen as soon as they move in – a cross on their wall rotates upside-down, the coffee on their stove boils over with thick, dark, pungent slime, and Ben spots a shadowy hooded figure lurking on the property. This, as it turns out, is merely the beginning of the horrors to come. Oh yes, there will be more slime… and it will be green.

Satan War is, ostensibly, a home-grown “Christ-sploitation” response to The Amityville Horror, in which a church-going couple is terrorised in their idyllic white-picket-fence home by the devil and his robed followers, and must overcome the forces of evil that torment them using faith, prayer, and the sign of the cross. To describe it as just that, however, would be a disservice to what Satan War actually is, and what makes it so interesting – because, in reality, what Bart La Rue managed to craft here is a dark, droning, moody portrait of suburban hell that is the American nightmare incarnate. In spite of its Amityville parallels, Satan War’s closest cinematic relative from the time is Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), with both being tales of the abstract spectres and shapes of violence and terror that stalk America’s neighbourhoods and haunt the dreams of their residents; I’d even go so far as to say that, whilst Satan War’s dramatic narration preaches the black-and-white morality of the struggle between light and darkness, the true horror of the piece lies in the far more grey and murky evils that exist within the suburban family home itself.

It’s hard to completely gauge what angle Satan War is coming from, on a socio-political level. Its politics could be deeply conservative, trying to strike the fear of God into the hearts of its viewers, and one cut featured extended unrelated sequences of black masses and voodoo rites to hammer its potential reactionary element home. On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure that Satan War really wants to be that kind of film, hence why those sequences are omitted from this original cut – because, with those removed, you get a nightmarish, consciously sluggish, grindingly monotonous and repetitive tale of a housewife attempting to survive the violent and sexually aggressive attacks of an entity in the home that her husband insists she can’t abandon.

Perhaps its feminist streak isn’t entirely intentional, and there’s a chance that many will merely find Satan War dull as dishwater rather than hypnotically compelling; in the case of the latter, there’s a reason why this movie has been dubbed an example of “murderdrone”, an ultra-niche subgenre of sleepy, slow, repetitive underground horror films with simple plots, droning synth scores, and senseless violence. For most audiences, there’s a chance that Satan War will be too inherently low-rent and schlocky to be even considered as worthy of being given any thought beyond iron MST3K-style riffing, yet for those who wish to clean off its crusty, dirt-strewn countertop, they’ll find a surprisingly potent, vibes-driven tale which may have more thematic weight than was ever consciously put into it.

At the end of the day, Satan War is a movie where perfectly-mown lawns can’t hide the blood spilled on the land centuries prior, where the marriage-bed is haunted by ghostly groping hands, and where the pistol you’ve bought to make you feel safe in your own home is useless against the intruders who wish to do you harm. It’s a nightmare you wake from, but can’t quite shake. The narrator warns you of demons in your home, but you’re beginning to wonder if they’ve already got to you without you knowing it.

It is also a silly B-movie about evil coffee and green slime leaking from the kitchen cupboards, so take my word with a grain of salt. Make a ring of salt around your house, too, just to be safe.

Robyn’s Archive – Satan War