Year: 1980
Duration: 01:02:13
Directed by: Nick Millard
Actors: Greg Braddock, Ray Myles, Lisa Milano and Barrett Cooper
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as:
Description:The plot of “Satan’s Black Wedding” is quite short and simple. A young woman committed suicide for unknown reasons, and her brother is taking a trip to her funeral. During the movie he finds out that his sister is a vampire, who returns from dead to have revenge for her family
Some notes from me:
Hardcore sex pioneer Nick Millard (aka Nick Phillips, and many other pseudonyms) suddenly shifted gears in the mid-70’s when he moved from porn to schlocky horror…or seemingly so. In fact, the aberrant state of mind of Ethel in Millard’s next drive-in gorefest has its antecedent in the cracked psyche of titular Roxanna (one of Millard’s superlative forays into early hardcore). And although he could make bright (his socio-cultural determinism still obtaining) hippie free-love films (The Pleasure Spots, Dedicato), his tones are generally downbeat, at best. He could be taken, for that, as an arch-conservative…but all of those natural breasts and furry mounds tend to excuse the political.
I’ve only very recently begun to explore Millard’s world, and it’s been one of the more notable cinematic discoveries for me in a long time. Somehow, being his own producer, he could both make what he wanted and effectively squash his own work for nearly 30 years (just the sort of short-circuiting his characters most-often irreconcilably experience). All that began to change a few years ago, when his Bergmanesque proto-porn began showing up on DVD.
It’s ironic that Criminally Insane is his best-known film. As jaggedly as it presents it’s shocks, in Millard’s typically jeweler’s-eye 16mm, it nonetheless veers far from Millard’s previous total lack of irony, in a series of beautiful and distinctive sex films that have few rivals. The more Millard I see, the more I am impressed, and inclined to put him in a highly personal pantheon where Radley Metzger and Joe Sarno hold sway.
Satan’s Blood Wedding grasps a specificity of time and place – here, Monterey, CA – in the usual manner Millard had perfected: quick iconic flashes of people, places and things, montages, naked voiceovers…a plethora of affect in shorthand, never long impinging on the exploitative angle (sex, previously…gory shocks here).
And also as usual, he asks for barely an hour of your time. The Roger Stein score, plaintively off-key piano, largely, is a very nice compliment.
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i had not seen this in quite some time, and when i started reading the review, it rang a bell. it made me want to see the film again, and then as i read further i began to realize that i had written it when i posted the film in a private forum some years back. funny to see it re-contextualized, but i hope it likewise feeds your appetite to see it (if you have not) as it fed mine to see it again.
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and by the way, i recognize that as a tall statement: sarno and metzger? in the intervening years since i first saw millard’s work, my opinion has not maintained that level. it’s still highly distinctive and well worthwhile.