Satan's Children

I'm no Satanist but I'm pretty sure of one thing - Satan loves the gays. What better way to bring sin into the world? They're so efficient at it! But, like all other religions, everyone has their own (mis)conception of whatever imaginary friend they worship. In the case of Simon's Satanic cult, they literally just change "God" to "Satan" and leave everything else as is. Thus, the gay is ironically evil. So is unchecked greed and power-grabbing. And gratuitous nudity. And even straight sex seems to be taboo.

Long story short, Satan is a prude and this movie, despite its inadvertent hilarity offers nothing more titilating than the lead actor's bare ass just before he's raped by some rednecks.

Satan's Children (1975)

** (out of 4) Bobby (Stephen White) isn't having a very good day. While his stuck-up step-sister sits by the pool his mean stepfather bosses him around making him do all sorts of chores. After finally working up the courage to run away Bobby is then sexually assaulted by a group of homosexuals before waking up in a field where he is discovered by a group of people who turn out to be Satan worshipers!

SATAN'S CHILDREN has one of the wackiest story lines that you're ever going to witness and while the film isn't a masterpiece I thought it was silly enough to be entertaining in its own way. Of course, that depends on the viewer not taking it too serious. This is one of those low-budget movies that were made back in the drive-in era by college kids and it really shows. It's easy to see that the majority of people were working on their only film but this adds a layer of charm to the picture.

Again, if you're looking for a polished Satanic movie then go check out ROSEMARY'S BABY. This film here certainly isn't that but there's so much stuff going on that you can't help but have some fun with it. Poor Bobby goes through all sorts of hardships and it's all done in a rather amusing way. Seeing his time get worse and worse just has something funny about it. There are some pretty campy things that happen at the Satanic cult including one bizarre sequence where a woman is beaten with stones and then buried.

Performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this but I thought White at least kept us glued to what's happening to his character. This here was the second of two films that director Joe Wiezycki made in his career and he can at least say he made something that really isn't like anything else.

This is a profoundly stupid piece of film-making. Does that comment mean I'm panning this film? No way. This is great trash cinema. The director's intent is inscrutable in this mess-terpiece. "How to achieve purpose and fulfillment in life through satanic worship and depraved mayhem" could well have been the tag line for the movie. It's a gripping story of alienated youth. A young man can't get along with Dad or Sis, so he runs away from home. When our hero meets up with devil worshipers he has trouble fitting in and they make his life very diffictult. Of course, our protagonist eventually has some payback to mete out to those who hurt his tender young feelings. I believe porn-star John Holmes appears as the boy's father in an uncredited role. A bundle of laughs for the off-center sense of humor.

This film was marketed as one of those Manson family exploitation/satanic cult flicks that were so popular in the early 1970's (i.e. "The Night God Screamed", "The Deathmaster"), but its really a much stranger animal indeed, managing to combine virulent homophobia with a strong undercurrent of homoeroticism as if the filmmakers themselves were struggling to stay in the closet. A young orphan is sexually teased by his step-sister and abused and neglected by his step-father. He runs away from home, but ends up being gang-raped by a bunch of "queers". Dumped by the side of the road, he is taken in by a gang of erstwhile satanists whose cruel, tyrannical acting female leader falls hard for him. This proves to be a problem when the real male leader returns because, you see, "Satan doesn't like a loser". His disgraced lover ends up buried up to her neck and being VERY slowly devoured by ants, and its up to our hero to rescue her by taking belated revenge on all his various tormentors.

This movie has a very homophobic plot complete with a gay rape-revenge device. The message seems to be that its better go to bed with a cruel, murderous satanist as long as she is of the OPPOSITE SEX than it is to come to terms with your own obvious homosexuality. But not only is the sexuality of the protagonist highly questionable, the crusading heterosexuality of the filmmakers is even more suspect as they show a disturbing number of shots of the protagonist (who like many of his female equivalents in these kind of 70's exploitation films is somewhere between barely legal and hardly legal)naked and bound, or running through the forest in his tight-whities. I suspect the unintentional irony in this film would go over well in a gay film festival.

I would even suspect that the film is being knowingly subversive if it wasn't so completely incompetent. Check out the scene for instance where two guys slowly "drown" in "quicksand", which looks more like a hole filled with Malt-O-Meal, with the drowning even less convincing than the infamous scene Bela Lugosi being eaten by a giant octopus at the end of "Bride of the Monster". So does all this mean I wouldn't recommend this? Hell, no! Most of the entertainment in this film may be completely unintentional but it sure is entertaining. Check it out for yourself. Whether you like it or not, I GUARANTEE you've never seen anything like it!

I can't decide if this movie is really homophobic or if it's just toying with the idea innocently. In either case, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie because it was so unlike anything I've ever seen. I loved the weird looking people who star in this, especially the main guy Bobby. He's a red haired skinny kid who looks like he should be in a 70's stoner band. His step sister looks like a cartoon character. Sherry has strange teeth and a evil glare that reminds me of a girl I knew in kindergarten.

I liked how Bobby runs around in whitey tighties the whole time. It's about time that I see some hot boy bods in horror movies. It's always hot girls, but never hot guys. His make out scene with Sherry had some major French kissing going on. I loved his angry looks at the camera, and I really loved the shots of him smiling devilishly at the end. He's a charming kid. I don't know why, but you end up really loving this guy.

The movie has a gang rape scene with all guys (victim and gang) in a car and it's quite disturbing. The relationship between Bobby and his step sister is really interesting. She manipulates him way too much and almost gets him in trouble for having weed. That's where he draws the line, and he storms out of the house.

I thought the ant torture was hard to take because they were really pouring gross stuff all over that girl's head as she was buried in the dirt. Made me feel suffocated.

Best scene though - the quicksand! Looked like very watery cement with some soap suds. What a great way to kill off the enemy!

I really dug this movie, mainly because the main actor is so weird looking and mysterious, you can't help but feel very attracted to him, even though he runs into some really bad luck. He really makes the movie. I gave this movie 9/10. It's so much better than people on here are saying!!!