The slasher sub-genre is a vast and beautiful thing. There are tons of them out there, some that may never be seen again, lost in obscurity forever. We’ve all seen plenty of them I’m sure — the good, the bad, and the ugly — but there are always more out there, just waiting to be re-discovered. Re-discovery is exactly what has been done here with L. Scott Castillo Jr.’s Satan’s Blade.
Satan’s Blade follows the cookie-cutter slasher formula pretty closely throughout its entirety. A couple of groups of youngsters are staying at an inn for a nice little getaway. The only problem is that there was a murder committed the night before their arrival. The killer is said to be a legendary mountain man who wields a weapon given to him by evil mountain Gods and he is back to rid the mountain of everyone who doesn’t belong.
Everything you’ve come to expect in your favorite slashers can be seen here. With a pretty low budget, Castillo who acted as director, writer, and producer on this picture managed to squeeze everything needed into the feature’s 82 minute runtime. There was stalking P.O.V. shots, an ominous piano score, and enough gratuitous nudity to please any genre fan.
While the above list contains all of the things that are done right in the slasher world, Satan’s Blade also delivers some of the lesser desired traits, as well. Terrible acting is one of them. It is easy to see that careful planning wasn’t taken when casting for this film because everyone did a pretty awful job. Being a low-budget slasher from the 80’s, however, the poor performances didn’t really take much out of the whole thing and it was to be expected. If you were looking for anything more, you may be searching in the wrong places!
Slasher Video took great care in bringing this film back to a larger audience. If you can look past the vertical black bars on either side of the screen due to its 1.35:1 ratio and the screen pops and crackles from the original negative, you will see how great the picture actually looks. I can only imagine how poorly of shape the film’s 35MM stock was in, so it is great to see the work that Slasher Video put into the restoration. Aside from some sound issues, the audio track sounds great, as well.
As far as slashers go, this isn’t the best, but it certainly isn’t the worst either. It is a fun little cheesy flick and I am happy to have another slasher in my film collection. If you are a slasher fan… well, who isn’t!?, you’re going to want to pick up a copy today, available on Blu-ray for the first time from Slasher Video and Olive Films.
I give this film 2.5 naked bank robbers out of 5.
