Satan's Children (1975) (a gender-flipped I Spit on Your...)

[chazraps]

Super out-there Florida exploitation film. Anyone else actually seen this?

Just watched it and this isn't an endorsement of quality as much as it is genuinely a movie I've never seen anything like.

An older teenage boy flees his abusive step-father and step-sister only to get sexually assaulted by a gang and then kidnapped by a Satanic Cult who he then flees and the last ten minutes are him getting revenge on everybody except for the one person in the Satanic Cult who he has a crush on that the Cult had sentenced to death.

It's Tampa 1975 so there's so many strange places it goes, heavy on teasing step-incestual sexual harassment in the beginning, followed by overt homophobia by pretty much everyone all while the protagonist spends most of the movie in his briefs.

And the score is all 70s synth-psychodelia and lite rock, which feels unintentionally juxtaposed in the scenes of torture and revenge. (as opposed to say, a contemporary Kenneth Anger or Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey or John Waters film would have used the music)

Teensploitation roughie without an overt morality message. Other than perhaps being a gender-flipped 'I Spit On Your Grave' I can't imagine what motivated its creation and completion. I mean, I get that it's Drive-In box office for sure, but I struggle to think of any of the revenge film contemporaries that went THIS hard with THIS many taboos without a wink or a whimsy.

So yeah, anyone else ever experience this?

[dirtyoldman]

Getting kidnapped and buggered by a satanic cult then killing them all? Can't say that I have.

[burdette25159]

The film came out 3 years before I spit on Your Grave

[JoDaNa1281]

I seem to remember Brad Jones did a review of it.

Which, wouldn't be surprising, at all.

[chazraps]

Nov 24, 2022 17:41:04 GMT -5 burdette25159 said:

The film came out 3 years before I spit on Your Grave

Oh wow, you're right! For some reason I was misremembering it as an early 70s film.

Yeah, I have even less idea now who this was for.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Did you see it on the AFGA Blu-ray?

The long out of print Something Weird Video DVD that includes this as a double feature with Asylum of Satan has eluded me. I bid on several eBay auctions for it, but they tend to go north of $100. Right now the cheapest copy selling that earned eBay’s Great Price label is for $149.95.

[chazraps]

Nov 25, 2022 20:45:35 GMT -5 KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! said:

Did you see it on the AFGA Blu-ray?

The long out of print Something Weird Video DVD that includes this as a double feature with Asylum of Satan has eluded me. I bid on several eBay auctions for it, but they tend to go north of $100. Right now the cheapest copy selling that earned eBay’s Great Price label is for $149.95.

I actually saw a screener of an AGFA print (I'm co-curating midnight movies at my local theater). Just curious, why do you think the Something Weird version goes for that high?

BTW if anyone was curious about it, there's only about 200-something copies remaining and you can get them half off for Vinegar Syndrome's black friday sale - vinegarsyndrome.com/products/satans-children-agfa-something-weird

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Nov 25, 2022 20:51:46 GMT -5 chazraps said:

Nov 25, 2022 20:45:35 GMT -5 KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! said:

Did you see it on the AFGA Blu-ray?

The long out of print Something Weird Video DVD that includes this as a double feature with Asylum of Satan has eluded me. I bid on several eBay auctions for it, but they tend to go north of $100. Right now the cheapest copy selling that earned eBay’s Great Price label is for $149.95.

I actually saw a screener of an AGFA print (I'm co-curating midnight movies at my local theater). Just curious, why do you think the Something Weird version goes for that high?

BTW if anyone was curious about it, there's only about 200-something copies remaining and you can get them half off for Vinegar Syndrome's black friday sale - vinegarsyndrome.com/products/satans-children-agfa-something-weird

You probably already know most of this, but just for anyone curious Something Weird Video was like a proto-Blu-ray boutique label with a super passionate fanbase that traces it’s roots to the VHS tape trading days.

When they inked a deal with Image Entertainment, starting in 2000 a bunch of their titles got released on DVD for the first time. Many came out as double and triple features, some as stand alones. Some titles got huge and/or multiple pressings. In fact, the last trickles of some original pressings are STILL making the rounds from close out companies to resellers (though obviously most of the good stuff has been picked clean).

Anyway, after these initial releases pretty soon the batch of DVDs pressed got considerably smaller/many titles were not re-pressed. So if you’re buying a copy of Asylum of Satan/Satan’s Children you’re probably buying from the original 2002 release stock. I have no idea how many were printed though Lisa Petrucci (SWV founder Mike’s widow) is very active on Facebook and would probably know. My guess is in the low thousands (2,000?) at most.

Fun fact! A few years ago Amazon started re-releasing select SWV titles as MOD DVD-Rs. This pissed off DVD purists massively because in the community many consider DVD-Rs to be as different from pressed DVDs as fool’s gold is to real gold. I’m pretty sure the practice has stopped completely due to the backlash and low sales. Although this continues to be a problem for collectors because those DVD-Rs are still floating around and there’s plenty of unethical resellers out there. As far as I know Asylum of Satan/Satan’s Children never had a DVD-R version released through Amazon which contributed to it maintaining a high price.

[Mozenrath]

I wonder if it was one of those films that was made with the idea of, "What is available to us?" and then just slapping something shocking together for attention.