SECRET SATAN 2025

[RIPPA]

Okay - I got a couple of reviews so I will start us off in a couple of days

Usual reminder that I will accept bonus reviews and also if folks want to send me reasoning for the movie they selected, they can do that too.

A little something different I am doing this year is in the next post - I am posting all the movies that were selected this year (not who selected them nor who is reviewing them). Just a little nod to the old DVDVRMC plus I hope by doing this it will

A) Allow everyone to watch more movies to help facilitate discussion

B) Allow everyone to see what might be available for bonus reviews

If anyone gets really excited and decides to do a full review of a movie (that isn't the one assigned to you) - send it to me via PM

[RIPPA]

For this year we have...

• Alone in the Dark (Jack Sholder, 1982)
• Body Bags (Carpenter, Hooper, Sulkis, 1993)
• Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
• Scream Blacula Scream (Bob Kelljan, 1973)
• Sledgehammer (David A Prior, 1983)
• Talk to Me (Danny and Michael Philippou, 2022)
• The Food of the Gods (Bert I. Gordon, 1976)
• The Void (Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski, 2016
• Tourist Trap (David Schmoeller, 1979)
• Troll Hunter (André Øvredal, 2010)
• Zombi 2 (Zombie) (Lucio Fulci, 1979)

As I noted to the person who was assigned it - don't confuse this Alone in the Dark with the Christian Slater/Tara Reid one

[twiztor]

pretty neat that over the course of 11 movies, we have selections from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s. And some good choices in there too!

i initially thought your "Alone in the Dark" disclaimer made it ripe for a bonus review, but after seeing that it's Uwe Boll, i immediately rescinded that thought. IIRC we don't do "so bad it's scary" for Secret Satan, and i'm not about to start now.

[Curt McGirt]

Of course I got

Spoiler

Lynch

 

[Curt McGirt]

That is a killer list though.

EDIT: I've seen seven of those. Including the one I got picked for, or at least most of it. 

Edited October 7 by Curt McGirt

[Curt McGirt]

Dammit, I wanted to review 

Spoiler

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, which is coming on BBC tonight

but it already got reviewed. I might do it anyway. 

[RIPPA]

FOOD OF THE GODS (Bert I. Gordon, 1976)

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES

Selected by @Execproducer

My pick is the 1976 Bert I. Gordon drive-in classic The Food of the Gods. A loose adaptation of H.G. Wells with effects that were cheesy in their own time yet still weirdly work. Come for giant rats, stay for Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker and Ida Lupino.

Reviewed by @Andrew POE!

The Food of the Gods is a dreadfully bad movie. At times, it's almost comically so. Ralph Meeker as Bensington was the funniest character in the movie with his "I don't really give a shit" attitude throughout the movie. His first appearance has him breezing past a pregnant woman and her husband just so he can get the Skinners to sign the land deal to him. Later, he wants empty bottles so he can get the white substance being emitted from a spring. "We'll have so much money that we'll use hundred dollar bills for toilet paper!" "Oh, so that's what those bills are for." It's not just him with the unintentional comedy, it's everyone else.

For example, there's the scene where Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) talks with him. "When I swear out charges with the district attorney, I'll know who to name." "What the hell are you talkin' about?" " Second-degree murder, I guess that's what they'll call it. My friend was killed by your wasps yesterday afternoon." "Those aren't my wasps!"

What's interesting is The Food of the Gods starts a bit like other movies that are about an isolated region only accessible through a ferry - much like Hitchcock's The Birds was with its island that Tippi Hedren visits. The atmosphere in the early scenes make it one of mystery and make it seem like the movie would have more of a conspiracy at play. The movie tries to be The Birds in a lot of ways with the animals focusing their attacks on the characters.

What I really liked at the start was how the introductory scenes were filmed. A professional football team practicing and the screen freezes on each name appearing in the credits with audio playing while the screen is frozen.

The two characters at the start - Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) and Brian (Jon Cypher) - see the aftermath of their friend kill by a giant wasp in a really badly done scene as the wasps are superimposed on the screen. Ida Lupino appears as Mrs. Skinner and her character has the notion that the food that causes the giant rats and wasps to appear is of God. She's attacked by giant worms near the start (in a badly done scene where Lupino is just holding worms that aren't even moving) and is bandaged up later. Rats scurry around miniaturized vehicles and houses and the camera is set up to be a close up of the animals doing so. At that point, I realize that this would be a bad movie.

What's especially bad is the amount of animal torture and abuse that appears to have happened in the movie. Rats are shot at with a gun and the gun shoots a red dye onto them, to simulate blood. The penultimate scenes have the remaining on the roof of the house as the area is now flooded. The hope is the rats didn't really get drowned from the flooding and those are fake rats floating on the surface.

Despite some terrible effects and awful dialogue, the cinematography throughout the movie had some great shots of vehicles traveling through the area. I loved one shot as a jeep is driving around a lake and the shots of the ferry arriving at the island. The Food of the Gods isn't worth eating.

[No Point Stance]

On 10/6/2025 at 10:21 PM, Curt McGirt said:

That is a killer list though.

EDIT: I've seen seven of those. Including the one I got picked for, or at least most of it. 

I think I've seen 8 or 9 of them. Can't quite remebmer if I've seen Body Bags.

[Curt McGirt]

I've seen most of it since it's on the streamers all the time. Second and third stories anyway. 

Andrew, you should be glad you didn't get The Swarm! And wish you had gotten Squirm instead...

[odessasteps]

 

[RIPPA]

TALK TO ME (Danny and Michael Philippou, 2022)

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES : METACRITIC

SELECTED BY @twiztor

My niece (19) loves horror movies, generally more of the psychological thriller type. She was VERY excited to show us this one, as it's her favorite from the last couple of years. We all thought it had an interesting concept and was worth checking out. 

REVIEWED BY @driver

Since the movie is set in Australia, I was a bit disappointed that five minutes in and not a single instance of people being attacked by Emus or Cassowaries, but we do get a roadkill roo. 

Teenagers sneak out to a party where they play a party game with an embalmed hand. The game works by touching the hand and saying, “Talk to me!” , and you might or might not seeing a haunting vision. 

Mia (Sophie Wilde) is really fucking creepy during the party. 

The second occurrence of the game gets a little unhinged. Everybody takes a turn, and it becomes a bit of an addiction to them. One character takes a turn and somehow channels Mia’s dead mother. Which leads to something tragic/traumatic. 

This film has one hell of an air of creepiness and dread about it. 

Mia catches a frightening glimpse of hell (or something akin to it) when she tries to help her friend’s little brother in the hospital.  

I really enjoyed watching this and reviewing it. No in-depth takeaways other than I enjoyed the shit out if this.  

[twiztor]

glad you liked it @driver!

@RIPPA i have had a hellacious week so am behind, but will get my review to you as soon as possible

[RIPPA]

No worries I’m still waiting on others too

I got at least enough for next week right now

[RIPPA]

JT wanted me to let everyone know that The Substance is now available for streaming via HBO Max

[The Comedian]

10 hours ago, twiztor said:

 

@RIPPA i have had a hellacious week so am behind, but will get my review to you as soon as possible

same here...I should get it written by the end of the weekend...

[RIPPA]

SLEDGEHAMMER (David A Prior, 1983)

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES

 

SELECTED BY @The Comedian

Blame Nightmare Movies on YouTube for this one. Their video on it piqued my interest. It's cheaply made and bizarrely shot, yet there's something intensely eerie about it, like an 80's version of Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's available on Tubi.

REVIEWED BY @No Point Stance

Haha, wow – what dick picked this? Well, joke’s on you, pal, because not only am I an enthusiastic aficionado of director David A. Prior’s oeuvre, but I was actively looking forward to what would be my second viewing of his debut feature. Admittedly I feel a little guilty that I’ve seen Sledgehammer before, as I’m guessing it was intended to be someone’s first viewing. It is, in no uncertain terms, a dreadful fucking film.

At the risk of parroting whoever picked this movie, a little background: marketed as the first horror flick ‘produced exclusively for home video’ (though Boardinghouse is generally held to have beaten it to video stores, and other films may have preceded that), Sledgehammer was shot in a single week, after Prior decided he could either go to film school or just make a movie and teach himself the dos and don’ts along the way. What he came up with was a supernatural slasher flick where the wheels of doom are set in motion by shitty parenting, a la Ulli Lommel’s The Boogeyman. In the opening prologue a mean (but cute) mom shuts her young son up in a closet so she can canoodle with her lover for a few minutes before junior returns and ruins their night with the titular sledgehammer.

Some years later a bunch of friends show up at the apparently abandoned murder house (AKA David Prior’s apartment – the solitary location for the entire movie, bar a couple of brief exteriors) to party, the most prominent character among them being toothy blond beefcake Chuck, played by David’s brother Ted Prior. Ted is probably most recognisable for playing the lead in David’s classic OTT Commando knockoff, Deadly Prey. Not just a reliable family member when it comes to getting in front of the camera, Ted also contributed original music and gore FX to his brother’s debut, so kudos to him. He’s also likeable enough to get away with Chuck’s performative outdoor bare-chested guitar playing, a scene that reminded me that at some point in Deadly Prey Ted runs around kicking ass while ridiculously clad in a pair of Daisy Dukes. Chuck and his friends all seem to be in their 30s, which on one hand would seem to be refreshing but realistically is probably due to nobody in the cast being a professional thespian and everyone David knew at the time being in their 30s.

Chuck and friends spend the first thirty minutes just titting about;  wandering around, spouting inane (improvised?) dialogue and indulging in a food fight that David clearly didn’t think through when he wrote it, given he was shooting in his own home. One of Chuck’s jock buddies finds the sledgehammer. In an odd subplot that goes nowhere, one of the guys repeatedly shies away from his girlfriend’s attempts to get some action. Looking at the guy now, this would make total sense as he looks flaming but since this was the 80s and everyone dressed terribly it’s hard to tell if this was the intent. This entire half-hour section of the film is borderline unwatchable. To kick off the second act everyone settles down for a séance, with Chuck doing an exposition dump that is both a total rip-off of the campfire monologues in Friday the 13th Part 2 and The Burning, and wholly unnecessary to the audience, since we get an extensive recap of the opening double murder, only in sepia this time. About the only new bit of information is that the kid disappeared after offing his mom and her fancy man. With all that out of the way, it’s time to get down to the slashin’ (okay, hammerin’ mostly) as our killer crashes the party. He’s a ghost, apparently, materialising out of thin air via dissolve, but lacks the dynamism we want in our masked psychos. Oh, and he can appear as a huge hulking brute or as his little kid self. There’s a little nudity (but barely) and a few slightly anaemic slo-mo kills displaying some adequate, if crude, gore. The single location severely limits the chase/stalking elements and probably goes some way to explaining why the killer just meanders after his quarry instead of making much real effort to catch them. The static camera setups do the performances no good, and they need all the help they can get. The lighting is just as flat and detracts from staging anything approaching suspense or menace. The use of slow motion is stretched to breaking point (bringing to mind the great Garth Marenghi bit on padding a running time) as several door handles are turned ponderously, often with little payoff on the other side. On the plus side, the metaphysical touches are different at least, like the low-tech boy/man transformations, and a room that suddenly changes into a Satanic charnel house complete with inverted pentagram. Speaking of padding, though, seven minutes of closing credits (complete with in-camcorder video titles) was pretty fucking excessive for the day.

Make no mistake, Sledgehammer is absolutely not for everyone. In fact it’s for almost no one. But for all its flaws, I guess I’m a fan and, crude as it is, it did work as the education Prior was looking for; DAP improved considerably as a filmmaker in every area. And you know what? In the past couple of weeks I’ve sat through Gladiator II and Kraven the Hunter, and for some damn reason I’ve just subjected myself to the really, really shit Monster Brawl – and Sledgehammer is more charming, more honest, more forthright, more engaging and for me it’s all-around more entertaining than any of those. There are better direct-to-video horror films, but there are also plenty worse and I’m grateful to whoever selected it. No doubt my affection for and – ahem – prior knowledge of the brothers plays into this. David was a Facebook ‘friend’ of mine for years but sadly passed away a decade ago. He was prolific to the end, even reuniting with Ted to make a sequel to Deadly Prey in 2013. RIP, DAP.

Couple’a footnotes:
David Prior was apparently an extra on Carpenter’s 1978 Halloween and may have been bitten by the filmmaking bug on that shoot

I watched the film on a DVD rip that included a genial - if not particularly insightful – commentary and a couple of featurettes. Said featurettes were directed by Evan Husney of Dark side of the Ring fame, long before that show was a thing!

[Curt McGirt]

I didn't know what Sledgehammer was so I looked it up. The coverart was familiar. So, I watched the trailer, and the very end was like HOLY SHIT! So, I investigated further and found this review of the film, from a guy wearing... I dunno, one of the helmets that one of the Daft Punk guys wears? Anyway it's interesting and gives some insight into the filmmaking as well. Apparently this was shot in one apartment? 

 

[Andrew POE!]

I wouldn't mind watching Sledgehammer. Maybe I can squeeze it in between watching Robert Altman and Jia Zhangke movies. 

[Curt McGirt]

https://tubitv.com/movies/525831/sledgehammer

Here ya go

 

[twiztor]

@No Point Stance's review of Sledgehammer has me interested in it too. i kind of want it to be our unofficial theme of the year, with anybody that wants to submitting their bonus review of it. Yes, i appreciate the irony of somebody who hasn't even reviewed their given movie looking at a bonus review.

[The Comedian]

Here's the video that inspired me to watch/pick Sledgehammer:

https://youtu.be/tPkSihpYqAo?si=UfJgR5V8rum0mRVu

[odessasteps]

Forgot this had a pretty good theme

[RIPPA]

ALONE IN THE DARK (Jack Sholder, 1982)

(Trailer is very NSFW... which I wish I knew before the boobies started appearing)

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES

SELECTED BY @driver

Justified by being a staple of early 80's late night HBO/Showtime. Can't recall the amount of times I watched AITD and The Boogens. Plus it's got one hell of a cast.

REVIEWED BY @The Comedian

For this year's Secret Satan, I'm reviewing Alone In The Dark, a 1982 thriller. It's an early New Line picture, so there's a good chance Lin Shaye will show up since her brother runs the place. Jack Sholder is directing. Hey, he directed Wishmaster 2 ! Should be fun. Let's check it out...\

We start with a fellow walking into an old-timey diner in the rain. It's Martin Landau, but the folks in the diner call him Preacher. He orders his usual, but things go to shit pretty quickly as he's brought a mutated fish from the hellish kitchen, a frog hops by his plate for good measure, and then the short order cook turns out to be Donald Pleasence with a big cleaver! Preacher suddenly gets chained upside down, and is about to be split in twain the hard way...and then he wakes up from the night mare.

Dr. Dan Potter (Howlin' Mad Murdoch himself, Dwight Schultz) is about to start a new gig at an experimental psychiatric institute called Haven, run by Dr. Leo Bain (Pleasence). Dan gets a taste of Bain's unorthodox methods right away when  he finds out that the woman he thinks is the receptionist (yep, Lin Shaye) is actually a patient. See, she tells him he can't see Dr. Bain because he's invisible. He does get around to seeing Bain eventually, and learning about the facility. Of utmost importance is the third floor, where the dangerous patients are kept. Now if it were up to hippy-dippy Bain, no patients would be locked up, but the government forces him to keep the third floor guys locked away. With ELECTRICITY. This is very important. Bain takes Potter to meet the third floor inhabitants. There's Byron "Preacher" Sutcliffe (Landau), who we already met in the opening dream sequence. He's a pyromaniac religious fanatic. Ronald "Fatty" Elster is a giant chomo. John "The Bleeder" Skaggs is a serial killer who hides his face, and who develops severe nosebleeds after killing. Finally, the leader of the group is Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance, believe it...or not), a deranged former POW. Having been fond of previous doctor Henry Merton, the four take an instant disliking to Potter. In fact, they believe he killed Merton, and plans to kill them as well if they don't formulate a plan...

Back at the Potter residence, it turns out Dan's sister Toni is coming to stay with the family, after having suffered a nervous breakdown. Dan's wife Nell seems hesitant about this at first, but I don't know why because once Toni is there they're pretty much besties. Maybe Nell was worried about backsliding out of her comfortable suburban lifestyle, since Toni soon has her smoking pot, going to a Sic F*cks show, and protesting nuclear power. The set costumers really didn't know what to do with Toni, so she's got purple streaks in her hair, but an outfit that your grandmother would think is too prudish. Watching her try to "mosh" in the pit is pretty funny. Anyway, right in the middle of the F*cks show there's an area-wide blackout. This gives the Third Floor Four their chance to escape. Why? Because the only thing holding them back was ELECTRICITY, remember? They kill their guard and another doctor, steal a car, and head off into town, where they fit right in to the looting. They procure themselves some weapons and new clothes, including a hockey mask for The Bleeder, which seems like a shout-out to the Friday series except Jason literally only debuted the hockey mask himself two months before this film came out, so maybe not. Bleeder soon kills a man, but when the others notice the nosebleed running out from under hos mask, he gets upset and runs off, cutting our madman crew to three.

And this is where Alone In The Dark gets down to brass tacks and reveals it's true self: a siege movie. As the Third Floor gang scouts out the Potter residence, events transpire that eventually lead Potter, Nell, their daughter Lyla, and Toni, as well as a police detective and a nice guy named Tom that Toni met at the nuclear protest, all trapped in the house as the three psychotics torment them. Next thing you know, everything from crossbow bolts to dead bodies come flying in through the windows. Dr. Bain shows up just long enough to play the role of every DC comic psychiatrist who ever thought that they could cure The Joker. Can Dan and his family overcome their terror and secure their home? And hey, whatever happened to The Bleeder?

The siege is really the meat of the film, and it's effectively tense and scary. You'll probably see the twist coming, but it's not poorly done. Palance is surprisingly reserved, while Landau gleefully chews scenery up like a fucking lunatic. Pleasence's typecasting turns out to be a subversion; they may be in the same profession, but Dr. Bain is the polar opposite of Sam Loomis. Schultz may be the guy who did not win Best Actor for playing Oppenheimer, but he's pretty good here in the lead. I enjoyed the movie. 

[odessasteps]

I guess this needs to be a bonus review now. RIP.

[RIPPA]

BONUS REVIEW: WARM BODIES (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

Reviewed by RIPPA

WARM BODIES (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

The Youtube Algorithm genies work in mystical ways. 

I say this because at some point recently – they decided that between watching trailers for the latest Superman movie and all the trailers I go through posting Secret Satan that “Hey! You watched Warm Bodies once! Remember you watched it once! Here are some shorts from it! You watched it once!”

The connection to Superman is that the lead is dreamy Nicholas Hoult right after he stared in whatever X-Men movie he was Beast in. (This was also the same year as Jack the Giant Slayer so… yeah.. Mr. Hoult was lucky Fury Road was right around the corner.)

Warm Bodies is a horror comedy in the same vein as say Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland. It isn’t as good as either movie but I wasn’t angry I watched it. (I think I originally watched it for the Best of the Aughts movie poll. Fuck – I might have even put it on my ballot. Would it make it now? No but neither would probably 75% of the drivel I voted for.) The gimmick with Warm Bodies is that it is Zombie Romeo & Juliet. (Not to be confused with something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and, fuck y’all, I ain’t bonus reviewing that no matter how easy on the eyes Lily James was.)

Hoult’s zombie character is named R. (Yeah – I am gonna warn you now this bit is annoying). The idea is that R is zombie but a “normal” zombie (stick with me) who while undead (this movie defines this as not having a heartbeat) still ambles around doing his normal routine. His best friend is M (Grr…) played by Rob Corddry. These zombies still crave human flesh and brains. For R it is because when he eats brains – he experiences their memories. These zombies are different from the Boneys who are zombie zombies is that they don’t have flesh anymore and have CGI on par with the skeletons in The Mummy (but still better CGI than say World War Z) and go around killing anything with a heartbeat. 

Now for the other half of our star-crossed lovers, underrated new scream queen Teresa Palmer is Julie (God Bless the person who realized giving humans single letter names would be stupid.) Her Dad is John Malkovich… err.. Colonel Grigio (I take back what I said about stupid names nor am I doing the research to figure out how Grigio is related to Capulet.)

I should say now that I hate Romeo & Juliet and William Shakespeare and everything they both stand for. So, with that being said – this strays away from the traditional R&J plot threads so it makes it a lot more tolerable.

Though it might not be tolerable for you if you are over plots where LOVE WILL SAVE ALL!!! Basically all the normie Zombies starting turning back into human the more time they spent with Julie. I am pretty sure they just hand wave this plot point so don’t ask me for anymore details.

R kills Dave Franco’s character within the first third of the movie so he is easily my favorite Romeo ever. Eating dead boyfriend’s brain is what makes R fall in love with Julie so we really really hand waved that part away when at the end of the movie they are both together as human.

Again – it is much more comedy than horror so you get what you get in this genre meanwhile I have gotten really fucking distracted because I have now learned that Jonathan Levine (who directed this) is directing a movie about the New York Giants where Michael Shannon is playing Bill Parcells and I haven’t been able to process that information in the now two hours I learned about it.

This is why I need to bring back Veteran Presence because Shannon as Parcells and Nicholas Cage as John Madden could have fueled a dozen pieces.