Satan's Black Wedding (1976)

Sometimes a film can have virtually no obvious redeeming qualities, but there's just something to love about it, nonetheless. Director Nick Millard's Satan's Black Wedding falls squarely into this category for me. What's to love about a zero-budget vampire film from the seventies running barely more than an hour? Let's look into it.

Gaunt and haunted-looking woman Nina Gray (Lisa Milano) enters a dark crypt to meet her fate. She slashes her wrists in front of a vampiric-looking man, Father Daken (Ray Myles), who clearly relishes the sight of spilled blood. Later, he presides - in daylight - over Nina's funeral, attended by Nina's brother Mark (Greg Braddock). Mark believes Nina was murdered and Lieutenant Scott (Barrett Cooper) backs up this theory. Nina was found missing the entirety of her blood, and her left ring finger removed.

Searching for answers, Mark runs into Jean Holt (Zarrah Whiting), Nina's writing partner and Mark's ex-girlfriend. Though disgusted by the manuscript of the Satanic novel they were recently working on, Mark resumes their relationship. Their idyll is in danger though, as Nina has risen from the grave as a vampire under the command of the Satanic priest Father Daken, who plans a ceremonial wedding involving Nina and presided over by Satan himself. Can Mark and Jean escape the gruesome fate planned for them by Nina and the vampiric Daken?

Nick Millard has assembled a rough-and-ready little gem here. Well, a gem in my view. Let's look at the obvious shortcomings first. The acting by the cast is universally wooden, save for Ray Myles as the vampire priest. Myles brings a smooth, softly spoken menace to the small role. The score by Roger Stein is really just insistent plunking on the piano, becoming more frenzied as the film progresses. Somehow it adds to the makeshift charm. The sound quality of the film is hissy and compromised, but at least audible. Actors' close-ups are often skewed to the right or left of the frame in an odd way. The make-up is non-existent, other than oversized plastic fangs and fake blood liberally splashed about. The giant fangs actually add an animalistic quality to the undead, protruding from their mouths like a clenched Venus Fly Trap.

Deficiencies aside, there's still much to appreciate about Satan's Black Wedding. Director Millard also wrote the screenplay, which is nothing super-special, but the final film has a sort of grimy, impoverished charm to it. Most of the characters are shot in close-up, which often feels claustrophobic. Many scenes are shrouded in darkness with only pale faces floating in the blackness. I love the atmosphere of this film!

Yes, you may find the look of the vampires risible, but the vampire story itself is effective. Millard has created a new non-Dracula based undead lore based on Satanism that's appropriately macabre. With every corner cut, Satan's Black Wedding still becomes more than the sum of its humble parts, and presents a memorable horror experience.

If you feel like a stripped-back horror movie from the glorious seventies, maybe give this one a view. It's a brisk watch at a little over an hour, with some nicely creepy moments amongst the low budget trappings.

Do have a pleasant evening.