Most small children are disturbed and frightened by movies they were too young to have ever watched. I, on the other hand, had shaking nightmares simply about the VHS box for The Brotherhood of Satan, creating a dreamworld of horrific visions that recently came back the other night after I viewed the flick for the first time ever — and still about that damn VHS box!
In case you never saw the box, it was released on cheapo label GoodTimes Home Video sometime in the late ’80s. The cover featured the head satanist handling a knife as a couple of absolutely catatonic kids stood behind him, if I remember it correctly. It was one of the worst images in my fragile mind for a long time, only because it seemed so real, thanks to parents who put the fear of Satan deep in me.
Although the movie has a few solid Luciferian chills here and Mephisto-friendly spills there, it’s too bad there was no way for it to live up to the prepubescent expectation of downright fear and absolute loathing. I should have known better.
Playing out like a big-budget retelling of Manos: The Hands of Fate, a road-tripping family is caught in a small town when their car breaks down; as they try to find help, children drive voodoo-inclined army tanks over anyone entering city limits. I’m not sure how these travelers got passed them, but as they try to convince the yokel cops that something strange is afoot, their small daughter suddenly disappears.
Turns out a group of elderly satanists are trying to possess the kids, if only so they can live another some-odd hundred years. Truthfully, if I had to stay in that shitty small town, I’d just let the Lord take my soul because I ain’t doing another century of that.
Helmed by television director Bernard McEveety and surprisingly produced by character actors L.Q. Jones and Alvy Moore, The Brotherhood of Satan has a trace of a frighteningly good idea here — one fraught with my own childhood fears of who we’re taught satanists truly are. For all of their dark intentions, they just can’t pull it off.
If you ever hear about a documentary regarding spooky video slipcases and the nightmares they invoked in kid, please point it my way. —Louis Fowler