Color, 1979, 64 mins. 35 secs. / 77 mins. 19 secs. / 92 mins. 49 secs.
Directed by Bart La Rue
Starring Sally Schermerhorn, Jimmy Drankovitch, Jane August
AGFA (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD)


Continuing its mission to Satan Wardredge up oddities from the darkest, dustiest corners of the American horror landscape, Satan WarAGFA presents the mind-bruised Satan War, the only fictional directorial effort for onetime TV sitcom actor and voiceover artist Bart La Rue. Never released theatrically but aired on television a handful of times (which served as the source for a bootleg British VHS release), this take the slow burn haunted house story to masochistic extremes with a droning, endlessly repetitive synthesizer score that will either rock your world or drive you insane. The end result almost feels like a precursor to Skinamarink in its lingering focus on walls, minor production design elements, or utter darkness, and if you're expecting an actual battle involving Satan... well, adjust your expectations accordingly.

As the narrator (La Rue himself) informs us, evil forces are tricky devils as we behold two days in the lives of Louise and Bill Foster (Schermerhorn and Satan WarDrankovitch). Satan WarThey're ecstatic about landing their dream home, and just after moving in their furniture, they're being besieged by terrifying occurrences like a little cross on the wall turning upside down (sloooowly) and kitchen chairs bumping Louise in the butt. Things escalate when the coffee pot lets loose a torrent of chocolate cake-style sludge all over the kitchen, followed by green goop materializing across the floor and an invisible presence groping Louise after a shower. Our desperate couple turns to help to rid their house of the unclean forces at work, but is it too late?

It isn't too difficult to figure out why there wasn't a line around the block to distribute this one back in the day, given that it has no scares, violence, nudity, or coherent human behavior. That said, the dreamy, hypnotic aesthetic has a certain something to it that can click in the right circumstances, though your response might also depend on the version you watch. The initial cut of the film came in at a skimpy 64 minutes, so La Rue padded it out to 77 minutes by adding a long, funky opening with a Satantic cult in black robes performing a ritual and doing lots of interpretive dancing. Apparently this still wasn't enough to make it marketable, so an even longer 92-minute option was Satan Warcreated by adding an endless, very dark voodoo ceremony that has nothing to do with anything. La Rue himself provided more narration for both of these added sequences, which at least sort of ties it all together Satan Warin some sense.

All three versions are present on the AGFA Blu-ray, which wisely defaults to the shortest cut in the main menu with the other two tucked in the special features. The presentation here comes from the 16mm answer print, the best surviving source, so it's an "it is what it is" prospect that's as good as it's going to get. The DTS-HD MA English 2.0 mono audio is fine for what it is, with optional English SDH subtitles included. The 64-minute cut also comes with a new audio commentary by Kristin La Rue, the director's daughter, and AGFA’s Joe Ziemba, which is an invaluable account of how this film came about and a history of the filmmaker's wild life and career including his start working in a circus and doing theater. She also goes into how they used the family home as the central location, what he was going for doing this after his only other feature (the far more widely seen semi-documentary The Ark of Noah), the effects of his own Christianity on his work, and the mysteries that still linger about some of the participants on this project and its eventual fate. Also included is a new interview with Stephen Thrower (17m19s), very much in Nightmare USA mode here as he addresses the comparisons to The Amityville Horror, the film's refusal to play by any standard rules of genre filmmaking, and the unique qualities that make it worth checking it out if you want something very outside the box.

Reviewed on January 26, 2025