The history of exploitation is filled with directors who bounced back and forth between horror and erotica, though no one had a track record quite like the bizarre one of San Francisco filmmaker Nick Millard, who went by numerous pseudonyms over the course of his career. Even today the full extent of his output hasn't been firmly established, with several titles playing at one or two theaters before vanishing or never being released altogether. However, the one title of his that broke through to significant cult popularity, albeit over a very long period of time, is his wild proto-slasher Criminally Insane, which is driven by the astonishing performance by Priscilla Alden who reprised her role in 1987's shot-on-video Criminally Insane 2 (a.k.a. Crazy Fat Ethel II) and starred in two sorta-non-Millard slashers, Death Nurse and Death Nurse 2. This one also spawned a 2016 remake and would seem ripe for some maniacal theater kids to put on a Sweeney Todd-style musical someday, but there's really no replacing the original which packs quite a bit of insanity into its one-hour running time. Shot in 1973, this one was released in 1975 and sold around as a package deal with another one-hour Millard wonder, Satan's Black Wedding, an occult extravaganza that mixes Satansim, vampirism, and experimental techniques into a moody little offering that's stuck with the first feature on both DVD and a 2024 Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

Despite her doctor's reservations, the hefty Ethel Janowski (Alden) is released from a mental institution into the care of her grandmother (Lambert) who promptly locks up the food cupboards to keep Ethel down to three reasonable meals a day. Needless to say, Ethel doesn't take kindly to being separated from the food supply and goes berserk with a kitchen knife. Soon others are falling prey to her homicidal, food-driven mania including a grocery delivery boy, but things get complicated with the arrival of Ethel's hooker sister, Rosalie (Farros), who then invites her jerk pimp boyfriend John (Flood) to move in as well. Obviously this will not go well.

With its generous splashes of paint-style blood and mounting number of bodies piling up inside the house, Criminally Insane plays its study in psychopathic behavior a lot straighter than the campy approach you might expect. The result is off-kilter and compelling, with Ethel making for a memorable protagonist whose laser-honed focused on getting her fill of Nilla Wafers has you weirdly rooting for her, even against the obligatory investigating cop played by veteran character actor and occasional sex film guest George "Buck" Flower. It's no wonder this one caught dedicated VHS hounds' attention back in the '80s when its distinctive, bright yellow VHS box from World Video Pictures seemed to be in every single mom and pop store around, and coverage by genre mags like Deep Red continued to bolster its reputation. In 2005, E.I Independent Cinema's Shock-o-Rama line issued this on DVD with Satan's Black Wedding and Criminally Insane II all on one disc. Extras include audio commentaries by Millard and Irmi Millard moderated by 42nd Street Pete, plus standalone video interviews with Millard about Criminally Insane (7m19s) and Satan's Black Wedding (5m1s) and a joint one with Alden (9m42s) about their collaborations together, with the star looking a lot more elegant here than in her signature role!

As for Satan's Black Wedding, it's also a compact and frequently bloody saga that begins with author Nina (Milano) being driven to slash her wrists in extremely bloody fashion by a wild-eyed Father Daken (Myles), a former Catholic priest now turned powerful Satanist. As it turns out, he and his followers weren't too pleased about a book Nina was writing that would expose occult practices on the California coast, and now her actor brother Mark (Braddock) shows up for the funeral intent on finding out what happened. He teams up with Nina's writing assistant, bookshop owner Jean (Whiting), and beings a romantic relationship when they aren't sifting through clues with the police department. Meanwhile the devil worshipers are raising people from the dead as fanged fiends and seem to have a sinister plot in mind for Mark that might have something to do with the film's title.

Though this obviously isn't in the same league as Messiah of Evil, it does have some of that same woozy seaside atmosphere and dreamlike plotting. The vampire element is barely there and has no impact on the story, but the Satanic stuff works better with a nice paranoid delirium worked up on the way to a truly perverse twist ending you have to see to believe. The actors (mostly plucked from the theater scene around Monterey) are all fine, but probably because there isn't anyone here remotely as forceful as Alden, this has never enjoyed the same level of popularity as Criminally Insane. It's still a fun one though and not a bad way to pass an hour and change.

The discovery of the original 16mm reversals for both films in the Millard material means the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray will be a real treat for fans as well as an ideal way to see these for the first time for newbies. Criminally Insane actually looked pretty solid on DVD already, though this obviously improves quite a bit in terms of detail as well as more neutral color timing. Satan's Black Wedding is a radical improvement across the board, with the film now restored to its original widescreen dimensions with a great deal of extra info on the sides and much better compositions, black levels, and everything else you could name throughout. A few bits were missing from both and had to be slugged in from 35mm blow-up internegatives, but it's still a lot better than what we've had before. As an opening disclaimer notes, there's also an audio dropout early on in Criminally Insane that's been inherent in the film throughout its entire history. Otherwise the DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono tracks for both sound fine for what they are, with optional English SDH subtitles provided. The relevant extras from the DVD (both commentaries and the three short featurettes) are ported over here, plus fine new tracks by Millie De Chirico and Liz Purchell for Criminally Insane and Brian Albright for Satan's Black Wedding. You get a lot here including thoughts on the depictions of larger physiques, how these films were first experienced, background on Millard and his influences as well as the other participants, the creation of sets at the director's house (including his garage), and the joys of cheap-jack vampire fangs. "Remains To Be Seen" (17m52) is an interesting peek at the work done starting in 2023 when Vinegar Syndrome acquired Millard's film collection, which entailed identifying and sorting out hordes of films in everything from cans to trash bags and cleaning up everything as much as possible. In "Right Out of Left Field" (48m3s), Stephen Thrower takes an extensive and rewarding look at both films and Millard's overall early career including his early days working at movie theaters and his progression to making quickie exploitation films.

CRIMINALLY INSANE (Blu-ray)

CRIMINALLY INSANE (DVD)

SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING (Blu-ray)

SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING (DVD)

Reviewed on July 21, 2024