This movie is hilarious, quite simply put. What’s even funnier is that some people think it’s real. It’s a scripted faux “Mondo” style globe-hopping documentary on the worship of Satan, every bit of it dreamed up by a writer and performed by stock or non-actors who were following a screenplay, of sorts. Yes, Anton LeVay makes an appearance, but the Walrus was Paul etc: It’s just nonsense, but great for the press to putter about, and LeVay agreed to be in the film (plus another he participated in, SATANIS: THE DEVIL’S MASS) as a publicity stunt for his Church of Satan nightclub.
The narrator of the English language version is a treasure: It’s actually frequent genre actor/star Edward Purdom, and the tip-off to what is going on should be his blasé description of an initiation ritual in which a young supplicant’s slim, sexy body is ceremonially covered in blood from a severed boar’s head — shown from multiple, up-close tight angles. I am sure such a ritual actually exists, somewhere, but come on … This could be a long Monty Python sketch about otherwise ordinary British twits (played by Italians) going about their lives as hen-sacrificing, orgy participating followers of Satan, only there’s no punchline. It’s all straight man material, poker faced in sincerity about pretending to show us the alleged pastimes of various satanists, and describing it all in the same way that a NOVA episode about Amazon rain forest tribespeople might be narrated.
The film *IS* rather dated — the surviving home video prints look very old, tired, washed out, and about five generations of dubbing old. There’s a shorter version called WITCHCRAFT 70 that you can sometimes find online as prior rentals, then a super rare longer version called WHITE ANGELS, BLACK ANGELS that purports to be uncut. It probably is, but the print used was so shabby and over-used when transferred that it’s hard to tell: splice damage is rampant, the film has a discontinuous narrative, it’s more a collection of oddly staged little scenes cleverly edited together by someone with a very offbeat sense of humor.
A lot of the hilarity seems inadvertent, but then again you never know. The whole idea of this school of film-making is a put-on, and if you aren’t in on the joke you might actually think that some inventive film crew actually did get access to forbidden rituals & film events as they were really taking place. I think a better question would be, how accurate is the depiction of dark worship presented? I don’t doubt for a minute that some of the participants actually are coven members re-enacting their little orgies or whatever, but the point of the film was to entertain, not educate, indoctrinate or even shed light on Satanic worship. It’s almost pure exploitation, and only notorious because of the subject matter & amount of bare naked bodies. I will concede that it goes on for about a half hour longer than it really needed to: My attention started to wane at about the sixty minute mark, though I am sure that if you are into this kind of stuff it will all be riveting … even the repeated night shots of a city skyline. Which must have looked pretty cool to the cameraman tripping on the hillside, but don’t mean much on a small screen.
Still, it’s a priceless movie, especially with that hilarious narration. As Homer Simpson might put it, “It’s funny because they seem to be so serious about something so stupid.” Hilarious.
