The Brotherhood of Satan

The surprisingly maligned and underrated horror movie Brotherhood of Satan is an atypical project for its time, as it has more in common with European horror movies than with American productions of the given era. It imaginatively combines the anxiety-inducing Spanish film Who Can Kill a Child? with the Italian tradition of disturbingly irrational and unhinged scenes in the style of the Italian school, particularly the most significant works of Lucio Fulci; however, it is necessary to add that that Bernard McEveety’s work predates the above-mentioned classics by many years. Though horror fans disparage the film for its loose pacing and long passages in which nothing happens, which they liken to filler sequences in low-grade trash flicks, Brotherhood of Satan demands a much more perceptive viewer. Such viewer is then rewarded with subtle terror, which (like more recent classics) is not rationalised in any way. The narrative is built on the alternating of bizarre phenomena with seemingly everyday events, by means of which it frames the rational characters’ internal struggle with madness. As such, the film doesn’t contain any superficial attractions, so anything fantastical and all of the horror seemingly appears to be inadvertent (see the brilliant scene of the bodies being placed in the temporary morgue). At the very core of the film, there is tense exaggeration of intergenerational conflicts, where adults are threatened both by the irrationality and boundless imagination of children and by an old man’s fanatical clinging to life. The motif of terror from a child’s imagination is particularly horrifying, as it literally materialises and becomes an implement of evil. In comparison with these coldly depicted passages, the hysterically affected passages with satanic retirees filmed in expressive camera compositions come across as being even more intense. Brotherhood of Satan is not a movie for horror enthusiasts longing for superficial attractions. Rather, it is a treat for an audience with a refined sense of irrational terror and a subtly built atmosphere of unarticulated danger. 9/10 (18.05.2014)

The American film The Brotherhood of Satan is slightly harmed by the fact that it drags a bit, that in a large part of the scenes you have the feeling that nothing is really going on. However, it's still quite interesting and also quite an old example of a good satanic horror film. Unfortunately, the pace is also detrimental to the final climax, which doesn't have as much gusto as it probably should. That seems like a shame to me, this film needed a stronger push. (04.06.2019)