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Released by: AGFA/Something Weird Video
Released on: November 26th, 2021.
Directors: Ray Dennis Steckler, Zebedy Colt, N/A
Cast: Jana Louisa, Jane Tsentas, Lilly Lamer, Jody Maxell, Terri Hall, Zebedy Colt, Judy Angel, Ron Darby, George 'Buck' Flower
1974/1976/1971
Purchase From Vinegar Syndrome
Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Nite - Movie Review:
If you want to get dirty, but not too dirty, once again, AGFA's got you covered. The American Genre Film Archive saw success with their 'Smut Without Smut' theatrical showings and have made the move to bring the experience home with this second volume, a limited edition Blu-ray double feature pairing up a trio of woefully weird Satanic-themed XXX cheapies. The idea behind 'Smut Without Smut' is pretty simple - take some sex films and edit out the sex (or most of it, anyway) to see what you're left with.
Should you opt for the 'Smut Without Smut' option then this disc loads on your player, you're essentially treated to a video mix tape of sorts using a lot of the material from the three movies represented here along with some amusing inserts like vintage commercials and drive-in ads. It is, quite understandably, played for laughs but it does make for a pretty entertaining watch should you not necessarily be in the mood for three short hardcore features.
Thankfully, for those interested in being as dirty as possible, AGFA also includes the full-strength versions of three of the five movies featured here. Ideally we'd have been give uncut version of everything, but there's only so much space on a disc and I'd have to wager that the market for this type of stuff is niche at best, even if we here at R!S!P! headquarters have a real soft spot for it.
Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Night starts off with about ten minutes of footage from Hotter Than Hell. This one stars 'Paul Dodge' along with all your favorites like Jane Fondler, Elizabeth Tail, Raquel Belch, Englebert Humpsalot, Ronald Regalass, Fanny Fiddler and Lotta Goodbody. It was produced and directed by Al Mamar, Ben Cockright worked the camera, Dick Prixon edited the thing and good ol' Rusty Pecker handled the sound. You know you're in good hands with credits like that. The film opens with Satan himself laughing maniacally as the fires of Hell burn all around him. What's so funny? Maybe the naked chicks that his two sons have found. Satan wears a furry pink suit and laughs a lot, drinking out of a big goblet and sitting in a fancy chair while his kids whip chicks. This isn't quite enough for Satan, however, as he decides to send his two goofball sons back to Earth to corrupt some women and send them to Hell so that he can get his kicks. This material is pretty funny and the scenes that take place in Hell are awesome because they kind of look like what you think Hell would look like if it were portrayed in a high school drama class or something. Also Satan's costume and incessant laughing is awesome. Judy Angel has a small, uncredited role in this one as Donna. It would have been cool to get the uncut version of this on the disc but that didn't happen (though it is on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome and reviewed here).
After that we get roughly fifteen minutes of footage from Ray Dennis Steckler's Sacrilege. This one is highlighted in Smut Without Smut but also presented in its uncut form. The first of the three films on the disc, its uncut form, tells the story of a sexy witch named Cassandra (Jane Louisa credited as Jane Tsentas) who runs around the hills, Bat Pussy style, without much rhyme or reason, her evil cape flowing behind her during these strange, prolonged scenes. While running around, Cassandra meets up with studly young Jay and before you know it she's morphed into a sort of sexy bookworm type chick from her previous evil persona.
The pair hangs out for a bit and it turns out that they're both into the occult. They head back to her place, a cat turns into a weird old dude with a creepy smile, and Jay soon figures this bitch be a witch! Then pow! Cassandra turns into her evil witch self again, jumps around the room and seduces him into making hairy, hairy love with her by way of some strange gurgly cat noises. Later on, Jay talks his girlfriend into swinging by for kicks. She arrives and Jay is out cold. She finds herself drugged and wakes up bound and the cat turns into the freaky bearded guy again. What the fuck is going on in this movie? Soon enough, beardo is humping the gal, and people get it on. Once Cassandra has had her way, Jay and his lady friend make their escape and that's pretty much it.
This movie is mesmerizing in its stupidity. Far more interesting as a curio than any sort of cinematic, well, anything it's hard not to find yourself amused by the sheer lunacy of Steckler's attempts at eroticism. Whoever did Cassandra's eyebrow make up deserves an award and the idea whoever came up with the idea of having a cat turn into a creepy bearded guy deserves at least a high five or two.
After that, we get roughly ten minutes of clips from Sexual Awareness, courtesy of Occult Films and a director named Otto! A neat Tarot Card opening segues into a guy reading aloud from a text over a naked woman on a table, candles all around them. Clearly some sort of ritual is going on. A heavily made up woman watches as the other woman is inducted into the cult and she gets to have sex with a guy named Jerome but it's cut and we don't really see it. Then Jerome and the cult walk around the woods a bit and give a business card to a gal who brings it home to the three-way she's having with her guy and a foxy black chick. The black chick, Diane Smith, decides to check the place to learn more about the occult and she gets naked on the altar just like in the opening scene. A cop with frizzy hair shows up to ruin the cult leader's fun.
Moving right along, we get to check out fourteen minutes of Satan's Lust. In the uncut form for this one, Pamela Goodnight (Judy Angel) and her boyfriend Wayne, who is some sort of chemist, are bound and determined to find out how her good friend Carla, who could not drive, died behind the wheel of a car in a fatal accident. As the pair starts to investigate, they learn that Carla was, in fact, killed by a group of Satanists, one of whom is an ancient witched named Edith who, like all good Satanists, has a dimwitted assistant named Boris. They have ties to a movie producer named Manheim (played amazingly by George 'Buck' Flower) who uses some of his employees in the group's devilish rituals. Somewhat tellingly, Manheim's production is called 'Satanic Films,' which really should be a red flag to anyone expecting to work with him. Anyway, Pamela and Wayne make contact with Manheim and he instantly knows something is up with them. Edith, however, likes what she sees in Wayne and turns into a cat and then back into a woman so that she can have sex with him. Meanwhile, Boris tries to abduct Pamela, the poor gal later hypnotized by evil Manheim who coerces her, while under his control, to strip for him. Satanic shenanigans continue and eventually Pamela is offered up as a sexy gift to the devil himself (or, at least guy in a goofy devil mask pretending to be the devil himself).
The right mix of silly and sexy, Satan's Lust offers up the typical 'less than perfect' looking performers you expect to see in no-budget early seventies fuck films, but Judy Angel gets full marks for at least trying to bring some heat now and then. The bulk of the movie that isn't made up of bumping and grinding is, thankfully, made up of some dime store horror movie efforts, and it's here that the movie really entertains. Flower steals a lot of the scenes in the film, playing his sleazy part full tilt and going full weirdo more often than not. The guy in the devil mask is also pretty fun to watch, clearly having a good time here. It's hard to take any of it seriously, and it's doubtful that we were ever meant to in the first place.
Lastly, we're treated to roughly seventeen minutes of footage from The Devil Inside her. This film, set in the 1826, was directed by Zebedy Colt. In it, we follow the story of a young woman named Faith Hammond (Terri Hall) who lives on a farm with her father, Ezekiel (played by Colt himself, of course!) and her sister Hope (Jody Maxwell). Ezekiel has raised his girls with rigid adherence to his Christian faith, playing his parental role with the strictest of attitudes. When he learns that Faith has been, gasp, holding hands with a farmhand named Joseph (Dean Tait), he strips his daughter down to her birthday suit and gives her a thrashing with his whip! Faith would love nothing more than to take Joseph as her lawfully wedded husband, and he reciprocates her feelings, but Hope's lust for the hunky worker obviously complicates things. In order to steal Joseph away from her sister, Hope summons the devil himself (Rod DuMont) to break them up and send him her way. Of course, you can't make a deal with the devil and get off easily, not even in a creaky old porno movie, and soon enough ol' Scratch is working out his kinks not just with Hope, but with everyone else in the family as well, using his shape changing abilities to get into the pants of all three of the Hammonds and coerce them into screwing one another's brains out.
Well-paced and plenty weird, The Devil Inside Her actually features some pretty decent performances. Rod DuMont is a blast to watch as the devil, made up here to look rather ridiculous but somehow, still quite cool in an odd way. He sort of looks like Gene Simmons from Kiss, and he sports a dog collar and a cape. Colt gives his all in both the dramatic moments and the sex scenes, while Terri Hall and Jody Maxwell each look great and do fine job handling the material. Look for a young Annie Sprinkle in an orgy scene. The psychedelic paint swirling used in the opening credits adds some creativity to the proceedings, but the film never succeeds in convincing us that it really is set in the 1800's, as characters are clearly wearing what was, in the seventies at least, some modern clothing. Still, this is a fairly wacky movie and like most of Colt's work, shatters some taboos and stands out as…. something.
Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Nite - Blu-ray Review:
All of this sleaze is presented on a 50GB disc framed at 1.33.1 taken from 'new 2K preservations from 16mm prints from the Something Weird Video and AGFA vaults.' Presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition, we're at the mercy of the available elements here but don't let that dissuade you. Compression is fine, and there are no problems with any noise reduction or edge enhancement, these transfers always look like film, which is exactly how we want it! Print damage isn't uncommon throughout any of the features but the transfers are stable and show considerably better detail than previous DVD editions ever have.
Each film gets a 16-bit DTS-HD Mono audio track. Optional subtitles are provided in English only. The audio fares better than you might expect it to. There's some hiss here and there but it's minor, and the tracks are well-balanced on both films. Range is, quite understandably, limited but dialogue, is a bit flat sounding in spots, is always easy to understand.
Aside from the 'Smut Without Smut' option and the three features presented uncut, the disc also includes menus and feature selection, that's it. As far as the packaging goes, we get a very cool limited edition slipcover and some slick cover sleeve art that features some equally slick art and trade dress on one side and a poignant still from one of the features on the reverse.
Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Nite - The Final Word:
AGFA's Blu-ray release of Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Nite is a serious kick! The presentations are at the mercy of the available elements but they are considerably better than previous DVD editions ever have been and it's great to have the three films presented in both neutered and proper uncut incarnations.
Click on the images below for full sized Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Nite Blu-ray screen caps!
