Burl reviews Satan's Blade! (1982)

Ha ha and big bears, it’s Burl, here with another movie to review! No, there are no big bears in this picture, but I believe it was shot in the vicinity of Big Bear, California, several years before its release! Ha ha, the picture is called Satan’s Blade, and it’s usually listed as a movie from 1984, but the copyright date at the end is 1982, so that’s what I went with!

But whenever it was made, Satan’s Blade is a bit of a cronkité! It starts off with a bank robbery which appears to be taking place in somebody’s rumpus room, and leaves two lady tellers gutshot and groaning on the floor! These deaths are typical of the movie’s approach to murder, which generally involves a splash of blood (ha ha, no Special Makeup Effects here!) and the victim writhing around and moaning for about a minute before succumbing! It’s like watching an acting class reel with all the students attempting their own version of a death scene!

Anyway, the big reveal is that the bank robbers were ladies themselves, and then we get a betrayal and another long moaning-and-writhing death, and finally a killing involving the titular blade! After that we move into the meat of the picture: two groups of people, a quartet of galpals here and a pair of couples there, arrive at a snow resort and install themselves in cabins! There’s a lot of chatting, some flirting by the flirtiest of the galpals, much drinking of Jack, incidents of jealousy and a heartwarming scene of near-adultery, and some other doorway dramas; and eventually the local legend of the Very Big Man, who will kill anybody who befouls his territory with their presence, comes to pass, with the devilish knife put to work on the snow resort’s guests! Ha ha, it’s pokings galore!

However, they’re not very good pokings, nor scary ones neither! But what about the Very Big Man, you ask? Ha ha, that sounds interesting! Is it a spirit of Indigenous vengeance, as we saw in The Ghost Dance? Well, sort of! Unlike the similarly real estate-based slashers The Devil Rider or A Bay of Blood, it’s definitely a possession-based situation, but I won’t give away who the possessed one is! I’ll just say it’s one of those slasher movies with a downer ending, like The Dorm That Dripped Blood or something similar! Perhaps the movie this is most similar to is The Slayer, if you removed all of The Slayer’s atmosphere and Special Makeup Effects!

What I’m saying is, Satan’s Blade isn’t a movie I can recommend with one of my trademark laughs of jollity! Ha ha! No, although there was a bit of novelty to the location, and the back story had potential, and the movie follows through on the aura of misanthropy it projects from the opening scenes, and some of the actors performed their characters amusingly (the flirty galpal is my favourite), I’m afraid the utter lack of style and, almost as criminal, the exclusion of any Special Makeup Effects, prevent me from giving Satan’s Blade more than one fast talkin’ radio deputy!