After writer Nina (Lisa Milano) inexplicably commits suicide, her brother, Hollywood actor Mark Gray (Greg Braddock), tries to find out why, his investigation leading him to an old church where a cult of vampires plan to invoke the devil to preside over an unholy 'black wedding'.Even with a scant running time of just over an hour, Satan's Black Wedding, from director Nick Millard, is still a real test of endurance, the film being inept in almost every department: the script is crazy bad, amateur actors struggle to keep their plastic joke-shop fangs in place, the blood is obviously bright red paint, the day-for-night shooting still looks like broad daylight, the sound is diabolical (in one scene, the dialogue is almost drowned out by the noise of nearby traffic and passing aircraft), and a pair of rats look embarrassed to be involved (at least the humans had a say in the matter).While some people clearly enjoy Millard's work for its sheer clumsiness, I can't bring myself to rate it any more than 2/10—the same low rating that I also gave to Millard's previous movie, Crazy Fat Ethel (1975).

Sexploitation director Nick Millard dabbled in the horror genre a few times in his career. His best known effort in this capacity is the howlingly stupid "Criminally Insane" a.k.a. "Crazy Fat Ethel" (itself followed by a sequel). Then there's this cheap and tacky opus, which is decidedly more obscure. Lovers of genre rarities and bad movies will likely get a kick out of it. It may not be quality stuff, but it has a certain clunky charm, and lots of gory imagery to please splatter aficionados.Greg Braddock stars as Mark Gray, an actor who travels to North California to attend the funeral of his sister. She's supposedly committed suicide, but it turns out that she ain't dead. She's *undead* now. And she goes about attacking their aunt, the aunt's housekeeper, and other unlucky people.The movie comes complete with some delicious hambone acting by Ray Myles as the sinister Father Daken. This role is the most fun and has the most colourful dialogue / exposition. Braddock is an utter stiff, but Lisa Milano seems to be enjoying herself as the now predatory sister, sporting some utterly hilarious, ridiculous looking vampire teeth. The guy playing the intrepid detective Lt. Scott certainly looks his part."Satan's Black Wedding" is expectedly crude, but it's pretty amusing in its own silly way. The out of tune piano score is just icing on this cheesecake.And the run time is only 63 minutes, so it won't take too much time out of anyones' life.Five out of 10.

This is an obscure little low-budget exploitation flick from the mid-70's. Just how obscure are we talking? Well, this review will be number six here at IMDb. Only three actors are being credited for this movie, if the cast list is any indication. This flick is so unheard of that nobody involved with it even bothered to track down the five or six other actors that appear in this movie. That's saying quite a lot, really. I personally acquired this on a triple-movie DVD set along with two other Nick Millard movies, CRIMINALLY INSANE and its sequel. I have no idea what the other options are in terms of availability for SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING.This movie was released during a time when horror often dealt with Satanism and the rise of the devil himself. It very much rides the coattails of popularity from similarly-themed movies such as ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST and even lesser-known titles from the drive-in movie circuit. SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING was definitely a bandwagon-jumper, and not an especially good one, at that.First, the good things about this movie: as other reviews have mentioned, the atmosphere is very dark and spooky, in a way unseen in later horror films. The opening shots of a Goya painting, coupled with creepy, off-kilter piano music, certainly set the stage for a genuinely disturbing movie. The score for this movie was very well placed, as were many of the sets and locations.On the other hand, this is a very cheap movie, and finding professional actors must have been rather tricky. Many of the actors, most of whom are not listed on IMDb, were pretty wooden. The special effects aren't much to write home about, either. The bright red "70's blood," as I call it, is to be expected, but the vampire teeth used for the undead Satanists looked as though they were purchased out of one of those 25-cent vending machines seen in the opening walkways at your local department stores--the kind you might have used as a child while completing a Dracula costume for Halloween. It's hard to be scared of creatures with those plastic monstrosities sticking out of their mouths.The plot is pretty basic. Mark, a young actor and Elvis Presley lookalike, arrives in town to investigate the mysterious death of his sister. As he continues searching, he finds that she was involved in a bizarre underground cult of devil-worshippers who, through some sort of dark rites, are able to reanimate the dead as some sort of Satanic vampire things that bite necks and suck the blood from the living.This is a fun movie for those who enjoy cheap horror flicks that virtually nobody has ever heard of. I can honestly recommend this for that crowd. For those who prefer a higher-budget flick or something that had a little more talent behind it, I'd suggest steering clear of this one.

*minor spoilers*A man travels to California to unravel the mystery surrounding his sister's death. He learns that she had been writing a novel about Satanism, and spent much of her time at an old church outside of town. Soon, he begins seeing her in the company of a creepy-looking priest(and with a decidedly bigger and sharper set of chompers than he'd remembered), and eventually learns a horrifying truth...that he and his sister have been chosen by Satan to be wed in very unholy matrimony, and to become the proud vampire parents of the Antichrist.SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING is an under-the-radar obscurity still largely unnoted by the votary of horror fans...an unfortunate thing, because for all its technical shortcomings(production values are nearly nonexistent), this gritty grassroots flick actually delivers in a strange way. It's thick with eerie emanation, and serves up some surprisingly savage vampire attacks. The affrightment is beneficially italicized by the film's gloomy score(of mostly spare, crunching piano), and a cast of total nobodies perform acceptably for such a proletarian production.A strange little appurtenance from the muster of 70s drive-in horror, SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING is a film many will disregard as tossable schlock. That being stated, it may just as well prove a rewarding excavation for those drawn to remote film oddities.5/10