There's really no suspense in this glorification of the occult that has a young lady become involved with her devil worshiper distant family members after some sort of spell has her witness her parents being burnt alive after a supposed car accident in front of her uncle's house. Wandering around the grounds of a part of her family she had never met up to this point, she realizes that she has been there before, perhaps in a past life. As seen in a flashback, a totally different girl is shown being whipped, branded and possibly burnt alive. The film also opens with a brutal rape that shows the victim lying dead. Another gory scene has a man stuck frantically in an elevator and then walking off the roof to a (shown) gruesome end. Both disgusted by the themes and lack of a concrete story, I also found the nudity pointless and gratuitous. If that's your cup of tea, dig right in. But if you want a story or even suspenseful frights, don't bother. There are much better occult films out there that won't waste your time. I found this one, even with the presence of Michael Gough as the uncle, a total waste.

Pretty nineteen-year-old Catherine (Candace Glendenning) travels to the countryside with her parents to visit the home of her Uncle Alexander (Michael Gough) and cousin Stephen (Martin Potter). As they approach the house, the car crashes into a tree. Catherine gets out of the car out to seek help, but both her mother and father are killed when the vehicle suddenly bursts into flame. Catherine spends the next few days in the country, convalescing, unaware that her uncle and cousin are planning to use her in a Satanic ritual that will see her body becoming the vessel for the spirit of a long dead sorceress.David McGillivray's screenplay for Satan's Slave is a mess of hoary old genre clichés and director Norman J. Warren conducts proceedings with very little finesse, but this mid-'70s Satanic horror is still one hell of a fun film thanks to an excess of those basic horror ingredients, gratuitous female nudity and graphic gore. Barely a few minutes go by without one of the film's females stripping off for the camera (there's more bush here than Kew Gardens), while the frequent violence is surprisingly nasty in tone and excessively bloody, which makes one wonder why this wasn't one of those titles hounded by the authorities in the '80s.Assorted gory stabbings, a man falling to his death from a tower block with a satisfying splat, a woman pinned to a door by a knife through the mouth, a naked blonde being flogged and branded, a nail file in the eye, and Michael Gough with a massive moustache: this might just be Warren's most entertaining movie.

Charming psycho Stephen (Martin Potter) gets a blonde girl drunk, ties her to the bed and then threatens to do naughty things to her naughty parts with a pair of scissors before she decides she's had enough. On her way out, Stephen smashes her head in the door and then stabs her death in charming close-up. Meanwhile, pretty London teen Catherine Yorke (Candace Glendenning), who is plagued by some odd premonitions, heads out on a week long vacation with her parents to visit some distant relatives she's never met before. Unfortunately, as soon as the car pulls into the secluded Yorke family country estate, the car crashes into a tree in the front yard. When Catherine gets out to get help, the car blows up and kills both dad and mum. Though she's only slightly distraught by the bizarre accident, uncle Alexander Yorke (Michael Gough), who immediately announces he's not only her uncle but also a doctor, decides it would be best if Cathy stayed for a few days to re-coop and get to know him and his son, her cousin… Stephen (the nut from the opening sequence). Also in the house is a bitter "secretary" named Francis (Barbara Kellerman), who is also Stephen's part-time lover.Catherine's premonitions continue, including a strange dream where she's stripped naked by (naked) female cult members, has a pentagram carved into her stomach and a metal staff shoved where the sun don't shine. In another dream, a blonde is stripped naked, branded and whipped by a priest, who is played by writer David McGillivray. A few days after the shock of her parent's death, Catherine feels well enough to screw Stephen (the fact they're first cousins doesn't seem to phase anyone and is never even commented upon once). Francis gets jealous and bitchy ("I won't be rejected for good!") and then decides to get revenge on Stephen by helping out Catherine and explaining the devious plans her uncle and kissin' cousin have in store for her. See, there's a family ancestor named Camilla who is powerful witch that can only be revived by the blood of a direct female descendant. Guess who that is?Shot in Surrey, England, this OK exploitation jumble has gobs of full female nudity (that the cameraman doesn't hesitate to get close-ups on), some gore (sometimes employing an obvious dummy) and surprisingly good acting from the four leads. The script stinks to high heavens and the ending is poor, but it's lively enough to keep you watching for an hour and a half.

The works of Norman J Warren and David McGillivray can be likened to the little girl with the little curl - when they're good (FRIGHTMARE, TERROR) they're very very good, and when they're bad, they're horrid. SATAN'S SLAVE completely lacks the edgy, tense, paranoid atmosphere of foreboding doom that marked Warren's later work (including the unfairly maligned INSEMINOID) and the gleeful nastiness that made McGillivray's collaborations with Pete Walker memorable, and the result is a tedious experience indeed, with a sub-standard Michael Gough performance, several sequences that make little sense (though the version I saw was probably hacked to pieces by the sensitive souls at the BBC - good of them to leave the eyeball gouging intact though!) and a central premise that just seems corny to our modern sensibilities. The opening credits should give you your first warning that something's amiss, because no fewer than FIVE directors of photography are credited, which is probably why the overall look of the film is so muddled - for every sequence that musters a degree of low-budget atmosphere, there are several that have the over-lit, barrel-scraping feel of a cheap public information film. Warren seemed remarkably unconcerned about coaxing decent performances from the cast at this stage, and the number of alternate versions suggests he wasn't too bothered about creating a definitive director's cut either. In all, a sad disappointment and a missed opportunity - I much prefer Warren as an unsubtle misanthropist to his mantle here as a bargain basement Roman Polanski.One other thing - the ident at the beginning for the film's distributors Brent Walker is pretty good, with a great synthesizer fanfare, like the old Cannon movies ident from the eighties, only cheap-looking. Catch it if you can!