Legacy of Satan (Damiano, 1974)
When I'd first learned that Gerard Damiano had directed a horror movie, I was immediately intrigued. Not just because movies about devil worshippers and the like, which this one is, tickle my fancy, but because I was interested to see how Damiano would channel his style into material outside his usual genre. Having seen the film, I don't know how much Damiano I could discern in the finished product, but I will concede that most of the film's interest comes from viewing it through that lens. The movie is pretty slight and not very good, but not totally unenjoyable if your partial to marginally budgeted horror movies. Probably the biggest surprise is the lack of nudity and sex in this, given Damiano's background in hardcore pornography. On one hand, those elements, while common in horror, aren't necessary for the genre to work. On the other hand, you can see in his hardcore work how the sex scenes lent charge to the dramatic elements and gave the narrative structure and momentum.
This movie came out the same year as the excellent
Memories Within Miss Aggie, and that movie deepens its sense of dread and our understanding of the heroine's psyche with each successive sex scene. (That movie can only loosely be considered a horror movie, but is a lot more effective than this one in that respect.) This movie, without any real set pieces to structure itself around, feels like a comparatively flat experience. (There are ritual scenes but the don't really ground the movie in the same way.) It has something of an arc in the heroine achieving self actualization through her recruitment into and ascension in a satanic cult, but the events that play out feel oddly shapeless, without much sense of escalation. The movie also fails to give us an understanding of who the character was before the plot kicks in, so there isn't much resonance to what transpires. (The fact is that Damiano, like most people but especially so, doesn't have the same relationship with devil worship as he does with sex, and isn't able to give the material the same charge.) This flatness and underdevelopment of characters does at least help enhance the threat posed by the cult, particularly in defining the totally milquetoast husband. This guy's supposed to resist the influence of the devil? Fat chance.
The movie mocks him further when the protagonists are invited to a "costume party" thrown by the cult, and he's stuck wearing a jester costume while his wife gets a flowing white dress. Also on the costume front, it's worth noting that the female cultists mostly get flowing dresses while many of the men are stuck with black hoods and underpants, so this contemptuous wardrobing carries over to the rest of the cast. Some of the more important male cultists get garishly coloured puffy shirts, including one guy with a beard who strongly resembles Damiano but is in fact not him if the IMDb cast list can be trusted. Alas, this movie has no Gerard Damiano cameo. (My favourite of the ones I've seen is his brief but effective role as a probably-mob-affiliated financier in
Skin Flicks, where he demonstrated real acting chops while proving crucial to the film's dramatic arc.)
Also, while this is obviously made on a low budget, and it definitely shows in the meager effects (sporadic drops of blood and facial scars), but it doesn't feel squalid, thanks to the astutely chosen sets. (This is one department where it feels like Damiano is pulling from his usual genre, leaning on stylish decor to class his movie up just a touch.) The movie was shot by Joao Fernandes, a prolific cinematographer of hardcore movies and occasional collaborator of Damiano, and he bathes the movie in attractive, Hammer-inspired lighting, while the downmarket production values provide an not ineffective feeling of confinement. (Fernandes shot the aforementioned
Aggie, and later worked on a bunch of Cannon productions as well as the most technically adept
Friday the 13th movie,
Part IV: The Final Chapter.) Sinister electronic fuzz permeates the soundtrack, setting an appropriate tone for the bizarre rituals and occasional bloodletting that transpires. And given my weakness for atmospheric scenes where characters walk down corridors, this movie has a pretty good one. Like I said, not a very good movie on the whole, but there are things to enjoy.