'Brides of Satan' is an action horror exploitation film, broken down into chapters. As we progress through a night of terror, a happy young couple in the dawn of love are kidnapped by a gang of thrill-seeking strippers and a brutal and terrifying evening unfolds. Or so that is how the bio for this film reads, what we actually see unfold on screen is something completely different. Clearly drawing inspiration from the golden era of grind house, 'Brides of Satan' tries to utilise this gritty approach with its cinematography - a tone that very much suits the overall nature of the film. The problem is, this style of filming is used so sporadically (inbetween your standard filming type), and alongside a hyperrealistic colour pallet, collectively, the overall variation of different filming techniques culminate in a converluded and unbalanced end result. This is something that it is not enjoyable to watch, and the director should have committed to one filming style in order to make for more coherent story telling. The main actress, Mary (played by Mindy Robinson) is walking that very fine line between a good and a dreadful performance. One or two more bad scenes and I would have been pulling her performance here apart. The main antagonist of this film, Sidney (played by Alice McMunn) is terrible, not only as an actress but as an overall character. Sidney - although considered to be the ultimate threat - has about 10 minutes of screen time and each one of those minutes is unbearable to watch. We are introduced to various other characters along the way but none of them are noteworthy or memorable. The soundtrack and score is a definite highlight of this film, featuring some heavy guitar driven punk music and electro new wave combinations. The score comes from Melbourne based musician Jamie Coghill, also known as The Jimmy C and I personally think he deserves top billing as the strongest element of this entire production. Taking on such an overall 'Neon Punk' colour palette, it was good to see that the music was well enough sourced to suit the tone and direction this film intended to take, but it is a shame that the music was actually the only thing that effectively expressed this intention. Whilst full of promise, 'Brides of Satan' just doesn’t quite fulfill its potential. The director tries too hard to combine too many varying stylistic elements, ultimately comprimising his overall vision. This is the perfect example of style over substance. If low budget horror with no plot, unengaging characters, terrible actors, messy cinematography and an excessive use of unnecessary nudity is what you're into, then his might just be the film for you.
💀1/2
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