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| From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BK-6fWMP6m4/S99R0GSdOOI/AAAAAAAAAIM/AOHAy7RDSyk/s1600/KILLINGOFSATAN-1.JPG |
Dir. Efren C. Piñon
The Killing of Satan is awful. A candidate for one of the worst
films for this year's series. I confess last year I controlled the choices for
films to write about more strictly, hesistating to have to write negative
reviews but going by nationality now I've decided to loosen it, and sadly for
the Philippines, this was a poor film to represent them. A father of two,
although his son is killed in opening establishing scenes and is never
mentioned again, is called to replace his uncle in an isolated rural community.
When his daughter is kidnapped by human mercenaries for Satan himself, wanting
to make her his virginal bride, and his wife is harmed, he goes after them to
rescue his surviving child, quickly discovering his capabilities for
supernatural powers to help him in a war between literal good and evil. It's
cheap, tacky, the version I saw had the type of English dub you get on these
sorts of films which underwhelm your expectations further, and it's something
like this which is a stronger candidate for the worst of cinema than Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).
It's supposed to be a Christian
battle of good and evil, with appropriate religious symbolism, but
paradoxically it plays up to lurid content. The rudimentary gore is surprisingly
violent and effects heavy, a poor man's Riki-Oh:
The Story of Ricky (1991), and there's a magical cage of completely naked,
brainwashed women which completely jars against the film having a religious
message. It's an erratic film in presentation, and frankly despite the presence
of things I've just mentioned, they have little effect on you when the movie in
its whole is completely dull to sit through. It's also the poor man's z-movie,
far worse than well known examples I've seen, on a completely different plane,
in how horrifically sluggish it is. It's strange moments - snake fighting, a dog
attack involving one poor man being tackled to the ground in a living room by a
real canine with its jaw around his arm - are really not that rewarding for the
slog you're putting yourself through watching the whole film. To enjoy this, The Killing of Satan can only have
merit if you give up on any entertainment value, beyond laughing at how bad it
is, a perverse mindset to end up in anyway, and not doing this will make it
hell to sit through. No amount of ridiculous, added-onto-frames magical/psychic
power effects can prevent this film from being atrocious even on the scale of
z-movies. It's something that's only rewarding, if there's another way to find
entertainment in it, if you watch the potentially funny clips, separate from
the film, on YouTube. That is not a
good place for any film to be in, as it effectively means that it has been
scrapped and recycled into clips while the rest is eliminated from the minds of
viewers.
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| Randy Savage would be proud of that elbow power (From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wjtoZ_1jtxs/T423kxLZIYI/AAAAAAAAAYc/RRPJ7V5suTQ/s1600/killing%2Bof%2Bsatan-lando%2Bmagic%2Bdefense.jpg) |
It's also a caution against the
notion of any bad film being instantly enjoyable. Even if your soul has died
and there is no such thing as a bad film to you now, you still would have a
strict idea of what entertaining is, where the highest and lowest of cinema
only is what interests you. The Killing
of Satan is just boring, not rememberable at all. Even if it has ridiculous
moments, and an impressive chest explosion, its only merit is if you watch the
segments by themselves only, and never watch the whole film, because the
journey of the hero against the forces of the Devil is completely worthless.
Truly bad cinema is not rememberable. If you try to enjoy every "bad
film", you are gullible to embrace something legitimately awful like The Killing of Satan; I have seen so
much better for this kind of perverse kick of watching ramshackle movies, and
this one provides me with nothing baring this review.
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| From http://nekonekomovielitterbox.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/kos-052.jpg |
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