User reviews

I had no idea what I was going to see when I decided to view this film and to my surprise its just an extremely well made horror film that is easily one of the best of the 1970's. Film is of course low budget and this is an excellent example of how the story and style of a film creates chills, not special effects! Strother Martin is one of the great character actors of all time and he has a rare starring role here and the film also stars Martins good friend L.Q. Jones and "Green Acres" Alvy Moore. Jones and Moore helped produce this film as well. TV veteran Charles Bateman is the star and "Enter the Dragon" beauty Ahna Capri is his girlfriend. Capri is in a bikini at the beginning of the film and she's just gorgeous to look at! Film does a terrific job of staying with the story and not adding a phony feel good ending and I really liked the way the film ends. Great atmosphere, interesting story and well directed by Bernard McEveety. Martins performance is top notch also as he doesn't hold back at all and really throws himself into the role of Doc. Good and underrated film!

'Brotherhood Of Satan' is a very interesting and overlooked Seventies Satanic thriller. Initially you might lump it in with silly-but-fun schlock like 'The Devil's Rain' and 'Race With The Devil' but it's actually a much more complex and ambitious movie with a much more serious and less sensationalistic approach. T.V. veteran Charles Bateman and Ahna Capri ('Enter The Dragon') play a couple on a road trip with their young daughter (Geri Reischl - 'I Dismember Mama') who find themselves in a mysterious and hostile small town gripped with hysteria. Townsfolk have been brutally murdered and children kidnapped and nobody is quite sure why. Glance at the title of the movie and take three guesses! 'The Wild Bunch's L.Q. Jones (who also co-wrote and co-produced) and Strother Martin (the latter probably best known for his role in 'Cool Hand Luke' - "What we have here is a failure to communicate!") star as the town sheriff and doctor respectively. This is one of a half a dozen movies they made together and it is always a joy to see them sharing screen time. They made a great team which was unfortunately cut short with Martin's death in 1980. The supporting cast also includes Hank Kimball from 'Green Acres' (!) Alvy Moore, a real kick for buffs. 'Brotherhood Of Satan' is a surprisingly creepy and effective horror movie with a sometimes fascinating approach to narrative. A movie that is ripe for rediscovery!

This starts very well and I hoped that it would get better because the dialogue seems a bit odd and some of the acting just the same. Unfortunately it gets bogged down although there are very strange and interesting things at the same time but there is something that seems rather silly. I imagine the ending would be really good but not so and it is a shame because every now and again it would become startling before it falls away.

This totally odd-ball feature is a typical and prime example of satanically shocking 70's horror. The events are thoroughly confusing and it takes up quite a while before you figure out what the hell is going on, but the brooding atmosphere sucks you in immediately. Right from the indescribably bizarre intro, showing a couple of eerie children turning toys into real-life war machinery, you just know this become an uncompromising and gritty shocker. "Brotherhood of Satan" soon appears to be another installment in the alleged & unofficial "creepy little town hiding a dark secret" sub genre. A young widower, traveling with his new yummy girlfriend and 8-year-old daughter, stops in a remote little town to report a car accident they witnessed on a nearby highway. The villagers behave very hostile and insist the visitors on leaving right away. The town clearly bathes in an ambiance of fear and panic, as local children vanish inexplicably vanished and unnatural forces maintain everyone within the boundaries of town. Hillsboro is in the grip of a satanic cult, apparently ruled by the elderly members of the community. I really liked "Brotherhood of Satan" a lot. The story reminded me of a novel written by John Saul, but I can't remember the title. It also dealt with a cult of elderly people abusing youthful villagers for their own greedy merits. The film mainly relies on creepy scenery (like dolls and witchcraft relics) but a slightly more involving and coherent screenplay would have been nice. The subject matter often raises a lot of issues and questions, and director Bernard McEveety can't always provide us with answers. The climax is terrific, very seventies (meaning shocking) and unforgettable. Beautifully shot film, too.

A family gets stuck in a desert town where the people seem to have gone mad. No wonder, a satanic cult has set up shop there. Charles Bateman & Ahna Capri play the couple, LQ Jones the sheriff, Strother Martin the doctor and Charles Robinson the priest.

"The Brotherhood of Satan" (1971) combines elements of "Carnival of Souls" (1962) and "The Masque of the Red Death" (1964) for satanic horror in a desert town.

It has the stamp of an early 70s' art film and was the precursor to flicks like "Race with the Devil" (1975) and "The Devil's Rain" (1975). It's not as good as the former, but better than the latter. The main problem is the tedious pacing with pointless scenes, like the unnecessarily long driving sequence with no conversation near the beginning. Scenes such as this should've been scrapped for an effective 74-minute movie, like "Gargoyles" (1972).

Cinema started to flirt with satanism in the early 60s with Roger Corman's "The Masque of the Red Death" and England's "Devils of Darkness," which were shot in 1963 and 1964 respectively. You can trace it back further if you consider "The City of the Dead," aka "Horror Hotel," which was made in 1959. The overt satanism is surprising for films shot way back then.

Like "The Brotherhood of Satan," none of those movies painted satanism in a positive light, but LaVey capitalized on this new interest and sprung his "church" of satan in 1966. Hammer's "The Devil Rides Out" (a.k.a. "The Devil's Bride") and "Rosemary's Baby" went into production the next year.

The other day I saw a recent movie that ludicrously turned the tables by making the satanic witches the protagonists and the twisted serial killers Evangelical believers. Yup, Christians are the real evil out there (rolling my eyes).

The film runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot in New Mexico & Southern Cal.

GRADE: C

When I first saw this movie, I hated it as it made little sense. Watching it a second time was good because I discovered that it did have some intelligence to it. However, it's probably too intelligent for the audience it intended to attract. The plot conecrens the inhabitants of a small town who are into witchcraft, attempting to kidnap children for evil purposes and the efforts of a family passing through the town to unravel the mystery. Though not particularly scary, it does have some moments which really stand out and are not easily forgotten. It's also nice to see Strother Martin (an underrated actor) getting to play a lead role.

Produced and featuring actor L. Q. Jones, co-starring his fellow Sam Peckinpah stock member Strother Martin and directed by Bernard McEveety, THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN is 90-minutes the very, very, very long way...

With a perfect married couple and their perfect blonde daughter getting stranded in a rural town that, as we learn halfway through, consists of Satan-worshiping old folks led by Strother as the local doctor under the secret protection of L. Q. as sheriff: the town recruiting children (including Debi Storm) for the cause...

The only decent scenes are not for content but the symmetrical aesthetic of the groovy-Gothic Satan-worshiping church interior where most of the budget probably went, and where more time with the kids, especially the central family new kid in town Geri Reischl whose parents become a vanished after-thought, is needed...

But SATAN has no perspective of the children feeling fear since they're hypnotic all along, and as for suspense.. without chills there are no thrills. Making BROTHERHOOD a drive-in flick to fall asleep to... to dream scarier nightmares.

Some days ago, I watched for the first time The Brotherhood of Satan. It's a nice little horror flick that has a creepy and surreal feel throughout the whole story, so if you enjoy movies with that kind of mood, you'll probably like it. However, it may not be suitable for those who are only looking for intense gore and brutal slashing business.

But those who enjoy movies like The Devil's Hand (1961), To the Devil a Daughter (1976), and The Devil Rides Out (1968) may find something worth to watch. Other reference movies are for example Children of the Corn (1984) or Village of the Damned (1960) - kids can't be evil, can they?

What surprised me the most about this little horror flick is the director, Bernard McEveety. He is well-known for his work on TV shows like Gunsmoke, How the West Was Won, and he directed even some episodes of Bonanza and Knight Rider.

Last words: while The Brotherhood of Satan may not be a masterpiece or essential viewing, it's definitely not a bad movie and can be entertaining - for the right kind of audience.

Every great once in a while, you stumble upon a movie that exceeds even your wildest expectations. Given the IMDb rating of 4.0, I wasn't really expecting much with The Brotherhood of Satan. I hoped that at a minimum it might be cheesy fun like The Devil's Rain or any of the other early 70s similarly themed Satanic horror films. I couldn't' have been more wrong. What I got instead was an ambitious and intelligent film with a cast I really enjoyed. Speaking in broad terms to avoid giving anything away, the film's style and structure are much more experimental than the straightforward storytelling so prominent in the early 70s. The Brotherhood of Satan doesn't beat you over the head with plot points and explanations. A lot is left to the viewer to fill in the blanks. As a viewer, you know something is amiss, but for the longest period you're just not sure what it is. The unknown helps make for a far creepier atmosphere than most similar films. The ending is effective with its surreal imagery. I sat in amazement as the final credits began to roll. Those wanting a big slam-bang finale will be disappointed with the ending's simplicity. A lesser film would have tried to pull out all the stops and would, most likely, have failed miserably.

There are moments in the film where it's easy to forget the director, Bernard McEveety, had primarily worked in television before The Brotherhood of Satan. There are a few scenes that are so well set-up, lit, and shot that even the most accomplished of directors could learn a thing or two. For example, I've seen enough films over the years to realize that directors can sometimes seem to have trouble shooting widescreen shots indoors. Not here. The scene where the men are discussing their plan of action in the sheriff's office is amazing. We see all five men at once - each doing their own thing as in real life. In a lesser film, we might see all the men at once, but each would be motionless, quietly waiting their turn to deliver their dialogue. It's a small scene, but it looks so natural and is so beautifully shot that it's one of my favorite moments of The Brotherhood of Satan.

Finally, I mentioned the acting in my opening, so without going into a long-winded speech, I'll just say that The Brotherhood of Satan features Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones. Any film with these two guys is almost an automatic winner with me.

Diabolic forces wreak havoc in a small New Mexico town. A young widower and his pretty new bride and eight year old daughter travel through and unwittingly get drawn into this convoluted world of fear. They cannot escape it's lair and all the towns people are equally weird and possessed by some dark spirit. This is definitely budget horror from the early 1970's. Characters are from a rural background and are played with backward and vapid mentalities. Weird things happen in these small towns and Hollywood understood that long before it became common knowledge. I grew up near the Mojave Desert where there have been numerous accounts of Satanic worshippers practicing their rituals in the Lucerne valley. Oh yes, these things are not always fiction, they exist.

This is a good, creepy little gem that will scare you into submission.

Watch and enjoy.

If there's one thing that the middling horror movie "The Brotherhood of Satan" (1971) demonstrates, it is that Old Scratch must have been pretty desperate for worshipping disciples in the early 1970s. In this film, Charles Bateman, his 8-year-old daughter and his hotty gal pal (the yummy Ahna Capri) get stuck in a small town out West that is in the midst of being terrorized by a coven of elderly Satanists. The town's children have been disappearing, families have been butchered wholesale, and in the blink of an eye, Bateman's daughter vanishes, too... Although the Maltin book claims that this is a "horrifying little terror tale," I didn't find it overly chilling. This is the kind of film that almost demands a second viewing; during the first, you won't know what the, uh, hell is going on for the first 2/3 of the picture. Scenes seem to peter out without making their point. While a repeat viewing does clear up some of the confusion, many questions remain unanswered. (Can anyone explain to me, for example, that little dolly that suddenly begins to cry?) Strother Martin, as the coven leader, overacts shamelessly, and it works somehow. But as geriatric covens go, while the one here IS a tad creepier than the one shown in the Joan Fontaine film "The Witches" (1966), it cannot top the one led by Sidney Blackmer in the shuddery "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), and most viewers, I think, will be left with the feeling that this film could have been so much more. There WERE two things about the movie that I really did enjoy, however; Ahna looks absolutely smashing in her white minidress. Whotta pair of gams!

For some reason in the 1970's it seemed to be a requirement for every former cast member of "The Wild Bunch" to appear in a low-budget satanic-themed horror movie. You had Ernest Borgnine in the ridiculous "Devil's Rain", Warren Oates in the underrated "Race with the Devil", and of course William Holden in the the overblown sequel "Damien: Omen II". The weirdest one though was probably this one which features both Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones (Jones, who would later write and direct the cult classic "A Boy and his Dog", also contributed to the screen play).

It starts out promisingly enough with an entire family somehow being compacted in their car, all except for the young son who wanders off and runs into a strange group of other children. For awhile it is unclear whether this movie is ripping off "Village of the Damned" or "Rosemary's Baby", as you have this group of orphaned and kidnapped children wandering around after their parents have been done by a bizarre murder spree, AND you have a coven of decrepit oldsters led by Strother "What we have here is failure to commun'cate" Martin. The main protagonists are a good-looking but bland couple and their young daughter who are only passing through town, but become involved in the weird goings after they discover the remains of the compacted family. Jones plays the good guy sheriff, and Martin has a second role as the seemingly kindly town doctor.

The satanic scenes are very weird with a lot of freaky shots of children's dolls, and people violently convulsing and dropping dead. The pretty blonde wife also has a "Rosemary's Baby" style hallucinatory dream that is like "Coffin Joe" on particularly bad acid. The end finally ties everything together sort of, but this remains one of those 70's movies that is a lot longer on style than on logic. Still I guess I'd recommend it if you go for these sort of films at all.

A family outing is shattered when they find themselves trapped in a remote desert town, where supernatural forces are murdering townspeople, and an evil cult of elderly Satanists are planning to kidnap the children(including the family's daughter) for a sinister purpose. The parents, a priest, and some others try to stop them before its too late...

Though directed with some style, this dispiriting, dreary, and very unappealing film makes little sense, and is vastly inferior to "Rosemary's Baby", which it clearly is inspired by. Strother Martin as a doctor/cult leader is wasted.

"The Brotherhood of Satan" is a stupefying combination of conventional horror elements mixed with some imaginative characterization and direction (Bernard McEveety). It all starts out with father Charles Bateman (as Ben) driving out west with his pretty blondes: luscious Ahna Capri (as Nicky), and daughter Geri Reischl (as K.T.). Things get weirder and weirder for the trio, as they approach the town of Hillsboro, which is being gripped by a Satanic cult!

When the dullish travelers hit Hillsboro, the "action" switches to the film's more interesting assemblage of characters: townies L.Q. Jones (as Pete, the sheriff), Strother Martin (as Doc), Charles Robinson (as Jack, the priest), and Alvy Moore (as Tobey). Their interplay is sometimes fun. Soon enough, it all gets very silly, and predictable. Mr. Martin is the stand-out (as you might expect); he considers the possibility of a Satanic cult to be a "cock-and-bull story", but is (of course) their leader. The "Come in, Children" ending is puzzling; unless, perhaps, it was the film's original title.

*** The Brotherhood of Satan (8/6/71) Bernard McEveety ~ Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Charles Bateman, Ahna Capri

The first hour of The Brotherhood of Satan is a series of WTF? scenes that leave the viewer wondering what the hell is going on. It all ties together in the end, but you'll need to hang on in there...

The film opens in full-on surreal mode with a toy tank transforming into a real tank and crushing a car and its occupants. A child then picks up the toy and joins his friends. So far, so weird.

We then meet the film's protagonists: Charles Bateman plays Ben, who is driving cross-country with his sexy girlfriend Nicky (Enter the Dragon's Ahna Capri) and his 8-year-old daughter K.T. (Geri Reischl, Jan Brady from the Brady Bunch). The family arrive at a the small town of Hillsboro where the locals act in a threatening manner, causing them to leave in a hurry. However, when their car is forced off the road, they must return to the town, where they discover that the grown-ups are being killed by their own children, who are being controlled by a coven of elderly witches.

It's all told in a very strange manner, complete with a bizarro dream sequence and creepy occult rituals that have an air of authenticity about them, all of which make it a unique experience, if not a totally satisfying one (the pace tends to drag a bit at times), but any film that sees a mother and father strangled to death by a toy doll is worth a look in my book, and the ending is in a neat downbeat style reminiscent of '60s/'70s Satanic shockers like Rosemary's Baby, The Wicker Man and Race With The Devil.

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

This film seems to be a tad underrated on IMDb--it's not that bad a film despite the current 3.5 rating. However, the reviewer who gave it a 10 also shouldn't be trusted--believe me, this is not GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA--it's just a cheap but somewhat interesting horror flick! The film starts off very well and it really had me hooked with the concept. A family wanders into a small town where no one can leave due to some bizarre force and now that same force won't let the family leave as well! In addition, many adults have died in the last three days and their young children are missing. Apparently, a Satanic cult wishes to sacrifice these kids so that they may be immortal!! While this is original and very chilling, it did irritate me that despite all this, some townspeople laughed at the minister when he suggested that there were "supernatural powers afoot"--well DUUUUHH!!! Any idiot would have known that, but oddly the scared folks balk at his reasonable suggestion!! Unfortunately, from about that point on, the film kind of fizzled. Now it wasn't bad, but the momentum surely was lost and the whole thing ended in a big anti-climax. The film had a great idea but spotty writing and a few clichéd characters keep this one from being any better than a 5. Worth a look, but not exactly earth-shaking!

Being a big fan of horror films and always manage to find something good about a picture, but this film just did not hold my interest or attention. This story revolves around a father and his daughter and a girlfriend, since his wife died a few years back. These people encounter a horrible situation in a town they stop off and visit and all the senior citizens in this town gang up against these people and almost kill them. This film reminded me of a film called "Children of the Corn" because it really involves children who are being presented to Satan and are his instruments of terror. There is plenty of chants, mambo jumble and a toy tank that completely destroys an entire family in their station wagon as well as dolls who kill a husband and wife.

"Brotherhood of Satan" is one of the most underrated horror films of all times.Why it hasn't achieved a cult status is beyond me.This is a chilling tale of terror and witchcraft which contains one of the most powerful and disturbing climaxes in the annals of screen horror.In the small American town some children have disappeared and their parents been violently murdered.What is the cause of hysteria?The film is really eerie,some scenes are genuinely unnerving and definitely not easily forgotten.The suspense never lets up,the acting is really good,and the climax is bizarre and disturbing.Check out this forgotten gem of satanic horror.Absolutely recommended.

The first time I saw Brotherhood of Satan I was 12 yrs old I saw it in a little town in central Washington state it played before Tales from the crypt which we left early because my sisters were already scared from the Brotherhood of Satan. All in all I thought it was a pretty good movie. The beginning was good we had just sat down and that tank did a number on that station wagon.

What struck me about the movie was the scenery around the town in which it was filmed it looked almost like the area around Chelan WA where I saw the movie especially when they were driving towards the town of Hillsboro which is the location of the movie a small town in SW New Mexico. I have always liked LQ Jones and Strother Martin and also Charles Bateman who was on Get Smart another show I like. I gave the movie a 7 and later on when I did get to see Tales from the crypt I thought Brotherhood of Satan was better.

You'll either like it or not. Most of the time I enjoy these types of films but this one I found rather boring. The first 45 minutes of it was long and drawn out.. I fast-forwarded it to what appeared to be an exciting part and watched it - boring as well. I kept doing that until the end of the film and I found that to be nothing exciting. I am not sure what it is about this film that I disliked because I generally like the 1970s occult movies but this one did not grab me at all.

You will not be missing much of anything if you pass by this horror film but if you watch it you will either be bored by it, as I was, or you will like it as others do.

2/10