User reviews

Bobby is an everyday male adolescent who's constantly bossed around by his dominant father and sexually harassed by his manipulative stepsister Janis. He runs away from home and drifts off into the big city night life. However, it quickly becomes clear the outside world isn't a much better place to hang around actually, as he successively encounters an elderly pervert in a bar and a bunch of redneck rapists. Bobby eventually ends up with the worst possible circle of friends imaginable: a satanic coven! Although, friends … It seems like Bobby isn't welcome anywhere, not even among devil worshipers. "Satan's Children" is a crazed 70's film stuffed with bizarre and uncomfortable sexual vibes. There are hints of incest, pedophilia and a whole lot of innuendo towards homosexuality and rape. This could be quite the controversial and disturbing masterpiece of exploitation; if it wasn't for the fact the film is so poorly elaborated and pitiable. "Satan's Children" is another one of those out-and-out demented devil-worshiping movies cashing in on the real life-case of Charles Manson and all his followers. You know this type of flicks! Long-haired teenage hippie scum talking to goat head statues and tying down scarcely dressed girls to alters with the intention to sacrifice their virgin blood to Our Lord Satan. This movie never manages to build up an even remotely sinister atmosphere, but it does contain a handful of shocking and downright offensive images; like when a disobedient girl is buried up till her neck in sand before covering her face with a gooey syrup that attack ants. Since there obviously was too little budget to put craftsmanship into the sequences of virginal sacrifices and occult ceremonies, the makers admirably attempted to hold on to the viewers' attention by continuously adding new sub plots, like rivalry and competition within the sect. I just wished the script would follow the idea of its own title and have the cult exist of actual children instead of late teens or punks in their early twenties. Now that would have made the film truly original and special without even requiring the sexual innuendo. Still, any movie that has its teenage protagonist running around for at least three quarters of the play time dressed only in tidy white underpants is maybe awkward enough already. And just when you think the film tends to get a little boring and/or start to wonder where all of it is going, there are a couple of deranged but exciting plot twists and a marvelously twisted climax.

This is a profoundly stupid piece of film-making. Does that comment mean I'm panning this film? No way. This is great trash cinema. The director's intent is inscrutable in this mess-terpiece. "How to achieve purpose and fulfillment in life through satanic worship and depraved mayhem" could well have been the tag line for the movie. It's a gripping story of alienated youth. A young man can't get along with Dad or Sis, so he runs away from home. When our hero meets up with devil worshipers he has trouble fitting in and they make his life very diffictult. Of course, our protagonist eventually has some payback to mete out to those who hurt his tender young feelings. I believe porn-star John Holmes appears as the boy's father in an uncredited role. A bundle of laughs for the off-center sense of humor.

The budget for "Satan's Children" must have been about $72.99-- certainly no more. This is because the acting, direction and script are all bargain basement and nothing speaks of quality about the movie...nothing. Because of this, the only folks who might find it of interest are bad movie buffs--and that's what I am. While I don't want a steady stream of terrible films, every so often it's fun to watch an ultra-crappy movie just for a laugh.

The film stars a young man who is about as charismatic as a block of Velveta. When he argues with his stupid step-dad, he runs off--into the arms of some gay rapists! Then, he's rescued by a coven of Satan worshipers. You know, things keep going from bad to worse with this guy! How can it get worse? He will then be forced to watch a lot of amazingly bad actors (such as "Simon") and that seems like a fate worse than death!

I don't know who the audience was for this pile of crap, but according to IMDb it was made mostly by University of South Florida students in Tampa--the movie capital of the world. Why they made it, I have no idea. I hope it wasn't for a film class, as the film makes it seem like they learned absolutely nothing! It just doesn't get much worse than this!

If you in a mood to torment yourself, you can find this turkey on YouTube. Don't say I didn't warn you!!

I'm no Satanist but I'm pretty sure of one thing - Satan loves the gays. What better way to bring sin into the world? They're so efficient at it! But, like all other religions, everyone has their own (mis)conception of whatever imaginary friend they worship. In the case of Simon's Satanic cult, they literally just change "God" to "Satan" and leave everything else as is. Thus, the gay is ironically evil. So is unchecked greed and power-grabbing. And gratuitous nudity. And even straight sex seems to be taboo.

Long story short, Satan is a prude and this movie, despite its inadvertent hilarity offers nothing more titilating than the lead actor's bare ass just before he's raped by some rednecks.

Teenager Bobby Douglas (Stephen White) is abused at home and runs away. He is picked up by a gay man and raped by him and his friends. They leave him by the side of the road--bruised and unconscious. A friendly Satanic cult (!!!) pick him up and bring him to their place to heal. But then they think he might be gay and Satanists hate gays and lesbians (???). It leads to an ending that was just laughable.

Wow--what a TERRIBLE film! The plot is (to be nice) pretty stupid and homophobic. As a gay man I have no tolerance for homophobia and if this were a GOOD movie I'd be bothered--but it's not. Also the rape scene in the car is so obviously faked it's hard to take seriously. And since when are Satanic cults homophobic? Let's see--it's OK to worship the Devil but you can't be gay? Right. Also White spends a large part of the film running around in his underpants. So--the film comes out against gays yet throws homo erotic images in our face. That's so pathetic it boggles the mind.

That aside the acting is terrible. Every actor seems to pause before saying his lines and there are long pauses in between sentence. If they cut those out this movie would be much shorter. Hard to say who's the worst actor here--they're all pretty terrible. It's poorly directed with many technical problems--some scenes were so dark I couldn't tell what was going on. Cheap sets too.

This is almost bad and offensive enough to be good--almost. Basically a boring, stupid and offensive film. I give this a well-deserved 1.

It's hard to tell from the outset which aspect of the film is most striking. Is it the lethargic pacing? The unbelievable acting? The meager direction? The amateurish writing? The abject, appalling, pervasive homophobia - a predominant theme of the entire length, and a horrid bigotry that the filmmakers are obviously encouraging? The total ignorance and willful misunderstanding of Satanism? The ill-fitting music that suggests Ray Fletcher just discovered contemporary prog rock and had to be sure everyone knew about it? The sexual assault and tawdry exploitative slant? The awful, unconvincing dialogue? The feeble scene writing? The floundering editing and weak cinematography? The absent production values? I can forgive a low budget and inexperience, but only part of the substantial flaws here can be attributed to a lack of resources, knowledge, or prior activity in the industry. More than not, 'Satan's children' is simply rotten, a damning testament to the astounding arrogance, prejudice, and conscious refusal to learn or even attempt comprehension of director and producer Joe Wiezycki, writers Gary Garrett and Ron Levitt, or apparently anyone else involved. This is low-grade schlock that other low-grade schlock would be ashamed of.

I don't know if I should commend the production for at least finding suitable filming locations, and materials for an infinitesimal modicum of art direction, or despise those who provided access to those locations and sold their materials for this production. Even if we overlooked every other trace of putrescence in these eighty-odd minutes - and we absolutely cannot and should not - there is no value to be found here. The presentation is so flat and dull that there is never any possibility of extracting any thrills, excitement, or baseline engagement. Between the course of events and the ideas that it plays with I suppose this does technically fit into the "horror" genre, yet I don't know if I've ever encountered another title of the genre that is less capable of making itself be felt. Everything about it is so astoundingly terrible that there's no possibility of even having mocking fun at its expense. I will grant that the last minutes give the narrative an ending that at last provides the sinister fun we wanted all along from a picture with the name 'Satan's children,' but that alone is plainly insufficient to allow this to recover from all its overwhelming problems.

And so we come to it at last: the simple truth that whatever it is you're looking for in a horror flick, including that last sliver of wicked delight, you will find it elsewhere. You will find it elsewhere in far greater abundance, with higher quality, and without all the significant issues that weigh down this feature from the very beginning through to the very end. For as much as it may be true that anyone can make anything in the Age Of The Internet and distribute it online for mass consumption, clearly filmmakers in past decades had no problems with having their own dreck disseminated. 'Satan's children' is horrible and worthless, and no one should ever watch it.

I started with this would be just another bad movie moved on to thinking it was an attempt by a Christian church group at showing the evils of drugs sex and homosexuality and how they all lead to satan but then it seemed like a Church is Satan recruitment video for reasons I won't explain, possible spoilers. This is cheese from start to finish bad acting outside the performance of the guy playing the cult leader the dialogue would have been better if the acting talent was up to the job. I'll tell you what, I'm probably going to remember this movie for a very long time because I thought I figured out the point to the movie but was wrong multiple times. I'm obsessed with finding any actual information about who made this and why but other than a brief synopsis on IMDB that showed that this was the lone credit for the entire cast I've found nothing beyond that the "studio" never made another movie and there is no Wikipedia page, the movie is almost a complete mystery.

"Satan's Children" follows teenager Bobby, who is tormented by his abusive stepsister and stepfather. When Bobby runs away, he falls victim to a group of brutish men who gang rape him and leave him in a ditch for dead. If things couldn't get worse, he is taken in by a cult of Manson family-esque Satanists.

This no-budget schlock-fest is one of the weirder Satanic-themed horror films of the '70s, inept in more ways than one can count, but so bizarre that it almost demands to be seen. Despite its budgetary limitations, the themes and content here are pretty cruel, and the plot setup has been (understandably) questioned for the confounding moral stance it does (or doesn't) take.

Aesthetically, the film's cinematography is pedestrian at best, often looking like a cheaply-made Afterschool Special from hell, and boasts inane performances from a young cast of non-actors. The film contains a trove of flimsy dialogue and disconnected editing choices that lend it a somewhat surreal quality, but none of this seems to be intentional in the slightest. Even still, despite its weaknesses, "Satan's Children" offers enough visual (and thematic) strangeness--and some occasionally haunting imagery--to warrant a viewing from fans of Z-grade grindhouse horror. 6/10.

This movie is great... to tear to pieces! One can't help but laugh at the antics of young Bobby, who seems to like running around in his underwear (little white briefs, to be exact). Yes, he's in nothing but his underwear a lot. And if that's not enough, he gets covered in mud too! That's the entire movie in a very little nutshell (pun intended).

Luckily you can see this movie with Asylum of Satan. They're great to watch back-to-back and quip away to. Though I'd advise supervised viewing, as you may pass out during the needlessly long credit sequences at the beginning and end.

Best line in this movie: "Your a** hurts." -Simon the Cult Leader to young Bobby

This film was marketed as one of those Manson family exploitation/satanic cult flicks that were so popular in the early 1970's (i.e. "The Night God Screamed", "The Deathmaster"), but its really a much stranger animal indeed, managing to combine virulent homophobia with a strong undercurrent of homoeroticism as if the filmmakers themselves were struggling to stay in the closet. A young orphan is sexually teased by his step-sister and abused and neglected by his step-father. He runs away from home, but ends up being gang-raped by a bunch of "queers". Dumped by the side of the road, he is taken in by a gang of erstwhile satanists whose cruel, tyrannical acting female leader falls hard for him. This proves to be a problem when the real male leader returns because, you see, "Satan doesn't like a loser". His disgraced lover ends up buried up to her neck and being VERY slowly devoured by ants, and its up to our hero to rescue her by taking belated revenge on all his various tormentors.

This movie has a very homophobic plot complete with a gay rape-revenge device. The message seems to be that its better go to bed with a cruel, murderous satanist as long as she is of the OPPOSITE SEX than it is to come to terms with your own obvious homosexuality. But not only is the sexuality of the protagonist highly questionable, the crusading heterosexuality of the filmmakers is even more suspect as they show a disturbing number of shots of the protagonist (who like many of his female equivalents in these kind of 70's exploitation films is somewhere between barely legal and hardly legal)naked and bound, or running through the forest in his tight-whities. I suspect the unintentional irony in this film would go over well in a gay film festival.

I would even suspect that the film is being knowingly subversive if it wasn't so completely incompetent. Check out the scene for instance where two guys slowly "drown" in "quicksand", which looks more like a hole filled with Malt-O-Meal, with the drowning even less convincing than the infamous scene Bela Lugosi being eaten by a giant octopus at the end of "Bride of the Monster". So does all this mean I wouldn't recommend this? Hell, no! Most of the entertainment in this film may be completely unintentional but it sure is entertaining. Check it out for yourself. Whether you like it or not, I GUARANTEE you've never seen anything like it!

Nothing works effectively here. Acting is atrocious with no exceptions. Scenes of torture were laughable. Once at the Satanists camp the plot starts winding in circles. No good in the 70's and even worse in modern times. Decent plot and intriguing subject matter ruined by inept directing, acting, music......everything. Skip. There's lots better out there to choose from.

I can't decide if this movie is really homophobic or if it's just toying with the idea innocently. In either case, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie because it was so unlike anything I've ever seen. I loved the weird looking people who star in this, especially the main guy Bobby. He's a red haired skinny kid who looks like he should be in a 70's stoner band. His step sister looks like a cartoon character. Sherry has strange teeth and a evil glare that reminds me of a girl I knew in kindergarten.

I liked how Bobby runs around in whitey tighties the whole time. It's about time that I see some hot boy bods in horror movies. It's always hot girls, but never hot guys. His make out scene with Sherry had some major French kissing going on. I loved his angry looks at the camera, and I really loved the shots of him smiling devilishly at the end. He's a charming kid. I don't know why, but you end up really loving this guy.

The movie has a gang rape scene with all guys (victim and gang) in a car and it's quite disturbing. The relationship between Bobby and his step sister is really interesting. She manipulates him way too much and almost gets him in trouble for having weed. That's where he draws the line, and he storms out of the house.

I thought the ant torture was hard to take because they were really pouring gross stuff all over that girl's head as she was buried in the dirt. Made me feel suffocated.

Best scene though - the quicksand! Looked like very watery cement with some soap suds. What a great way to kill off the enemy!

I really dug this movie, mainly because the main actor is so weird looking and mysterious, you can't help but feel very attracted to him, even though he runs into some really bad luck. He really makes the movie. I gave this movie 9/10. It's so much better than people on here are saying!!!

A youth named Bobby Douglas runs away from home to escape his weird step-sister and obnoxious father only to be picked up and gang-raped by a group of crazed homosexuals.He's left to die and then picked up by this Satanist cult whose leader decides to kill him and his freshly met girlfriend."Satan's Children" by Joe Wiezycki is a perfect drive-in trash.The script is gloriously homophobic and the torture scenes are entertaining as all hell.If you like hilarity you can't go wrong with this Florida lensed cult classic.Overall,Joe Wiezycki's "Satan's Children" is a great example of mid-70s regional filmmaking at its best.8 gay rapists out of 10.

Satan's Children (1975)

** (out of 4) Bobby (Stephen White) isn't having a very good day. While his stuck-up step-sister sits by the pool his mean stepfather bosses him around making him do all sorts of chores. After finally working up the courage to run away Bobby is then sexually assaulted by a group of homosexuals before waking up in a field where he is discovered by a group of people who turn out to be Satan worshipers!

SATAN'S CHILDREN has one of the wackiest story lines that you're ever going to witness and while the film isn't a masterpiece I thought it was silly enough to be entertaining in its own way. Of course, that depends on the viewer not taking it too serious. This is one of those low-budget movies that were made back in the drive-in era by college kids and it really shows. It's easy to see that the majority of people were working on their only film but this adds a layer of charm to the picture.

Again, if you're looking for a polished Satanic movie then go check out ROSEMARY'S BABY. This film here certainly isn't that but there's so much stuff going on that you can't help but have some fun with it. Poor Bobby goes through all sorts of hardships and it's all done in a rather amusing way. Seeing his time get worse and worse just has something funny about it. There are some pretty campy things that happen at the Satanic cult including one bizarre sequence where a woman is beaten with stones and then buried.

Performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this but I thought White at least kept us glued to what's happening to his character. This here was the second of two films that director Joe Wiezycki made in his career and he can at least say he made something that really isn't like anything else.

If you love the classic Florida Grindhouse films that only premiered in the sleaziest drive-in theaters, this film is for you!!! Such a fun film for grindhouse fanatics!