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There are scads of movies about satanic and/or evil cults and Satan’s Children is one. It’s also one of the horror movies on Tubi that you never hear about. There aren’t supernatural elements in this movie, but it has a thing or two to say about a devil-worshiping society.
I have memories of when I was five or six years old, of watching a movie a Saturday afternoon or evening that featured a satanic ceremony somewhere in the open, near some woods.
This movie may be it, but judging by it not being rated and the risque quality of the subject matter I’m not sure.
A kid, Bobby, is molested by his adoptive sister and bullied and used for house chores by his adoptive father. He has an altercation with them and leaves.
He ends up in a Floridian gay bar. He makes friends with an older man there an they leave together. By the by, a gang of gay men sexually assaults Bobby in a car. After they finish their dastardly deed, they drop him in a ditch in a secluded location.
A gang of satanist kids finds him and brings him to their house. The girl in charge fancies him and the others don’t approve.
I don’t know if this film is a student film, as some watchers have conjectured, but the actors didn’t act in any way that I could slag them.
A mediocre script makes for mediocre acting, yes, but I do not strive to find defects with the cast, as to say this or that actor sucked acting in Satan’s Children.
Maybe the scenes at the satanic shrine, when the children summon their cult leader may feel psychotronic, but in general none of the themes degenerated into cliched camp or trash cinema.
I felt in a time capsule watching a real-life story develop. None of the characters in this story was larger than life, and the actors did what they could with the rather shallow characters they had to play.
Obviously, I didn’t like the sexual abuse episode in the first half of the movie. The scene is not the rape event in Deliverance but it’s hard to watch anyway. Maybe it is for me because I was sexually harassed by strangers on two occasions.
Also, when I was a teenager I knew several satanist of my age and kept them as acquaintances for years.
When I knew what my acquaintances were up to (things like selling porn and committing animal cruelty), and what Satanists in general do, I began to actively reject them.
You may guess that this kind of movie interests me a lot due to my former connections and what I learned knowing them just a bit. It interests me as other horror movies that feature evil cults, some of which can be considered of the folk horror sub-genre.
Like for instance, The Devil’s Rain (1975) Blood Diner (1987), Children of The Corn (1984), the obscure Midnight (1982), the erotic Night Terrors (1993), and more recently Kill List (2011), Martyrs (2015), the disgusting Wake Wood (2011) and the understated Get Out (2017).
The scene of the gang-rape by the finocchios is just an appetizer and setting up the stage for what comes next.
The things that are shown afterward, in the satanist’s commune may appear tame and non-horrific.
Well, this movie gets a whole different reading from someone with the basic knowledge of what’s not being shown but implied due to the kids being a satanist coven.
There aren’t black masses with naked women, sacrificial killings, and eating of children or summonings of demons and then controlling said demons in this movie.
Still, the things the children pray in their shrine don’t leave any doubt about what branch of evil cult (satanism) this movie is about.
Those that are homophobic may get a bad reaction when seeing this movie. Those that have a trigger about sexual abuse may dislike the parts the degenerates have their way with Bobby. Still, as I wrote, it is not as graphic as the rape scene in Deliverance.
I saw people qualify this movie as trash. I just saw it as simple horror exploitation without the need to apply the monicker of trash to it, but I guess lovers of trash a horror cinema should watch it for some easy fun.
Hopefully other Horror Movies on Tubi Will be as Cool as this One
Trash or not, this movie was a very fortunate find for me, and I hope there are other seldom talked about horror movies as iconic of well-executed camp cinema. Do you know any other rare horror movie like this one, please share it with us in the comments, thanks.
© Bholenath Valsan 2021 — “SATAN’S CHILDREN” (1975) – Best Horror Movies on Tubi
