Satan's Slave is a 1976 British supernatural horror film directed by Norman J. Warren. It was written by David McGillivray and stars Candace Glendenning, Michael Gough, Martin Potter, and Barbara Kellerman. Its plot follows a young woman who, after surviving a car accident, stays on the country estate of her uncle and cousin, unaware they are both necromancers who intend to sacrifice her to resurrect the spirit of a supernaturally gifted ancestor.
The film, a production of Warren's newly formed company Monumental Pictures, was funded by producers Les Young and Richard Crafter with their own money and shot almost entirely on location in Pirbright and Shepherd's Bush in December 1975. The following year, re-shoots were conducted to film additional material as well as more violent alternative versions of existing scenes, with the aim of increasing the film's appeal to Far East audiences.
Satan's Slave was originally released as a B movie in the United Kingdom, with screenings beginning in December 1976. The film was released in the United States three years later under the title Evil Heritage. Critical reaction to the film has been mixed, with aspects such as the acting, script and plot drawing a variety of responses.
Plot Catherine Yorke, a young woman from London, receives a bracelet from her boyfriend John for her upcoming birthday. She then leaves the city with her parents to join her father Malcolm's brother, Alexander, for a week at his home in the country. At the turn into Alexander's estate, Malcolm falls ill at the wheel of the family car and crashes into a tree. Catherine gets out to fetch help and the car explodes, seemingly killing her parents.
Alexander, assisted by his son Stephen and secretary Frances, takes the distraught Catherine into the house and gives her a sedative. On waking, Catherine finds the driveway cleared of wreckage and is told that the police have concluded their investigation. Her parents' funeral is conducted later that day on the grounds of the estate. After the ceremony, Catherine finds an old gravestone bearing the name of Camilla Yorke, an 18th-century ancestor of hers who died aged 20the age that Catherine is about to reach. Over the next few days, as she continues to be hosted by Alexander, Catherine experiences visions of women being branded, flogged, and sacrificed in satanic rituals. She finds herself drawn to Stephen, with whom she becomes romantically involved. Meanwhile, Alexander steals Catherine's bracelet and uses it to channel dark magic that compels John to kill himself by jumping from the roof of a tower block.
Frances tells Catherine that Camilla had supernatural abilities and that Alexander, who believes in necromancy, plans to resurrect her spirit to increase his own power. Having murdered several women, including his own wife, to test his theories, he has determined that he can achieve this only by sacrificing Catherine, Camilla's direct descendant, when she turns 20. Frances also warns Catherine not to trust Stephen who, having witnessed his mother's sacrifice as a young boy, has grown up to be a murderer like his father.
Discovering Frances's betrayal, Stephen stabs her to death and locks Catherine in a bedroom. On the morning of her birthday, Catherine is led into the nearby woods to be sacrificed by Alexander and his cult. She escapes after stabbing Stephen through the eye with a nail file, then runs into her father, Malcolm, who claims that both he and her mother survived the car accident. Malcolm takes Catherine back to the house, where Alexander, no longer wearing his ritual robes, tells Catherine that her recent experiences were hallucinations brought on by the sedative. However, his trickery is uncovered when Catherine pulls back a curtain to find Stephen's corpse. Alexander praises Catherine's brutality and hails her as a true descendant of Camilla. Malcolm is then revealed to be the actual leader of the cult. Trapped, Catherine screams in terror.
Cast
Themes Kim Newman compares Satan's Slave to "post-Rosemary's Baby satanism exploitationers" like Virgin Witch and The Wicker Man". According to Steve Green of Flesh and Blood magazine, while the story and "Gothic staging" are reminiscent of "mid-period" Hammer horror films, Satan's Slave sets itself apart by adding an "overt sadistic undercurrent". Nigel Burrell, also writing for Flesh and Blood, describes the plot as "a stir-fried mix of Dennis Wheatley and Jess Franco, a familiar witchcraft/family curse theme jostling with deranged Black Mass sequences".
Critic Adam Locks notes that Satan's Slave uses plot devices typical of 1970s horror films, including settings that amount to "nowhere places" where characters become lost. He argues that the effect of the Yorkes' car journey is comparable to time travel, defining it as a "re-programming for the audience with memories and associations disconnected from the modern and the urban [...] In psychogeographical terms of the relationship between the individual and space, there is the clichéd yet interesting idea of the road leading to nowhere." Locks also compares Satan's Slave, along with other Warren films, to the 1960s TV series The Avengers for the way that it conveys an "underlying disquiet" about its setting: "Behind the façade of mundane England, threatening figures or forces – be they crooks in The Avengers or Satanists in Satan's Slave [...] – plan to disrupt the everyday world." He observes that through this sense of unease "the familiarity of 'Englishness' is transformed and warped." He describes Alexander as an "atavistic amalgamation of various icons of British gentlemen" – among them the "chivalrous knight", whose moral code he inverts by sacrificing the women in his family. Warren felt that the character and his house were influenced by Hammer films. Anne Billson writes that the country house setting carries "echoes of Hammer", also stating that the film as a whole picks up where Hammer left off while "amping up the nudity and gore".
Leon Hunt, author of British Low Culture: from Safari Suits to Sexploitation, regards the grim ending as part of an emerging trend in 1970s "generation-gap" horror films, noting in contrast that Michael Reeves' films of the 1960s had an "angry", "anti-authoritarian" tone. He observes that Satan's Slave ends with Catherine trapped by her own family and destined to be "consumed", commenting: "The battle is over and 'youth' has lost."
Production After making Her Private Hell (1968) and Loving Feeling (1968), Norman J. Warren had been in negotiations to direct films for Amicus Productions and American International Pictures (AIP). When these deals fell through, Warren and camera operator Les Young decided to make a film on their own.
Satan's Slave was Warren's horror debut as well as the first film by Monumental Pictures, a production company formed by Warren, Young and his wife Moira, and fellow camera operator Richard Crafter. Knowing that they would be working on a low budget, the group believed that the only genres open to them were horror or erotica. In the end, they decided to make a horror film on the basis that it would enjoy a longer "shelf life". After several failed attempts to secure a third-party financing agreement, they opted to produce the film independently. Satan's Slave was funded by Crafter and Les Young with their own money: Crafter by selling his shares in Mothercare, Young by selling his car as well as mortgaging his home and his film equipment company, Crystal Film Productions. Warren gave the total budget as either £30,000 or £35,000 (£ or £ in ), about half of which took the form of deferred payments.
Writing and casting The plot for the film, originally titled Evil Heritage, was devised by Warren and the Youngs and expanded by screenwriter David McGillivray, whom Warren had first met while editing Her Private Hell. It was adapted from one of Warren's abandoned projects for AIP: The Naked Eye, which had been intended to star Vincent Price. McGillivray completed the script in nine days. Warren did not want the film to end with the revelation that Catherine's experiences were merely a nightmare as he thought that dream sequences were clichéd.
Warren said that Candace Glendenning, whom he had seen in Tower of Evil (1972) and other films, was "always [his] first choice" to play Catherine. The role of Stephen was harder to cast due to the character's complexity; Martin Potter, who had recently played the title role in the TV serial The Legend of Robin Hood, was hired after first-choice actor Michael Gothard withdrew shortly before filming began. Potter researched psychopathic behaviour to gain a better understanding of his part. Michael Craze, who plays Catherine's boyfriend John, had appeared in Warren's 1965 short film Fragment.
Although the filmmakers could not afford Michael Gough's usual fee, the actor accepted the role of Alexander after reading McGillivray's script and hearing Warren's personal vision for the film. According to Warren, "[Gough] was doing something at the National Theatre in London so I saw him in his dressing room, talked him through Satan's Slave, and he said yes." Gough agreed to participate on the condition that the production would not interrupt his stage commitments. He was paid £300 () for his role.
Filming Principal photography of Satan's Slave began on 1 December 1975, and was completed on 20 December. It was largely shot in and around Admiral's Walk, the country house of the Baron and Baroness DeVeuce in Pirbright, Surrey. The house had been the main shooting location for Tigon's Virgin Witch (1971) and would also appear in one of Warren's later films, Terror (1978). Warren remembered the challenges posed by the low budget and how production designer Hayden Pearce found the DeVeuce house: "Most places were not suitable or the people were not interested. And because we didn't have any money, we needed a house that also had furniture in it. Hayden was ringing everyone he knew in connection to art departments and someone suggested the mock-Tudor house in Pirbright, and we couldn't believe our luck. Not only did it look great outside but everything in there was genuine – there were wall-to-wall paintings and it was fully dressed." The grounds of the property contained an electrical substation that the crew used for their power supply, eliminating the need for generators. A nearby cottage served as the location for Catherine's home in London.
Due to budget constraints, Gough and Potter were required to supply their own costumes. During the production, Gough, for whom the production could not provide hotel accommodation, stayed with a friend in Barnes. According to Warren: "We would pick him up each day at around 5.45 a.m. [...] He would work with us all day, often until midnight, and then we would drive him back to his friend's house, stopping on the way to buy fish and chips." He adds that despite the consistently long hours, Gough "never had a word of complaint." Hooded cultists were played by the producers and other members of the crew. Moira Young took over the role of a woman who is sacrificed in the opening scene when the actress who had been booked to appear failed to attend the shoot.