Now Playing: SATAN'S PRINCESS
When I interviewed filmmaker Bert I. Gordon nearly three years ago, he had this to say about SATAN'S PRINCESS, the final film (to date) of a career that dates as far back as 1955:
Q: I wanted to ask you about Robert Forster (NOTE: whom I had interviewed the year before).
A: Terrific guy.
Q: You worked with him on SATAN’S PRINCESS.
A: I made it at Universal as MALEDICTION. Universal distributed it in foreign countries as MALEDICTION and domestically as SATAN’S PRINCESS. (NOTE: Gordon might mean Paramount, which released it on videocassette in the U.S.) Did you ever see the film?
Q: Yeah, I saw it on cable several years ago. The girl with Forster is Lydie Denier.
A: Gorgeous. You have a good memory. She is gorgeous.
Q: Yes, she is. And Forster was a good guy to work with?
A: Oh, yes, yes. In fact, I’d like to do something again with him. Excellent, and his cooperation was excellent.
Well, not much to say, I guess, but when you're talking to a guy who directed THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE and Orson Welles, you don't waste a lot of time yapping about SATAN'S PRINCESS.
Gordon on his best day was no better than an average director, but his enthusiasm and lack of taste was generally good for an entertaining movie. SATAN'S PRINCESS, released on home video in 1990 (did this play theatrically?), is that and more. It's a well-paced and generally silly combination of urban crime drama and supernatural chiller. And it features Borscht Belt comic Jack Carter as a 15th-century Spanish priest. Yep, it's that kind of movie.
One thing you gotta respect about Robert Forster is that he never walked through any of these movies. Not only did he always give the project 100%, regardless of how much of a turkey it was, he usually was able to jack the movie up a notch or two with his performance. SATAN'S PRINCESS is dumb and often laughable, but I'll be damned if Forster doesn't project what the screenplay doesn't and create a full-fledged character that's a joy to watch.
Forster is Lou Cherney, a crippled ex-cop with a retarded son and a put-upon girlfriend played by Caren Kaye, whose steamy nude scenes in MY TUTOR made a lasting impression on most boys of a certain age. Caren doesn't get naked in this movie, but just about every other actress does. Gordon, who directed several sex comedies, including the X-rated HOW TO SUCCEED WITH SEX, never misses an opportunity to have the ladies in this movie pop their tops. Thank you, Bert I. Gordon.
Cherney walks with a cane as a result of a shotgun blast in the line of duty that shattered his knee. His disability surprisingly doesn't affect the story a bit, although it does give Forster more to play than just a standard "moody, alcoholic ex-cop obsessed with an unsolved case he takes too personally". Providing him with a retarded son seems like overkill, but the boy does eventually become a story point.
The case Cherney can't shake involves a missing person, a female runaway he could never find. The girl's father hires Cherney to continue his investigation, which leads him to a murdered model and her boss at the agency, Nicole St. James (Lydie Denier).
For reasons not immediately explained, Nicole takes a shining to the battered gumshoe and invites him back to her mansion for some hot sex. Considering we've already seen Nicole engage in full-frontal lesbian sex with the girl that Cherney's searching for, we're now ready to anoint Bert I. Gordon as a genius.
This gets most of the sex out of the way, but there's more craziness to come. Just about everyone in Lou's life comes to a violent demise. His son is occasionally possessed by Nicole and driven to violent acts, including pounding an icepick into his old man's back and forcing a psychic to leap to her death. Cherney makes a call and picks up some homemade weaponry from a dude named Jilly, who's recognizable as actor Daryl Anderson, the unkempt photographer Animal from the LOU GRANT TV series.
I'm not completely sure about the film's resolution, except that Cherney flames the French chick with a rickety-looking flamethrower that I wouldn't trust to fire BBs, much less napalm. She's supposed to be a 500-year-old demon, not an alien, but she still sheds her (hot) human skin to reveal some unrealistic makeup effects.
Plenty of sex and violence keep this junky freight train of schlock rolling right along with Forster and Denier doing their best to keep it classy. Forster's weary manner of handling the script's one-liners (which are really funny) adds intentional humor (God knows there's plenty of unintentional laughs, and he manages to kick plenty of ass, bad leg be damned.
Unsurprisingly, Forster didn't sign on to make a picture called SATAN'S PRINCESS (who would?). It was filmed as THE MALEDICTION, but I can imagine the smell of sweat from the Paramount marketing execs who would have to sell that to video stores.
Posted by Marty
at 11:32 PM CST
