Another Backwoods Legend continues: Satan's Blade (1984)

Satan's Blade (1984)
Rating: **
Starring: Tom Bongiorno, Stephanie Leigh Steel and Thomas Cue

If you're the kind of guy who watches the first Friday the 13th so much that you already know your way around it, then you probably know your way around Satan's Blade (1984).

We start with an all-girl robber duo stashing their loot in a cabin way up on a snowy mountain, with one lady double-crossing her partner while she, in turn, gets backstabbed (literally) by a gloved killer wielding the titular weapon. (A lot cheaper and ordinary looking compared to the one in the box arts, mind you) The local cops then arrive to investigate the noises, only to find two dead girls, a symbol done in blood and no killer. As of any law enforcers in these movies, they couldn't do anything without a lead so they just have the whole place cleaned up and left it open for business.

Cue in a bunch of vacationing teens stopping at the cabins and meeting this film's the doomsayer, a more reasonable-looking old lady this time, who tells them of the recent murders in their cabins and connects it with the legend of the Satan's Blade, a wicked weapon given by the dark forces to a protective mountain man who mistook it as a weapon given by the gods against the greedy settlers. Of course, the mountain man ended up killing more than just his enemies and many say that the blade was cast out in the woods, waiting to be found.

The teens say malarkey to the legend as they normally but, true enough, the killer returns to the ski lodge during this movie's hour mark, slicing and stabbing his way through the teens and their guides like there's no tomorrow.

Satan's Blade actually has potential to be a good movie; the plot's easy enough to understand and the filler moments are watchable despite being cheesy and lacking on the imaginative bloodletting, courtesy of the movie's minuscule budget. The badly acted death spasms each of the victims do definitely earned some laughs but, overall, the effect of the movie is very forgettable and easily dismissed as yet another zero-budget horror flick you can find sitting on the top shelf of a video rental.

Awfully optimistic in the first half, downright gloomy in the end, both ways all in all cheesy, Satan's Blade (1984) is a fair catch. While it won't satisfy anyone's horror needs, the zero-budget Friday the 13th rip off does go well as a time-waster cult title that unevenly brought out the goods and the bads in bad horror flicks.

Bodycount:
1 female shot to death
1 female shot to death
1 female shot to death
1 female stabbed on the back with dagger
1 female had her throat cut with dagger (dream)
1 female stabbed to death with dagger (dream)
1 female had her throat crushed while being drowned in kitchen sink
1 female gets a dagger to the back
1 female gets a dagger stabbed to her breast
1 female gets a dagger stabbed to her chest
1 male had a throat cut with dagger
1 female gets a dagger thrown into her back
1 male impaled with fire poker
1 female strangled and stabbed with dagger
1 female stabbed to death with dagger
Total: 15