Satan's Sadists is a bit of a special film in the Al Adamson canon, created specifically with the purpose of having material for the newly formed production company Independent International that he formed with producer and marketing guru Sam Sherman in 1969. It also had a drive-in success that allowed Adamson and Sherman the chance to tinker with two films that were sitting on their shelves: Psycho A Go-Go, a crime picture that was edited twice to add science fiction and zombie elements, and The Fakers, a spy film that added new footage of Robert Dix and company to become the biker film Hell's Bloody Devils. And while filmed three years later, Angels' Wild Women stands alongside Satan nicely, with both films executing simple road narratives in an effort to make the most of very low budgets while also tapping into a particular mindset of the time period, notably the disillusionment, paranoia, and aimlessness brought upon by the end of the 60s, heavily engaging, both implicitly and explicitly, with the Manson murders that tipped the culture into such a state.
Both films have a relative plotlessness that reflect their meandering characters: Satan's Sadists follows a handful of days on the road with "The Satans", a gang of outlaw motorcyclists roaming the southwest. Led by the well-nicknamed Anchor (Russ Tamblyn, giving the picture a little bit of name recognition in the way John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr. would in later works), the rest of the gang includes Firewater, Willie, Muscle, Romeo, and Acid, the latter of whom also makes nice use of his official moniker (love watching him earnestly play Russian roulette while the watching Tamblyn pretends to play by putting the gun just over his head before pulling the trigger). The group wanders about, demanding service in a roadside cafe, tormenting a policeman and his wife (a scene with a terrific speech by Anchor about how cops bother a generation that just wants to look, behave, and engage with the values of the world a little bit differently than the previous one, before executing them point blank), and looking for other outlets to release their violent urges. The gang has a bizarre code instilled in them, with Adamson including a few nice details such as one of the Satans leaving a hat behind as he grabs a candy bar off the shelf, and the primary conflict comes out of the Satans in pursuit of a hitchhiker and a waitress who escape after Anchor goes berserk on the cop and his wife.
Abandoning plot even further, Angels' Wild Women focuses on a group of women who break away from their biker boyfriends and go on a spree of violence across California, eventually leading to an encounter with a group of hippies led by their creepy and charismatic overseer: a character who short of name is Charles Manson, in scenes shot on and narratively taking place (Adamson could not resist lingering on the sign) on the infamous Spahn's Movie Ranch.
While the earlier film perhaps has slightly more in terms of narrative stakes and even set-pieces, both films really take advantage of their "wandering moods", with long sequences of these characters riding across desert scapes in an effort to extend the running time and save money for a handful of action sequences (with, sure enough, the pair each getting the chance for Adamson's favorite "car over the cliff before exploding" shot (with Angels' actually doing a knee-slapping variation of the stunt with an empty motorcycle going over a cliff and landing on a moving car with both of them blowing up), though both Adamson appears to have different methods in mind in how he approaches such similar material.
Satan's Sadists has the feeling of a picture with a desire to sell, where narrative and character arc is arguably more important in an effort to land a distribution deal. One could see it being more traditionally done, with Adamson trying to give his ensemble a few different traits and a little bit more energy, Tamblyn giving the picture a slight amount of prestige, but also someone like pal Robert Dix building a connection with the films and time period of his father, allowing for a certain mood and expectation. Adamson is quite effective with large ensemble scenes, and there is quite a bit of skill in something like the diner sequence that has a series of pieces all operating independent from one another that converge: the cop and his wife at one table, the hitch-hiker who sits at the counter while the pair wonder if they should invite him to eat with them, the waitress who is late because of a college class she was attending, the middle-aged diner owner, and the various personalities and individual dynamics of the Satans themselves. Tension derives both from a pre-credit sequence that shows the gang raping and murdering a couple and the understanding on the part of the audience as to what to expect from films in this particular genre of exploitation, the latter of which is also arguably a facet in Adamson's later horror film Dracula vs. Frankenstein and western Five Bloody Graves. Violence is more of an inevitability rather than a possibility, with the tension coming from the question of "when?" rather than "what if?", something Adamson twists slightly during the final few minutes which tacks on a final violent confrontation following a shot and a needle drop that would typically signal the end of a movie, instead nudging the audience and going "but wait. . . there's more!" For all of the jabs and laughs at Adamson's expense, he truly often did attempt the best with the resources available to him, and Satan's Sadists has an obvious amount of attention going into it that has both an understanding of film making (something Adamson is often accused to not having) and the expectations and hopes that come from the genre itself.
Angels' Wild Women takes a different approach, still desiring to sell but with Adamson experimenting a bit more with rhythm and montage. Born out of the immense popularity of Roger Corman's The Big Doll House, the film attempts to merge the tough female cast with the biker genre, though the latter would, according to Sherman, essentially die overnight. Adamson depicts the violent aimlessness of these characters through several extended dreamy sequences, a psychedelia suggestive of the altered state that comes from such a mental disturbance. While primarily a "day-in-the-life" narrative, the Manson-like cult gives the film some kind of conflict to latch onto, though their presence is more symbolic than tense. On a production level, the story appears born out of an experience Adamson and some of the crew had while filming The Female Bunch of Spahn Ranch in 1969, where they were approached by a group of Manson women to go for a walk but trepidatiously turned them down, and it is a pure happy accident that a film engaging with the event that arguably closed a decade would be operating at the end of a genre fad.
Adamson's output is striking in its ubiquity of genre dabbling, though there is an energy in his western-type films absent from the forays into horror, an obvious appreciation for what can be accomplished through western narratives and desert scapes. On a practical level, the ability to shoot outside in sprawling desert scapes as opposed to the production costs that come with horror tropes (however limited) may be a bit more freeing. But this chunk of Adamson's filmography, with an emphasis on these two films, have an almost relaxing method of navigating through these characters and these communities, sequences of lulling calmness amidst the violence giving a balance between the bloodthirsty expectations of the audience and a visual depiction of how their characters are essentially calmed by the carnage they are numb to. This is an intriguing pair of films, a double bill that is perhaps the best work by Adamson at this point in time: a borderline avaant-garde, dirty, violent, and grimy sequence, and, oddly enough, the last time Adamson would take his productions into the vast open desert. The luster of the wandering gang and meandering narrative diminished, and Adamson and company needed to find other generic exercises to sell.
Satan's Sadists
Dir. Al Adamson
86 Minutes
USA
1969
Starring: Russ Tamblyn, Scott Brady, John Cardos, Robert Dix, Gary Kent, Greydon Clark, Kent Taylor
***/*****
Angels' Wild Women
Dir. Al Adamson
84 Minutes
USA
1972
Starring: Ross Hagen, Kent Taylor, Preston Pierce, Regina Carrol, William Bonner, Arne Warde, Vicki Volante, Albert Cole, Claire Polan, Gus Peters
**1/2/*****
Films viewed on August 12th, 2020
Part of the ongoing Al Adamson Project.