The Brotherhood of Satan

Obscure DVD Review
You need to know a little background about my personal life to understand why I forced myself to watch this 1971 horror flick again.

I’m the youngest of three kids. Yes, that’s me, the baby. Sure, the baby gets spoiled, but often the baby must sit through things that they are too young for because everyone else doesn’t want to miss out. For me, it was my family’s love of horror films.

My mom loves horror movies. Even though they scared the crap out of me, I was told, “Just close your eyes.” This tactic did not work, as I would usually imagine far worse than anything on the screen. In 1971, I was dragged to see a little film called “The Brotherhood of Satan.” This film ruined me for years to come and set me up for a lifelong fear of dolls coming to life.

Please note that my dear mother is completely innocent in all of this. She was a woman who loved her horror movies and nothing more. She had no way of knowing that my baby doll would have a cameo appearance where she kills the parents of her little girl owner. How could Mom know? But the damage was done. My beautiful Drowsy doll who I loved so much, capable of such atrocities! As a four year old, I was scarred. I ran home and threw all my toys out of my giant cardboard toy box, took Drowsy off my bed and buried her at the very bottom. She stayed there for many years. I moved on to only owning stuffed animals, no more dolls.

Several years ago they re-issued Drowsy and I purchased one. I had to make my peace with her. You can see by our loving photo that we have put everything in the past. We’ve mended our fences and she’s paid her debt to society. Besides, she was possessed by the devil!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to watch “The Brotherhood of Satan.” I have not seen this film since 1971. Why would I subject myself to that? I rented it from Netflix and it sat here for months! I finally summoned the courage and popped it in the DVD player. Guess what? It was a pretty darn good horror flick. It made me miss the old fashioned scary movies where more was left to the imagination and you didn’t have all the blood and gore.

This took 70’s genre to the limit: dream sequences that seemed more like bad acid trips, sexy moms, the underbelly of a dark suburbia controlled by Satan, and a distrust of authority figures. It was all there, and above all, the story was creepy, but there was an explanation in the end. Our questions were answered, even if, in the end, it only posed more questions. At least it had more purpose than today’s theme of deranged-guy-who-wants-to-torture-people-because-that’s-what-he-does!

And as for Drowsy? Well, she did do some horrific things, but she was only on screen for a few minutes. Funny thing was, she strangled the family in the film, but in my experiments, her arms are way too short to capture the camera angles they showed. So you know what? There’s no way Drowsy did it. I’m glad I can move on now. Now if I could only summon the courage to watch the 1978 Anthony Hopkins film, “Magic.” I couldn’t sleep for weeks when the commercials for that movie aired!

*Update 9/14/10 Hi All! I'm currently participating in the Back 2 Blogging challenge with the SITS girls. Today we're posting something we wish more people read. This review gave a glimpse into my childhood.

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