Saturday night movie, via the new local Blu-ray release from Imprint. Despite some slow passages, THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971) is quite an effective, low-budget tale of the occult in a small Californian town, where a coven of elderly Satanists recruit the local children as receptacles for their souls, and to do Beelzebub's bidding. There's some genuine creativity at work here, director Bernard McEveety achieves an interesting and quite unique atmosphere, surreal and dreamy, and the Blu-ray really highlights the film's excellent, nicely framed and composed, photography (it was filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico). I still have the old RCA VHS release of this movie, as well as an unopened pack of "Satan's Soul" seeds, which were given out to promote the movie during it's original release (obtained through Andrew Leavold and his Trash Video Archives, who MAY have some more available). The seeds are a great reminder of the unique old novelty promotional items often produced for exploitation cinema like this. I'm sure I've still got the original paperback tie-in novelization tucked away somewhere, a pretty thin volume that was authored by actor L. Q. Jones, who not only starred in the movie but co-produced it and co-wrote the original story. The novelization was likely just an expanded and tidied-up version of Jones' original story.
