A California desert setting. A humble marine back home from Vietnam. A pretty waitress with visions of college bouncing underneath her 1960s beehive hair. A veteran cop on a rare vacation with the wife. A motorcycle gang of rapists and murderers. Sounds like a drive-in movie to me.
This is one of the more vicious biker flicks of the time. It opens with a gang rape that leads to a brutal murder—and that’s only the first five minutes. After that, we meet a fresh group of victims on a lonely stretch of sun-beaten road and then ten minutes later (if that long) our creeps on two wheels are back to violate and ventilate anyone who happens to be in their path. A few get away and retreat to the desolate hills and our villains follow to an unpretty climax.
Russ Tamblyn is the leader of the gang and the biggest psycho of the group. He commits atrocities with more smiles on his face than he had in The West Side Story. Regina Carrol, the wife of the director, is the girl in the gang who winces for us when the boys put on their rape hats. Screenwriter (and future director of several worthy B-movies of his own) Greydon Clark plays a character called “Acid”, who’s the passive drug casualty of the gang and who’s okay with playing Russian Roulette all by himself. Then there’s director Al Adamson, whose grimy style and plethora of uncomfortable close-ups breathe hot death down your neck. Meanwhile, enjoy the almost Pebbles-worthy music score performed by some group called the Nightriders. They serenade us straight to Hell with swaggering riffs, a showboating singer and some sledgehammer songs.
Satan’s Sadists is a great title. Not many movies could live up to it. This one does. Decades later you still want to wash this one off of you after you see it.