Satanic Panic

The movie is also just plain out fun, and I feel like a lot of other horror films could take a lesson from it.

The comedy-horror film Satanic Panic is the kind of movie that revels in the details of eviscerations and demonic orgies. With jovial bad taste and a bag of gruesome tricks, the director Chelsea Stardust cheerfully invites her audience to hail Satan.

It’s a fun concept, but the feature lacks the deft touch required to make disembowelments and virgin sacrifices actually seem amusing, although gore-hounds will certainly get their fill.

As Danica, the head witch, draped in a bright-red gown with matching lipstick, Rebecca Romjin gives a very perverse and funny performance, all icy intimidation and glamorous power.

There’s something just a bit off about Satanic Panic, a knowing horror-comedy with some wonderfully wild moments, but with pacing too slack and choppy to give its best jokes their proper punch.

It’s campy, it’s gory, it’s a little bit titillating, and it features one of those novelty performances from famous actors that tend to bring a lot of press to otherwise under-the-radar productions.

Satanic Panic has a few fleeting moments of inspiration sprinkled throughout its 83 minutes of mediocrity, but it’s not enough to salvage what is a bland effort from Stardust’s feature directorial debut.