Satan's Little Helper (2004)Director: Jeff Lieberman
Writer: Jeff Lieberman
Alexander Brickel ... Douglas "Dougie" Whooly
Katheryn Winnick ... Jenna Whooly
Stephen Graham ... Alex Martin
Amanda Plummer ... Merrill Whooly
Wass Stevens ... Dean Whooly
Dan Ziskie ... Vernon Martin
Melisa McGregor ... Nicole
My brother was visiting me in L.A. a couple of weeks ago and we decided to watch one last B-movie before sending him home. We had started the weekend off with a viewing of “Supercroc” and almost had a heart attack watching it. Actually, my brother was so drunk that he barely remembers it. When I reminded him that he actually had seen the movie he said, “Oh yeah! The crayon alligator!” Ahh memories. Can’t beat them.
So my brother, a friend and I got ready to bounce back with another movie. I had two movies sitting on my DVD pile and it was time to give one of them a spin. I told them it was down to “Undead”, an Australian zombie movie, or “Satan’s Little Helper”. They asked, “Which one do you want to see?” I said I felt like watching a zombie movie. They both replied in unison, “Let’s see “Satan’s Little Helper”.” Good to see that they trust my B-movie judgment.
“Satan’s Little Helper” is about a masked psycho killer and the boy who worships him. The kid is obsessed with a video game called Satan’s Little Helper and gets ecstatic when he actually meets Satan. Actually, “Satan” is just a guy in a Halloween mask who keeps nodding his head when the kid asks him questions. Soon the little helper will guide “Satan” through town so he can help him kill as many people as possible. The kid’s voluptuous sister plays along with “Satan” too as she believes it’s really her boyfriend playing kinky mind games. Masked men get to have all of the fun.
“Satan’s Little Helper” is an interesting flick. Black comedy would be a good description of it. The little helper believes that all of the violence he sees is not real because…why does he believe it? It’s hard to fathom that this kid could be so stupid. One scene has the little helper cheering as “Satan” takes a grocery cart and runs over a lot of different people for “points”. “Satan’s Little Helper” is either making fun of video game’s influence on young minds or it’s reveling in it.
Don’t trust men who hide behind masks. This is the moral of “Satan’s Little Helper”. Just the fact that I could believe that a horror flick has a moral to it shows you how ambitious this movie is. It’s trying to touch a couple of different nerves. One scene has the guy dropping the Satan mask so he can put on a “Jesus” outfit. When the sister finds out about it she says, “So Jesus is Satan?” Then we get to see a few scenes of “Jesus” behaving badly. Evil has many fake faces. They never run out of facades.
While my brother rolled his eyes and shouted, “Wow!” a few times, I enjoyed “Satan’s Little Helper”. It’s a unique B-flick. I can’t recall seeing a movie quite like it. It also delivers on some gore scenes as “Satan” starts slicing and dicing for the kid’s amusement. I was slightly disappointed that the idiot kid’s sister did not take the time to ditch her Halloween costume. “Satan” couldn’t keep his hands off of her. Who could blame him? But overall, “Satan’s Little Helper” is a cool little movie. It’s worth a look.
SCORE: 2.5 out of 4 little helpers
Dr G, keep your eyes open for a French film called Sheitan (aka Satan). I think you might like it.
ReplyDeleteI will be on the lookout for "Sheitan". I hear good things about it. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteSatan's little helper is a really BAD movie. That said I would still agree with you on three counts; one the movie has something oddly unique going for it( don't ask me what though), two; it is definitely worth a look if only to figure out what its ambiguous moral must be,t hre the sister carries the entire movie on here errr....Chest and midriff.(ironically She's also the only half descent actor in the danged thing).
ReplyDeleteOh and the dialogue sucks (big hairy balls)! well some key parts do anyway.
It's been a few years... It was at the "beginning" of my movie-extras career when I got the part for one of the uncredited greenfaced "party-goers" in this movie (and I have no qualms about keeping it uncredited). We filmed the "party" at a newly renovated mansion that was deemed to be "haunted" by one of the guys in our group...who said he was "sensitive to the vibes". But that's neither here nor there -the 3 nights we spent there was a lot of fun. We started at sundown and pretty much wrapped it up near sunup. I wrote about it in my blog and have a photo of the director during an awkward encounter. I liked your properly contexted review. Well done!
ReplyDeletemy blog (archived March 2006 batch): http://iwalkthemile.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html
Hey,
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing. Glad you liked the review.
I checked out your blog of the movie experience. Nice pics. And pizza 3 times a day? That's B-movie cuisine at its finest. I hope you had some toppings. Mushroom and sausage works well for me.