Satan Place: A Soap Opera from Hell (1988)

Directed by Scott Aschbrenner [Other horror films: N/A] & Alfred Ramirez [Other horror films: N/A]

A rather low budget anthology horror film, Satan Place: A Soap Opera from Hell is certainly an experience. It’s far from a good movie, but it can be reasonably entertaining, if you’re into SOV horror from the 1980’s.

Of the four stories (‘Disposable Love’, ‘Say Goodnight, Sophie’, ‘Too Much TV’, and ‘Sally Satan’), the most entertaining is either ‘Disposable Love’ or ‘Too Much TV.’ Both have decent special effects (or what passes as decent for a film of this quality), and while the first story may be more quotable (“What the FUCK is for dinner?”), ‘Too Much TV’ has some amusing performances and is a wild story.

Now, to be sure, this isn’t a good movie. The framing story is a bit of a mess, and the conclusion to the sequence, being ‘Sally Satan’, is probably the weakest of the bunch (though it does feature an okay-looking demon). There’s still fun to be had overall – in the third story, both Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are referenced (the latter from an in-universe short called Missouri Mop Massacre – “You can’t stop him, and he doesn’t do windows”) – but it’s definitely not a movie most people would go into and have a good time with.

For some of the better performances (or perhaps more apt, most amusing), you have Warren Andrews, Hollis Wood, Mark Rackstraw (as classy TV host Dick Slasher), and Lisa Hatter. It’s a campy and low budget movie, so expecting any real great performances might be unrealistic.

The gore isn’t too shabby. It stands out most during the first story, ‘Disposable Love’, a big portion of which is about a husband who accidentally kills his wife, and so chooses to cut up her body and put it down a garbage disposal. There’s okay gore here (such as a zombie-type thing cutting open their stomach and feeding their organs to a poor hombre), especially toward the story’s finale. Also, in ‘Too Much TV’, there’s a decent throat-slitting.

Much like the 1982 film The Toxic Slime Creature, this is a film that popped out of nowhere for me. Until about a month ago (which would be September 2021 – this is being written mid-October 2021), I’d never heard of this. And it’s not great, of course. It is, however, entertaining at times, and though it’s a movie I have a hard time imagining I’ll see again anytime soon, I can’t hate it. I don’t love it, but I can’t hate it.

5.5/10