You'll either like it or not. Most of the time I enjoy these types of films but this one I found rather boring. The first 45 minutes of it was long and drawn out.. I fast-forwarded it to what appeared to be an exciting part and watched it - boring as well. I kept doing that until the end of the film and I found that to be nothing exciting. I am not sure what it is about this film that I disliked because I generally like the 1970s occult movies but this one did not grab me at all.You will not be missing much of anything if you pass by this horror film but if you watch it you will either be bored by it, as I was, or you will like it as others do.2/10

"The Brotherhood of Satan" is a singularly creepy movie. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it. The opening sets the tone. A toy tank clicks and spins. A car is crushed flat by a very real tank, the family inside screaming. The two are cut together, no explanation provided. After the car is reduced to burning wreckage, a little boy in a cowboy hat calmly walks away, soon joined by a group of other quiet children. There is no music and the whole sequence is shot in either extreme close-ups or wide long shots. The effect is deeply creepy."Brotherhood of Satan" is actually packed with spooky imagery like that. A little girl is awoken by her baby doll. Downstairs, her father reads solemnly from the Bible, unaware that his wife is having silent seizure-like spasm right next to him. On its own accord, the doll enters the room. It doesn't spring to life and attack the man. Instead, the toy simply stares him down, shaking with glee, the man bleeding from the mouth. After the parents are dead, the little girl joins a group of other children, walking off into the foggy night. The doll cries a murky tear.The movie is disinterested in plot. There is a story. A stout-chinned man, his girlfriend, and eight year old daughter are on a road trip. While stopping through the town of Hillsboro, California, they are attacked by crazed locals. After escaping, their car breaks down outside the town, forcing the three to return. Over a nightmarish pace, we are made privy to a plot by the town's devil-worshipping elderly to kidnap children, sell their souls to Satan, and take up residence in the now lifeless young bodies. The dad and town priest realize this slowly, unaware that the kindly old doctor is the ringleader of the cult. The story is purely functionary and the film outright ignores it at times, focusing instead on eerie imagery. Like a man decapitated in shadow by the sudden a black-clad rider. A child's birthday party cut together with pictures of dismembered bodies. The red face of a painted devil appearing slowly over a man reading a book. So on and so forth.The satanic lodge reminds me of "Suspiria," with its checkered floors, and "The Masque of the Red Death," with the way the camera glides through the '70s puke-green painted walls. The movie is largely without music. Actually, there might not be any music before the fifty-five minute mark. The direction is frequently intentionally askew, creating an otherworldly feeling. There's even a sick sense of humor, when an elderly couple enter the lodge, pledge allegiance to Satan, and then chit-chat and tell jokes like this is an after-church bingo party.Like many of the Satanic cult films that followed, and "Rosemary's Baby" before it, "The Brotherhood of Satan" has a downbeat ending. Character actor Strother Martin screams madly about the devil while his cultists are stabbed to death by black-robed men with flaming swords. Evil triumphs and good arrives too late to stop it. It's hard to decide if the loose plotting was intentional. Either way, the film sustains a freaky atmosphere of seventies dread and packs a visual wallop.

Diabolic forces wreak havoc in a small New Mexico town. A young widower and his pretty new bride and eight year old daughter travel through and unwittingly get drawn into this convoluted world of fear. They cannot escape it's lair and all the towns people are equally weird and possessed by some dark spirit. This is definitely budget horror from the early 1970's. Characters are from a rural background and are played with backward and vapid mentalities. Weird things happen in these small towns and Hollywood understood that long before it became common knowledge. I grew up near the Mojave Desert where there have been numerous accounts of Satanic worshippers practicing their rituals in the Lucerne valley. Oh yes, these things are not always fiction, they exist.This is a good, creepy little gem that will scare you into submission.Watch and enjoy.

I was 10 or eleven years old when this movie came out, and it has stayed with me for 35 years since. When the movie came out, all of the theaters in the St. Louis area distributed, as a 'lure', a pack of flower seeds that had the movie name, etc. on the front. On the back of the pack it read, in so many words....plant these seeds at midnight. If a white flower grows, you are saved.....but if a red flower grows, you are doomed!!! Suffice it to say, that for an eleven year old kid, I did not plant the seeds for fear of what may pop up. Here is the spoiler: As the movie starts out, you see a small toy tank moving about in the dirt. On a small road a family is leaving town, and suddenly the camera turns to the tank again, and it is full size. It rolls over the car, and you see bloody limbs protruding from the wreckage, then, just as sudden, the tank is small again.The reason this movie stuck with me for that long, was because I had a exact toy tank as the one in the movie!!!! Unfortunately I don't know what happened to it, but I did keep a wary eye on that thing ever since!!!Turn out the lights, put in the DVD, make a sandwich, and watch this movie. It is very good!!!