'Satan's School for Lust' fails to pass grade

Satan's School for Lust (2002)
Starring: Misty Mundae and Darian Caine
Director: Terry West
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

A young teen (Mundae) is sent by her rich, always-traveling father, to a boarding prep school for girls. Here, she discovers that what the students are being prepped for is a life of demon worship and lesbian bondage games!


I was challenged to watch and review this film. It is a challenge that, I am sad to say, I lost. It was so bad that I couldn't even bear to watch it, but instead made liberal use of the fast-scan button on my remote. I've sat through some pretty bad films, but even I couldn't stand this one. The awfulness of the acting is only exceeding by the rancidness of the dialogue. And then there's the near-incoherent mess that passes for the plot.

"Satan's School for Lust" starts out like a Z-grade, super-low budget slasher flick, but it immediately veers into lame softcore demon-worshiping lesbian bondage porn territory. On level it's comes off as a spoof of any number of horror films from the 1970s, but I wonder if that was on purpose given the general lack of quality present here.

The ONLY interesting thing about the flick is a recurring nightmare that Misty Mundae's character has, an erotic nightmare involving a crucifix and a bucket of blood that indicates that she is the chosen concubine of the demon at the school (Caine). Everything else is too dull to stand. (And here is where I'll have to start doubting my sex-drive, because guys are supposed to love ANY and ALL lesbian action, right?)

Saturday Scream Queen: Darian Caine

A varsity cheerleader in high school, Darian Caine has remained physically active in her film career... and she wore even skimpier outfits or nothing at all. Since her screen debut in 1998's "Alien Encounter: Girl Explores Girl," she has appeared in nearly 60 films, most of them horror-tinged spoofs full of softcore, and even hardcore, pornography and lesbian sex scenes. She more recently branched out into more mainstream horror films, being a featured player in several low budget horror films, including Len Kabasinski's martial-arts themed vampire and werewolf movies (for which she did all her own stunts and fight scenes).

Caine's films range from craptacular to spectacular, so reviews of films featuring her will be appearing here and at the companion blog Movies to Die Before Seeing.

Vampires + martial arts = gory fun

Fist of the Vampire (2008)
Starring: Brian Anthony, Leon South, Darian Caine, Cheyenne King, and Brian Heffron
Director: Len Kabasinski
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Two police officers, the beef-cakey Lee (Anthony) and the babealicious Davidson (King), infiltrate an underground extreme fighting ring, only to come into direct conflict with the vampires that run it (Caine, Heffron, and South).


"Fist of the Vampire" is a rarity among low-budget action films. It sports a decent cast, a well-conceived script, and some effective use of both CGI and blue-screen effects. Overall, it's an entertaining film that fans of vampires and street fighting will enjoy.

The film derives most of its strengths from a solid script that moves along speedily from beginning to end. There isn't any big surprises in it, but it makes full use of both the vampire and extreme fighting angles. The good script also gives the lead actors plenty of material to work with, and they all do a good job in their parts. The weakest performer is Brian Heffron, who plays the vampire ring leader. His role called for someone to be completely over the top, but instead he seems subdued in most scenes. He is reportedly a professional wrestler who goes by the name of the Blue Meanie, so this is surprising to me. If anyone can ham it up, it's professional wrestlers!)

Another strong point in the film is the use of CGI. It's become commonplace for low-budget films to use CGI to simulate muzzle-flashes and gunfire and we have that here, too. The degree to which it's done is the most impressive I've seen so far. (The filmmakers go a little overboard here and there--such with an animated bullet speeding through the air that's cool the first time we see it but which gets tiresome when they use it a second and third time.) The CGI explosions, fire, and other blue screen effects are also very nice executed, particularly the ones where vampires meet their fiery ends.

Unfortunately, for all its good parts, it also features a number of weaknesses that are often present in low-budget action movies.

The most glaring of these weaknesses is in the fight scenes. While the staging of the action and the cinematography is superior to what I've seen in many films at this budget level, they are still obviously staged and choreographed. The angles the fights are being filmed from successfully hides that full-on blows don't connect, but the actors are under-rehearsed and blows and parries are telegraphed so far in advanced that nearly all illusion of reality is dispelled.

In final analysis, I think "Fist of the Vampire" is worth seeking out if you like vampires and martials flicks. Despite its flaws, it's a fun and fast-moving picture.

'Lust for Dracula' isn't very desirable

Lust for Dracula (2002)
Starring: Darian Cain, Misty Mundae, and Julian Wells
Director: Tony Marsiglia
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

Misty Mundae stars as Mina Harker. Darian Cain is featured as a female vampire named Dracula who likes to stand around naked and spout nonsense. There are also a pair of lesbian vampires who wander in and out of the film at random, occassionally masturbating as they do. Oh, and then there's Jonathan Harker, Mina's transsexual shemale husband. Plot? Storyline? This movie contains no such trivialities!

I suppose I should have known what I was getting into, but the plot on the back of the DVD case sounded interesting... and the promise of boobies is always alluring. But "Lust for Dracula" bears very little resemblence to what is described on the back, and the procedings are far too boring to even be remotely sexy.





(Trivia: This film was my first exposure to Misty Mundae and the Seduction Cinema crew. It was acquired at the closing sale of a DVD/music store going out of business in 2003.)

Boring sex and lousy mummy costumemakes this a must-ignore

Mummy Raider (2002)
Starring: Misty Mundae, Darian Caine and Ruby Larocca
Director: Brian Paulin
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

When Kristen (Caine) is abducted by a Neo-Nazi scientist (Larocca), it's up to adventuress Misty (Mundae) to save her before an ancient evil mummy is resurrected. Will even Misty's considerable skills at shooting, Kung Fu fighting, and lesbian seduction save the day?!


This "movie" clocks in at about 45 minutes, and even that's too long. It doesn't work as a spoof (it's not funny), it doesn't work as an action film (the fight scenes are so very, very lame), it doesn't work as thriller (bad acting and an even worse plot), it doesn't work as a horror film (horrible though it may be), and it doesn't even work as a soft-core porn flick (yeah, Misty wanders around topless for most of the flick, but so what?!).

Zita Johann was sexier in the 1932 Universal film "The Mummy" fully clothed than any of the ladies are in this flick. Yes, the girls here are very attractive and the casting appears to have been done so there's a breast-size to meet your oogling preference... but you've got to be REALLY hungry for naked flesh to sit through this one.

Add to the drawbacks what is one of the very worst mummy costumes that has ever been put on a film that people were expected to pay money to see, and you've got something that's not even worth the time it'll take you put the disc in your DVD player.

'Curse of the Wolf' shows common problems with low budget films

Curse of the Wolf (2006)
Starring: Renee Porada, Todd Humes, Leon South, Brian Heffron, Alex Bolla, Pamela Sutch, Darian Caine, Lanny Poffo, and Kylie Deneen
Director: Len Kabasinsk
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Dakota (Porada) is a reluctant werewolf who finally finds a way to suppress her bestial nature and monthly transformations and starts a new life in the city. When the leader of the werewolf pack she used to belong to (Humes) decides she needs to be forced to accept her true nature and starts targeting her newfound friends for death, she allies herself with an enigmatic nightclub owner (Poffo) and his more-than-capable bouncers/enforcers.


"Curse of the Wolf" is one of countless low-budget. barely above amateur-level productions where I can see the heart and excitement of the filmmakers and actors in every scene, but where I ultimately have to give it a bad rating because heart and love of a project is not enough to make a good movie.

Although the film suffers from a myriad of technical problems (the typical bad sound recording of the modern low-budget film, day-for-night shoots so blatant I haven't seen the likes since Amicus closed up shop, and a complete absence of color correction), the biggest problem here is with the editing. I think if the editing had been tighter in ust about every scene, the stagy, hammy acting of the performers would have come across a little less stagy, a little less like each actor was politely waiting for their fellow performers to finish their line before they started theirs. (Of course, more rehearsal time on the part of the actors might also have gone a long way to solving this problem.)

Another problem is that EVERYONE in the picture is acting as if they are playing to the very back row of a very large theater, except for Darian Caine, who is about right and who therefore seems like she is sleepwalking through the movie. I'm not sure if this was an intentional approach on the part of the director--there are many moments in the film that put me in mind of old horror movies from the likes of the aforementioned Amicus, Hammer, and American-International--or whether it was inexperience that failed to reign the actors in. I suspect it's the former, because the lines delivered by Todd Hume in his role as the werewolfpack leader Michael would sound fantastic if coming from the likes of Christopher Lee or Charles Gray (as they appeared in the 1960s), but they don't work quite so well coming from him because he doesn't have the presence to back up the over-the-top drama with which he delivers each line.

Things aren't all bad, however, The fact that the film made me think of some of my favorite horror movies and classic horror film actors says alot about the underlying quality that peeks through the generally bad execution of this film. It's also laudible that writer/director Len Kabasinski managed to make a somewhat successful werewolf movie on a very tight budget. (The werewolf parts are pretty well done, so long as allowances are made for the universally bad editing.)

Kabasinski also understands how to place the camera when filming fight scenes. The camerawork during the many fights in the film is some of the best I've seen in movies of this vintage and of this level of budget. There are a few places where the actors are under-rehearsed and therefore they either telegraph or anticipate blows (thus revealing the fight is staged), and the fight scenes suffer from the same lax editing that the plagues the entire film, but this is one area where Kabasinski displays real talent. He clearly has a flair for making horror movies with a martial arts/action flavor to them.

And while I'm covering what's praiseworthy about the film, I should mention Brian Heffron, who takes an amusing turn as a rather gross comic relief werewolf character in this flick. He does a good job in a fairly well-written part. It's too bad several of the gags are spoiled by the weak editing.

(Yes, I know I've harped on the editing in this film, but I think it really is what kept this film from getting a 4 or maybe even a low 5 rating.)

Werewolf films seem to be the hardest type of horror movies to do right... and with a little more care and money, I think this one could have be counted among those few. Actually, I think the topic of werewolves might be something Kabasinski should consider returning to the topic down the road. He continues to improve as a filmmaker, so I think he could eventually bring us one kickass werewolf film even if he continues to shoot on a shoestring budgets.