Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 4, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Say this for Jeff Lieberman: He hasn’t mellowed with age. If it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t directed a genre feature in the over two decades since Just Before Dawn, his new Satan’s Little Helper doesn’t feel at all like the work of someone with 30 years in the movie business—and I mean that in a good way. It plays like a movie made by an upstart young newcomer anxious to show off his rebellious, anti-politically correct streak, and the result is the first film I’ve seen in a while that seems tailor-made for the midnight circuit, without the pandering that afflicts so many wannabe “cult movies.” The fact that Helper is premiering at New York’s high-toned Tribeca Film Festival just seems like part of the sick joke.
Among other things, Satan’s Little Helper is the most original Halloween-themed horror film to emerge since the ill-fated, underrated Halloween III: Season of the Witch; like that movie, Helper incorporates a dark satire of mass media and has no compunctions about involving children in the mayhem. In this case, the focus is on a little boy named Douglas (Alexander Brickel), who is obsessed with the eponymous video game, and plans to dress up as its title character on Halloween night. And who should he encounter near his suburban New England home as the evening approaches but Satan himself—or rather, a hulking killer (Joshua Annex) wearing a grinning devil mask. Douglas, who’d like nothing more than to punish Alex (Stephen Graham), the new boyfriend who has accompanied his college-age sister Jenna (Katheryn Winnick) home for the holiday, appoints himself as the murderer’s right-hand kid, not realizing that the mayhem that ensues isn’t part of a “game” come to life.
Thankfully, Lieberman doesn’t use his scenario to take easy shots at violent media’s corrupting influence on kids—he’s making a gruesome entertainment himself, after all. Rather, he posits Halloween as a night when a celebration of the darker impulses can erupt into real terror, with the “Satan Man” (as he’s called in the credits) an even more explicit embodiment of the bogeyman than Halloween’s Michael Myers. There’s no escape-from-the-asylum prologue, or a Donald Pleasence type around to deliver exposition about e-vil; the Satan Man simply turns up, first seen by us at the same time Douglas initially spots him, dragging a body out of a house. It’s as if he’s an embodiment of the spirit of Halloween itself, a ghastly celebrant whose idea of a prank is to spike a party’s punch with drain cleaner, and there’s the suggestion that Douglas’ immersion in the game and his ill will toward Alex has helped conjure him up.
Lieberman strikes a nice balance between the appealing suburban setting and the nasty behavior of Satan Man and Douglas, mining the black-comic possibilities for all they’re worth. A centerpiece segment, and hilarious highlight, is set in a parking lot where the duo use a shopping cart to run down a baby carriage, a blind man, etc. as Douglas delights in the number of “points” they’re scoring. Young actor Brickel gleefully enacts every child’s fantasy of taking naughtiness to an extreme without winking at the camera, and Annex, whose character never speaks or shows his face, uses body language to convey an enjoyment of his own murderous acts, as if it is indeed all a game to him.
Satan’s Little Helper loses its footing a bit when the terror begins literally striking closer to Alex’s home and family (including his and Jenna’s mom, played by Amanda Plummer, who brings a welcome flighty eccentricity to what could have been a stock character). The conventions of the stalker subgenre begin to take over (like characters who stand there screaming when they should be running for their lives), and a race to save Mom from a costume party to which Satan Man has abducted her takes the action away from the gleefully subversive relationship between the villain and Douglas. The low budget begins to show here too, as the island community, absent its now-murdered cops, supposedly goes berserk, yet the mayhem is only heard and not seen. But Lieberman still has a few surprises up his sleeve, chief among them a costume change that spins his satire into a whole new direction, adding a fresh level of black-comic sacrilege (and, given recent media events, represents a remarkable stroke of fortunate timing).
It’s perhaps no surprise that Satan’s Little Helper feels more like a product of the confrontational ‘70s than a typical modern genre piece (notwithstanding its 24p hi-def videography by Dejan Georgevich, which is most attractive during the day and gets a tad murky at times by night). Both its occasional narrative roughness and its tweaking of social conventions recall Larry Cohen’s films of the earlier decade, and Lieberman’s infectious enthusiasm for the latter overcomes qualms about the former. It’s good to have him back, and one can only hope it won’t be such a long wait for his next horror exercise.
