Criminally Insane & Satan’s Black Wedding

            “250 Pounds of Maniacal Fury” screamed the ad for director Nick Millard’s Criminally Insane, about a woman released from an asylum who turns to homicide when anyone keeps her from her favorite cookies. “A Blood Marriage of Ghouls,” was the tag line for Millard’s Satan’s Black Wedding, the companion film released theatrically, about a brother who discovers that his sister’s suspicious death is tied in with a demonic cult of Satan-worshipping vampires.

            These were two of the more mainstream films director Nick Millard made in his lifetime. But when he passed on in 2022, his daughter approached Vinegar Syndrome and revealed a storage space filled with countless cans and garbage bags filled with his movies. This was indeed a treasure trove for collectors but because they were so badly stored they became a herculean task to wade through, catalogue, and digitally rescue from extinction. 

            Fortunately for us, their exhaustive efforts have produced Millard’s horror double-bill on Blu-ray the best it has ever looked. 

            Criminally Insane is set in San Francisco and is about heavy-set Ethel Janowski (played by the late, great, cult favorite Priscilla Alden), just released from a mental hospital, who doesn’t react calmly when her grandmother (Jane Lambert) locks up all the food in the house to help her lose weight. Nobody comes between Ethel and her Nilla Wafers. So, she stabs Granny to death to get at the key to the cupboards. Then she calls up an $80 food delivery, and when the boy refuses to leave the groceries without being paid, she smashes a bottle over his head and kills him also. Soon the bodies start piling up in the upstairs bedroom- grandma, delivery boys, pimps, doctors, you name it- and Ethel keeps snacking and spraying Glade air freshener to cover the God-awful smell. What’s so great about this 62-minute wonder is that there is no fat (pardon the pun). The film just barrels along with bristling dark humor and ludicrous violence (the blood looks like red paint). A lot of the credit goes to actress Priscilla Alden who attacks her role with fiendish glee, playing it straight without winking at the audience. (Alden was a well-loved and respected theatrical actress in San Francisco and was thrilled to get to play such a psychotic killer). Her sullen, hateful demeanor will bring to mind Shirley Stoler in The Honeymoon Killers– even down to her occasional nasty, antisemitic rants. But you can’t help rooting for her. If only Ethel had lived in the era of Ozempic. 

            Satan’s Black Wedding is about Hollywood actor Mark Gray (Greg Braddock), who travels to Monterey when his sister Nina (Lisa Milano) dies. Her death is deemed a suicide but a Lieutenant (Barrett Cooper) is unconvinced, especially since the body was found drained of blood and missing a finger. It also seems linked to several unsolved murders in the area. Mark teams up with his old girlfriend Jean (Zarrah Whiting), who had been assisting Nina in research for a book about a local devil cult and a satanic priest- Father Daken (Ray Myles), all tied to an abandoned church. Nina returns from the grave (with some pretty unconvincing Halloween fake fangs) and begins whittling down what little family Mark has. It has to do with Satan’s plan for Mark and his sister Nina to incestuously conceive a child. “By human standards your offspring will be terribly deformed but he will be beautiful in the eyes of Satan.” You have to agree, as a plot point that’s pretty wild. I love the fact that Satan saw Nina and Mark playing near the church as children and thought to himself- “Boy, now they would make a great couple to give birth to the Antichrist.”  Much of the acting is flat and uninspired, but visually the film is often atmospheric and creepy. Millard captures the fog-shrouded streets of Monterey and the eerie country roads up to the church (which the director forgets to interject). 

            The extras on the disc really help flesh out the story of Nick Millard, whose father- S. S. Millard– was an old burlesque promoter and made his own roadshow exploitation films, which led Millard to pick up a movie camera himself. Meeting and marrying a German woman named Irmgard Grabinger, Millard named his production company IRMI films and cranked a series of sexploitation films. According to an informative extra on the disc author Stephen Thrower (Nightmare U.S.A.: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents), Millard’s erotic films often ended on a bizarre, downbeat note. In the early 70s Millard decide to try mainstream films, and horror movies were a great way to transition “from the gutter to the curb,“ Millard laughingly admitted. The double-bill of Criminally Insane and Satan’s Black Wedding played a limited number of drive-ins and exploitation houses. But their release on VHS was where they caught on with cult fans everywhere. I even bought the movies on VHS and repeatedly showed them to countless friends. I still own them.   

            I am so overjoyed at Vinegar Syndrome for these meticulously restored releases and have reveled in all the extras on the Blu-ray which include archival videos of director Nick Millard and actress Priscilla Alden discussing the making of their movie. It all left me “Criminally Insane.”