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The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Welcome to the longest 80 minutes of your life. Distinguished by catastrophic acting, editing, cinematography, music, sound, lighting, makeup, pacing, plotting, dialogue and characterisation, L. Scott Castillo Jr's slasher is so bad it's bad, reaching an Edward D. Wood Jr plateau of tosh. It couldn't secure a release until 1984 – four years after it was shot.The legends speak of a "Mountain Man" who, frustrated at society encroaching on the hills and pushing him further into the wilderness, regularly comes down from the peaks to take it out on poorly-clothed teenagers. This season there are two groups: The lusty spring break chicks and the two sensible couples. Their worlds collide when hottie Stephanie (Stephanie Leigh Steel) inexplicably falls for nerdy Tony (Tom Bongiorno), and this sets in motion a series of horror movie separations, giving the killer his chance to pick them off, one by one. The plot isn't sufficient to fill the running time. We get endless shots of Stephanie wandering the wilderness, accompanied only by a drab piano-and-flute score. At times it's like we're watching bored actors waiting around on location. The killings ramp up in the final third, but are tame and lacking invention in their execution. There is one diverting nightmare sequence, although it is memorable for its dodgy makeup more than its creepiness. This is one of those cheapo horror flicks where, thanks to the desperate acting quality and the appalling script, the alleged friends barely seem to know each other. The relationship between Tony and his wife Lisa (Elisa R. Malinovitz) is laughable. Their dirty talk scene – packed with lame courtroom metaphors (he's just qualified, you see) – is an avalanche of cringe. Let's be relative. Comparing Satan's Blade to bigger budget horror movies of the era isn't fair. But films like The Mutilator and Sleepaway Camp – low budget contemporaries with which Satan's Blade bears resemblance – at least had fun deaths and biting humour respectively. And the final 'twist', involving a cameo from our esteemed director, is a total dud. It makes sense when Hitchcock does it, but Hitchcock he ain't. In a very awkward interview on the disc, the director states that film is "a business, not an artform". Don't worry, Mr Castillo, there is no danger of mistaking this film for art. Arrow Video (the version I watched) is scraping the barrel here with a curio that only the most dedicated slasher aficionados should indulge. It's also worth mentioning that this is a very rough print. Crackle and hair is authentic, sure, but the print is woefully damaged at times, with distorted sound and a multitude of unwanted historical artefacts. Actually, "unwanted historical artefact" might be the best way to describe the film.

A man terrorizes a ski lodge in the wake of being possessed by an evil spirit. Director L. Scott Castillo Jr. makes neat use of the bleak and isolated wintry landscape, takes time to develop the characters, generates a reasonable amount of tension in the harrowing last third, pulls out the sadistic stops for the shockingly brutal murder scenes, tosses in some tasty gratuitous female nudity for trashy good measure, and tops everything off with a surprise bummer ending. Thomas Cue's sincere script offers a cool supernatural spin on the slice'n'dice formula. The acting from the game, but variable cast is decidedly hit or miss, with Tom Bongiorno as the amiable Tom and Stephanie Leigh Steel as fetching coed Stephanie in particular giving perfectly serviceable performances in their respective roles. The gradual pace may prove to be a bit difficult to endure for less patient viewers, but it's the slow burner approach that in the long run helps add substantially to the overall eerie and desolate atmosphere. The hefty body count rates as another major plus. Terry Kempf's competent cinematography boasts a few nifty fades. Martin Jaquish's wonky synthesizer score does the shuddery ooga-booga trick A fun low-budget fright flick.

Plot = A group of girls and a pair of married couples head off to a cabin in the mountains for a weekend break, where they soon learn that the place has a murderous past and plus just hours before two female bank robbers were murdered there, and surprise surprise guess what happens next.I have watched this movie recently and being a big fan of 80's slashers that I am, I was eager to see this one, and when I did I was solely disappointed, the beginning was kind of interesting we get 2 female bank robbers which turned pretty violent, cue to terrible acting and bad bloodless effects. And despite two people getting murdered recently in a ski cabin, still the guests wanted to stay there and the police or owners hasn't bothered closing down the lodge despite there being a killer lurking about, a camp moment in a slasher movie.Well it's easy to see why this movie hasn't been released on DVD as it is terrible, so much potential and yet so much wasted, although there were some plus sides, like the beautiful eerie snowy setting was nice and there does seem to be a rather ruthless theme throughout and we do get some character development which is quite rare in these types of movies, it's just a shame that none of them were interesting therefore no-one to root for. There just seems to be no effort put into this movie whatsoever it's just lifeless and dull.All in all not a movie worth tracking down, not even qualify as average, a bitter disappointment.

I was there when this horrible nightmare began. I'd known Scott for years when he was given the opportunity to produce a horror film ala Halloween when someone (I think his name was Pat???) fronted the money. It was too bad Scott's experiences had been in 8 mm home-style and not in reality because he spent more on looking like a producer than being one and putting out a quality film.But I was a young innocent in my mid-twenties, like most of the people involved. We were all promised a percentage of the film (which we never received even though I have my contract somewhere) and I was promised an assistant and a writing credit which, you can see, doesn't exist. Tom Cue and I sat for many nights trying to put together a script that was constantly being changed. And like the actor Tom Bongiorno said, the film was doomed from the start and is one of the worst ever made.As bad as the film was I will say it was one of the most fun times I'd ever had. It was the closest I'd ever get to Hollywood and I knew it. It was like an ongoing cast party. The only people that really seemed to know what they were doing was Terry Kempf, the cinematographer, and Paul Batson, the makeup artist.It was so unorganized everyone did everything. Not only was I the assistant and a scriptwriter, I ran errands, changed lighting, was in charge of props (and so many other things I can't remember). I dropped off the production staff shortly after the film was in the can because I didn't agree with the way the money was being spent - which is probably why I'm not in the credits anywhere (ya think?).I didn't walk out of the "premier" but I spent the entire time laughing, it was so damn bad. They'd called it Satan's Blade but I wanted to call it Ski Bunny Blood Bath because that's what it was . . .