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Satan’s Little Helper (2004): DVD Review Starring: Katheryn Winnick, Alexander Brickel by Richard Leigh 
‘Satan’s Little Helper’ is the 2004 film from the director Jeff Lieberman. It’s a horror comedy and before viewing this film I’d never heard of the man and did not recognise any of the key cast members either; it looked like a bit of fun though and as a huge horror enthusiast it definitely seemed as though it would be worth a go. The basic premise of the film seemed fairly interesting, this was never going to be a groundbreaking movie but for the mere price of a pound I just felt that I couldn’t really go far wrong; oh how wrong could I be.
Nine year old Douglas Whooly has recently been bought a new computer game by his father; the title of the video game is ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ and the little lad has since become obsessed with the game. The film begins with the game being played on a PDA, it’s Halloween and he and his mother are off to pick up Douglas’s sister from the local harbour. Douglas is greatly looking forward to going trick or treating with his big sister, she’s brought her new boyfriend with her however and Douglas is not at all impressed. Douglas stomps off in a huff and sees a man in what he believes to be a Satan costume going around killing people in the neighbourhood. Having become so obsessed with his new computer game, Douglas can not distinguish between fantasy and reality and therefore believes it to be incredibly cool what this large looming Satan figure is doing and as he understands it this is all in the name of fake Halloween fun. Douglas asks to be Satan’s Little Helper and Satan agrees to take him onboard as his new assistant, Douglas has a good idea in mind of just who should be Satan’s next target and the two of them skip off down the street hand in hand as the film unfolds. When I started viewing this film I couldn’t quite work out whether ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ was a horror comedy, or just an awful horror film; either way the film was dreadful though and at no point did I feel either amused or scared. You can see where the film was trying to be funny, it just isn’t though and every joke attempted here just fails miserably. Whilst viewing this film I kept thinking of Michael Cooney’s 1996 film ‘Jack Frost’ for a majority of different reasons. Both films are horror comedies for a start, they’re also both just as terrible as each other, and the killer utilised by Jeff Lieberman in ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ looks incredibly similar to the murderous snowman of ‘Jack Frost’ also. The DVD box covers even more or less match, it’s as though director Jeff Lieberman watched ‘Jack Frost’ and actually found it to be a funny film, so preceded to steal Michael Cooney’s ideas and mould them around his own equally dreadful storyline. From the moment I read the quote on the front of the ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ DVD box case stating that this was ‘Destined to become a Halloween classic’; I just knew that this film was going to be a complete horror failure. The performances here are all incredibly ropey, I don’t exactly expect Oscar winning performances with a horror comedy but it would still be nice if some of the cast possessed just a little talent. Katheryn Winnick probably puts in the best performance here; she plays the beautiful blonde and older sister of young Douglas (acted by Alexander Brickel). She’s featured in a couple of horror films since as well as several other different films and TV series; the most notable of her performances here include the eighth Hellraiser film ‘Hellraiser: Hellworld’ and the upcoming horror release that is ‘Amusement’. It’s nothing great, and nor is her acting ability; it’s better than most here though and she is I feel the best of a very bad bunch. I guess you could argue that the ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ script doesn’t really allow for any great performances, an excellent actor will always show themselves to be exceptional regardless of the script though and for me no one really stands out here. Although there are no scary moments contained within this film, there is one scene that shocked me when I first viewed ‘Satan’s Little Helper’. A cat is crushed against a wall rather suddenly by the Satan costumed individual, being a huge feline fan this was an absolute moment of horror for me, and although I felt the death of the cat coming; the way that it happened was really rather unnecessary. Maybe this was one of the intended laughs of the film, I certainly didn’t find it funny though and I just found this scene to be more than a little wrong. There were no other scenes of this sort of nature, so just the one here that had any sort of emotional impact upon me; and for all the wrong reasons too. Although this is by no means an amusing horror comedy; it is quite difficult to watch this film without occasionally laughing. The reason for this is that the film is so dreadfully tacky that at times you just have to laugh at how awful the acting is, how terrible the storyline is, and how utterly ridiculous the costume that ‘Satan’ wears is. Everything about this film is just really bad, it draws upon horror conventions and tries to satirically put them across; it just doesn’t work though and it’s virtually impossible to derive any satisfaction or enjoyment whatsoever from watching ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ as everything about the film is just so dire. It doesn’t delve enough into comedy to be a funny film, at the same time however it does not provide one single moment of suspense and not once does the film scare so it certainly can’t be seen to be a decent horror film either. The soundtrack has here been completely stolen from ‘Halloween’, I’m a huge fan of John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ (and Rob Zombie’s remake for that matter) – soundtrack stealing is just not cool though. It’s not even subtly similar, it’s basically just the same haunting ‘Halloween’ music and in a film this rubbish the music just fails to make any sort of an impact whatsoever. In no event would I ever recommend viewing Jeff Lieberman’s ‘Satan’s Little Helper’, I love watching a bad horror film from time to time but this film just takes the biscuit. It’s a horror comedy, but without any real element of either genre contained; you can tell that it tries to draw on horror conventions, and know where the laughs were meant to, nothing about the film actually works though and I therefore did not gain any enjoyment whatsoever on any level from viewing this disgrace of a film that is ‘Satan’s Little Helper’. From start to finish this film is completely awful, I wasn’t expecting much from this film given its awful cover and the fact I’d never actually heard of the film, its cast, or even the director; still though this film somehow didn’t manage to meet my incredibly low expectations. The only extra this DVD release possesses is a really rather awful trailer. It’s not exactly a feature packed DVD, then again I wouldn’t really want to watch any additional extras when the film itself is this terrible anyway.  Rating: 1 out of 5 Details about the film: |
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