DIRECTOR: KURT KVLT. RUNNING TIME: 82 mins. DVD: BROOTAL. PRICE: £9.99. CERT: 18.
Produced at the height of Norwegian Black Metal’s ‘second wave’ The Joy of Satan was a bizarre attempt to cash in on the genre’s infamy by featuring Bergen-based band Katastrophe in a ‘zany’ black comedy. Apparently inspired by The Beatles’ Help , the film sees the band pursued by a bunch of crazy Christian fundamentalists, enraged over the burning of their church by Katastophe fans, as they try to record their new album: The Joy of Satan. Inevitably, of course, the band perform all of the tracks from the album in the course of variously being chased through snowy forests, across mountains and through ancient ruins by hordes of axe waving, flaming torch wielding and crucifix brandishing crazies. Director Kurt Kvlt, (who had also directed many of the band’s videos), seems to have been influenced by the 1972 Hammer lesbo-vampire epic Twins of Evil in his depiction of the Christian extremists as being a mob of funny-hat wearing, black clad, sexually repressed puritans, who have apparently escaped from the Seventeenth Century.
Despite their attempts to protest their innocence – claiming that the church had been burned down by a rival Black Metal band to discredit them and that their apparent opposition to Christianity is merely an expression of their desire to reaffirm their traditional Nordic cultural values – a series of ‘hilarious’ accidental killings just gets the band into more hot water. During their attempts to dig up some bodies from a graveyard with which to perform a Pagan ritual, for instance, a Christian is accidentally decapitated with a shovel when he tries to intervene. Later, several ‘maidens’ are killed when a traditional Viking axe-throwing contest goes badly wrong. Naturally, such sequences are accompanied by gallons of gore and the screaming guitars of band members Niklas Humpbjerg and Olaf Nads – although both are nearly drowned out by the growlings of vocalist Erik Kokler. No matter where the band try to hide in order to record their album, the Christians find them and disrupt the sessions. The film culminates with the religious zealots finally catching the band and ‘crucifying’ them by nailing them to trees. Unfortunately for the Christians, this merely results in the band being raised from the dead by Odin, as blood-sucking demons, who quickly wreak their revenge on the religious nutters. In a ‘zany’ post-credits sequence, the undead band fall victim to a supernatural mix up and find themselves sent to Christian heaven (their idea of Hell) rather than Valhalla.
Arguably, director Kvlt succeeds in his avowed ambition to present the most ‘brutal and extreme’ violence ever seen in a comedy film. Characters are variously bludgeoned to death with baseball bats, have their skulls crushed by sledge hammers or suffer various Viking tortures, such as having their skin peeled off and nailed to church doors, or having their ribs spread in the ‘Blood Eagle’. All done hilariously, of course. Unfortunately, to non-Scandinavian eyes at least, the end result just isn’t funny. The sight, however, of Katastrophe, in full ‘corpse face’ make up spike encrusted black leather and bullet belts at all times, variously maiming and decapitating various puritans in bizarre ‘accidents’ is somewhat surreal. The band, playing themselves, are ultimately far too grim as personalities to carry a comedy, even a black comedy. Crudely shot, to match Norwegian Black Metal bands’ preferred style of music recording, the movie is, without doubt, far from an easy watch. Inevitably, it failed to find a mainstream audience and proved to be a massive flop that propelled the band into a downward spiral: accused of ‘selling out’ to commercial interests and chasing mainstream popularity by the rest of the Black Metal community, the linked album The Joy of Satan found itself boycotted by fans.
Consequently, the band faltered, with various members suffering grim fates. Drummer ‘Judas’ was found dead with a wooden crucifix sticking out of his rectum the year after the film’s release. While many claimed that he had been assassinated by dark Christian forces, an inquest ruled death by misadventure as a result of a bizarre auto-erotic session gone wrong. Six months later bass player Sven Spunqvist was convicted of the manslaughter of six nuns after an extreme suicide attempt went wrong – he was jailed for ten years. Guitarists Humpbjerg and Nads both received serious burns after the house they shared with singer Kokler exploded after Nads lit up a joint one evening. A note left by Kokler was found, apologising for the huge and lingering fart he had let rip while the other two were out – while this was, at first, thought to be the cause of the explosion, police subsequently found that the gas main had been tampered with, presumably by Kokler. With a warrant out for his arrest, the vocalist vanished and is now presumed dead. After being released from hospital, the two guitarists left the music industry, with Humpbjerg becoming a nursery school teacher while Nads is currently an MEP for the Norwegian Green Party.
The tragic fate of Katastophe has led to many labelling The Joy of Satan a ‘cursed’ film, but the same time has also given it a cult status in some quarters. Now available, for the first time, in an English-subtitled DVD release, non-Nordic audiences can finally make their own judgement on this bizarre piece of Norwegian cinema. It comes complete with optional commentary track by the director who, in spite of the film’s failure, enjoyed a successful career directing children’s TV.
