"My Sweet Satan" is an American 20-minute live action short film made in 1993, released the year after, and it is one of the more known filmmaking efforts by writer and director Jim Van Bebber and he also acts in here playing a central character. This is the story of a man who hangs himself in prison as we find out early on and we find out during the rest of the film how he got there and what he did together with another buddy that got him arrested and thrown in jail. Like other stuff by JvB who is close to one that you could call a cult film director, this is a pretty violent and bloody watch, especially towards the end as it dives into satanic cult territory exacting one of the bloodiest revenges you could imagine. Sadly, the production values here look really weak (also not unusual for JvB) and the story can definitely not make up for it. There are even stills include and this is an absolute no-go for a film I must say. Having watched (and reviewed) the man's Roadkill about an hour earlier I must say that that one is clearly superior to this one we have here and this is my suggestion to go for in terms ov Van Bebber's short films. This one here struggles with how cheap it looks, unfulfilling production values and unconvincing elaboration on the characters that are far too many and we know almost nothing about most of them. Same applies to the actors who play them and frequently never showed up in another film at all. Or only in another JvB film. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Apparently based on a real life murder case, low-budget short My Sweet Satan stars Jim Van Bebber (director of cult low budget classics Deadbeat at Dawn and The Manson Family) as Ricky, a Satan worshipping, drug dealing low-life with really stupid hair who kills one of his reprobate pals for stealing his drug money (and possibly for daring to have an even sillier haircut than himself).

It's hard to like a film that is packed so full of thoroughly unlikeable characters sporting, but hey, it's under twenty minutes long, and is worth seeing if only for the painful looking nipple-piercing scene (which is done for real) and the truly repugnant murder in which the victim is stabbed repeatedly by Ricky before he and a friend stomp the poor sap's head into an unrecognisable smushy mess of blood, bone, brains, and eyeballs.

Jim Van Bebber's short about the true life story Gary Lauwers murder by Ricky Kasso. In the film Ricky (Van Bebber once again) is a devil worshiping drug dealing loser. But because he supplies acid to his "friends", he's the head of his particular group of equally feeble minded people. When Ricky feels Gary stole drugs from him, he along with another member of his crew kill him in a horrific, unsettling manner. I found this film to be a tad unsettling and pretty well put together for an amateur effort. I wish I''d have seen "Ricky 6:, so I could compare the two, but alas that film still alludes me.This 19 minute short film can be found on Side B of the Synapse Special edition DVD of "Deadbeat at Dawn". One interesting side note, I've found is the real life Ricky supposedly spent some time with his friends at the real life Amityville House. Now that's bizarre.

My Grade: C