THE BEAST (1970)
Directed by Jack Woods
Starring Edward Connell and Barbara Hewitt
Also available under the title "The Equinox," this ultra-low budget horror pic has some of the style and atmosphere of "Evil Dead," released a decade later.
Some college students go for a picnic while on the lookout for a missing professor (they even give Kentucky Fried Chicken a plug for some reason) only to wind up going to battle with Satan himself! The devil is in the guise of a friendly park ranger.
There are some cool, but very low-brow, stop-motion animation scenes by later Oscar-winner visual effects wizard Dennis Muren, who did work on "Star Wars." The effects here involve monsters from another dimension and a kick-ass castle the kids run across. All in all, although not a splatter film per se, this dreamlike film had a big enough influence on "Evil Dead" that any die-hard fear fan should find it worth watching.