The welcome and most unholy arrival of this year's big new horror classic, THE WITCH, onto Amazon Prime last week signaled the month (my favorite) of all unholy magic has arrived. Time for great hauntings and macabre classics streaming like a running flow of witches o'er town and dale come Hallow's eve or mizzenmast half-flap. Lucky then that--as I wrote re: their Vampiredeliction last week--while Netflix has shied away from the ratty old rarities and sideshow bargain basement found object art, Amazon Prime has more than picked up the slack. Every category of October horror now can hold its own special list. This one stretches from silent films from 1922 up until present day, linking Middle Ages gynocide to 70s ouija boards and forward to modern direct-to-DVD scrappy indie gems, made for the love of making them with nary a chance in hell of turning a profit--if that's not trusting the dark arts, what is? If only Ed Wood could have lived long enough to see the wonders his legacy hath wrought! My two great-great-great-great-etc. Aunt Marys (Edwards and Easty) and all my other Salem ancestors (no joke - I have the documents) are avenged through thee Prime. Let the fall foliage crumble in lovely dark red and purples in the crispness of your knobby knuckled hand's caress! We shall collect them for a recliner to plant before our tombstone screen. Wake thy imps from their velvet cloth slumber, the charm's rewound again!
PS - as before each film is rated both for film quality (factoring personal preferences) and image quality (as in the clarity, restored crispness/color etc of Prime's streaming print --which is subject to change)
1. THE CHURCH
(1989) Dir. Michele Soavi
**1/2 (Image- B)
It's long (feels longer than it is), convoluted, and it tries to keep too many balls in the air, this DEMONS variation (cross-section of people trapped in a building and threatened with demonic possession) is set in an ancient church erected over a pit full of Templar-slain pagans, involves a treasure map mystery and Rube Goldberg contraptions stirring to dusty life, opening the pit and releasing a horde of long-buried evil spirits (if the demons are let loose the church locks shut tight to keep them trapped). Like so many horror films dealing with witchcraft, this has its cake (those Temnplar murderers are bad), eats it too (but the witches are real, and evil), and then brings it right back to the store complaining its stale and demanding a refund, and then projectile vomits it back (pea-soup colored) into the cashier's face when he refuses (possession is 9/10 of the law!).
![]()
Co-written with Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento at the height of their mutual appreciation society, this stars Argento company regulars Barbara Cupisti (OPERA), Asia Argento (when she was still a young school girl), and creepy-sexy Thomas Arana, and ends with a spectacular destruction scene preceded by devil copulation (a running theme in Soavi's late 80s-early 90s work), unsettling near incest (as various people are possessed by demons), hallucinations, gory murders, and a relatively keen sense of who is where in the cavernous space at any given time. The music is credited to Phillip Glass and "The Goblins" and there's occasionally some annoying prog courtesy Keith Emerson, but most of the time it's quiet though, so you can pray to the blessed virgin sans distraction albeit in vain. The image is a little fuzzy but I think it's always looked like that - on par with Soavi's other films - lots of gray and dust filtering the light. Let Lamberto have the bright red Suspiria color fields; Soavi doesn't need them. Even if CHURCH isn't as good as most of Soavi's other work it still holds up better than most everything else in its league, genre, and field.
Co-written with Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento at the height of their mutual appreciation society, this stars Argento company regulars Barbara Cupisti (OPERA), Asia Argento (when she was still a young school girl), and creepy-sexy Thomas Arana, and ends with a spectacular destruction scene preceded by devil copulation (a running theme in Soavi's late 80s-early 90s work), unsettling near incest (as various people are possessed by demons), hallucinations, gory murders, and a relatively keen sense of who is where in the cavernous space at any given time. The music is credited to Phillip Glass and "The Goblins" and there's occasionally some annoying prog courtesy Keith Emerson, but most of the time it's quiet though, so you can pray to the blessed virgin sans distraction albeit in vain. The image is a little fuzzy but I think it's always looked like that - on par with Soavi's other films - lots of gray and dust filtering the light. Let Lamberto have the bright red Suspiria color fields; Soavi doesn't need them. Even if CHURCH isn't as good as most of Soavi's other work it still holds up better than most everything else in its league, genre, and field.
(1962) Directed by Sidney Hayers
***1/2 / Image - A
What makes this film work is its moody black and white photography and AIP talent roster, including Corman Poe screenwriters Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, who always instill 'classic' material with an edge of modern wit that does nothing to dispel the unease and terror. It's directed by Sidney Hayers, a TV director who's worked on The Avengers, and Baywatch, among others, but hey - it's all about the script and the actors, and these are top flight, even if there's nary a familiar face in the bunch: Janet Blair is the wife, Peter Wyngarde the brooding Rod Taylor-ish lead, Margeret Johnson the limping rival; Judith Stott an amazing and odd face as the charmed co-ed.
I've been shy about this film since I was afraid half of the running time would be spent with the husband condescendingly lecturing and belittling his wife about her black magic habits. He does, but she fights back with scathing wit and makes her conversion to logic something that's a result of her own self-doubt, rather than his stern paternal berating. Part and parcel to this left brain belittling the right thing is the whole code-enforced demoting of women from sexy independent thinkers to smiling slave drone Stepford wives. I love women! I think they're great / they're a solace to a world in a terrible state. What a nightmare to have no women in the world (Lou Reed). Or as BWB shows, it's a nightmare either way, but beautiful (Bing Crosby). Filmed in black and white, BURN has the arty photography of the British countryside, rocky beaches, and cloudy English skies of the British new wave, and stands up against the cream of Hollywood's post-Lewton / Tourneur ambiguous shadowy horrors.
3. BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS
(1973) Dir. Ted V. Mikels
*1/2 (Stream quality - B+)
For this alcoholic, a great simple throbbing synthesizer score goes a long long way towards paving over rough spots (what Carpenter called a 'carpet score' - i.e. it avoids micromanaging). Good old De Palma's preference for high-falutin' longhairs like Hermann and Rota can get a little overwrought, like one long music video for the orchestra, but here in Mikels country a nutcase named Carl Zittrer doing the 'special electronic music' keeps it simple: just one crude sustained repetitive drone, occasionally there's organ and drums - it works like some magic enchantment. Mikels directs the whole thing like he's ingested too much mandrake root and didn't pay his light bill, but the darkness is its major asset, for in this Amazon print/image the blacks are deep black and that's what counts. I've never been a fan of the HG Lewis aesthetic but something about Mikels primitivism grabs me, sometimes.... here the vibe is somewhere between Kenneth Anger's ceremonial rites and a Sam Fuller primitivist pulp nightmare. The lead witch Mara (Lila Zaborin)--stressing every word of her weird rhyming spells as if channeling Mickey Rooney's Puck in the 1935 Rienhardt film version of Midsummer Night's Dream--holds it all together very well and the scenes of her group dancing around naked men with spears, their hot midriffs and long legs driving innocent boys like me to sad distraction connects it all in some vague way to Hammer's Prehistoric Women (1967). I could have used more of them, less of the weird bouncer guy with the fur hat (he looks like he could be Tom Savini's dad trying out for the father in The Hills have Eyes). Various coven members stare into mirrors and hallucinate their past lives as witches being persecuted. A scene of a girl forced to watch her child mercilessly flogged while she's burned alive is pretty vividly acted and as a result kind of painful to endure. There's also Native American dances and a pope trying to exorcise a woman, failing and so having her stoned to death by the locals. It's all very appalling and surprisingly well done with decent crowd scenes. Meanwhile Mara takes a contract to rub out a crusading politician at a cocktail party via totem telepathy. It works, but the client doesn't get the message. Honey you don't cross the woman who can kill through remote viewing telepathy and voodoo doll torture. There's also a pretty weird seance, maybe the most amateur-creepy since the one the guy shouting "Mongo Mongo Monnnngo" in Ed Wood's Night of the Ghouls. In other words, this is clearly a can't miss Halloween option. "Sometime people devote their entire lifetime to study of the mind," notes the "good" doctor, known for his ability to "psychometrize objects." He and the 'normal' visiting couple who bring down Mara's coven aren't painted very well in the narratve; they seem like just another batch of violent puritans determined to kabosh Mara's powerful "demoniacal" presences. "There's a sabbath going on in this house at this time" he notes as her cool LA pad glows in the dark. Surrounding the house on all four sides with powerful 'good guy' warlocks, he kills everyone inside - after all, their politics disagreed with his. It is what it is. Christendom is 'saved.' Not even a rubber bat shall pass. 
4. THE WITCH
(2016) Dir. Robert Eggers
***1/2 / Amazon Image - A
Shrouded in portentous gloom and ominous droning electric cello, THE WITCH (2015) is the first great woodsy pre-Salem devil film in 300 years, a SHINING for the ANTICHRIST x BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW subdivision of the HAXAN community (with a dash of the recent HONEYMOON if you're keeping track). Set in 1630s New England on a small patch of farm and field surrounded by deep (if leafless) woods, it's a character piece that delves into the same dark patch of the soul that many witch and devil movies make feints at but then run away from, i.e. the actual dark superstitions and folk tales, court records, and the twisted folk horror stories of zonked-out American mystics like Hawthorne, Poe and Ambrose Bierce. First time-writer/director Robert Eggers flair for the milieu and the genre both, making the narrative work by being straightforward with the paranoia and the reality. Not unlike ROSEMARY'S BABY it functions on both conscious and unconscious levels; an historical look at repressed female psychic energy in a patriarchy and the validation of that patriarchy's fear of the dark.
Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Thomasin (above, amidst deepdreamgenerator pareidolia), a naif to the menstrual age, who prays valiantly for deliverance from sinful thoughts but nonetheless falls prey to shady woodsy pagan strangeness, especially once the baby disappears on her watch. Kate Dickie, brilliantly unhinged, is the salt of the earth mom slowly dissolving into the dirt from the loss; the loving yet ineffectual dad (the nicely deep-voiced Ralph Ineson) can do nothing but try and fail and shy away from all blame; the son, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), is the sacrificial Barleycorn offering of a young lad starting--since there are no other options--to lust for his developing sister. Running rings around them all are moppet evil twins and a strapping horned goat named Black Phillip --possibly the embodiment of Goat of Mendes i.e. Baphomet, or maybe just a buck in heat or in the early stages of rabies. Somehow that goat steals the show and miraculously never seems CGI fake or badly cut-in to appear to not be doing naturally the eerie stuff he's up to. There's also a rabbit and a raven, filmed in such a thin grey light we feel the ominous ambivalence in their empty eye that they might remind yo of being a small child terrified by some strange small (but big to you) animal. That THE WITCH conjures such tremulous memories via just showing a frickin' hare just sittin' there in the deep dusky woods speaks to the film's unholy power.
5. SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
(1973) TVM (prod.by Aaron Spelling & Leonard Goldberg)
*** (Image - C)
The print on Amazon isn't great but it's the best we've got until someone puts in some effort and $$. At least the bulk of it is actual film damage--green lines, cigarette burns, inconsistent color, blotches etc.--rather than tape dupe streaking--which works for its 70s retro cachet. The damage is actually very reminiscent of the first half of Tarantino's Death-Proof. And in addition to Kate and Cherly Ladd, the students include Pamela Franklin (the girl-child in The Innocents) who'd just come off shooting Legend of Hell House and Jaime Smith-Jackson who'd just come off Go Ask Alice!
So look, it's not that great I'll grant you, but there's a certain kind of black magic to this School that defines what I call '70s babysitter cinema' --the hair clothes and open attitude conjures precious childhood memories of cute older girls babysitting, playing with ouija boards on the orange shag rug, surrounded by wood panelling, the hum of the air hockey game, and the staying up late watching scary old movies on the late show (but racing upstairs when we heard the parents car). Charlie's Angels was the frosting on this cake, representing an alchemically-transmuted gold standard of adult sexuality just achingly beyond our ken, and Satan's School for Girls was (alongside Death at Love House), was the dark sexy poison cherry always too out of reach. Being a TV movie it seldom came on except late late at night when parents were home (long before VCRs). Thus it entered in my brain via the realm of jouissance-charged myth. We heard it was just so-so, but that didn't stop it it from growing in style and stature.
But that's the beauty of a 70s made-for-TV supernatural horror movie (and there were a lot): even stripped down simple narrative like this, even after seeing it a few times on a crappy transfer, its myth endures. Like a Satanic rite one is forced to participate in as a hypnotized child, one forgets it mere minutes after undergoing it, and the cover memory is even stranger --what a peculiar dream said Alice. Come, said the horned one, and join us!
Unless you're weird like me, well, if nothing else it has a certain easygoing charm the whole family can mildly enjoy - there's no kissing or nudity or blood (a few metonymic body parts aside. One day, when a first rate transfer/restoration is undergone, me and the seven other people who love this film wild chant and dance ecstatically around the burning altar in ecstatic surrender. We're home, Elizabeth! We're home!
6. VOODOO MAN
(1944) Dir. William "One Shot" Beaudine
*** / Amazon Image: B
Like Satan's School, to appreciate the beauty of Voodoo Man without the background of having being what Forrest Ackerman called "a monster kid" in 1960s-70s, is surely not easy. You must first understand true suffering: romantic longing, unfair parents, stupid little brothers, annoying teachers, sweethearts heading overseas to god knows where to face what kind of horror and death at the hands of the Germans or Japanese, because then you will know the joy in Bela Lugosi's insane megalomania, and be afraid of him at the same time. Here he abducts, hypnotizes young women, dresses them in ceremonial robes and uses them in weird soul energy transfer voodoo rites. Sound familiar? A little bit SKELETON KEY, a little bit Satanic panic Illuminati-mind control conspiracy theory and all a lot of tosh, and as a kid quite incoherent. Where's the monster? That was our nagging querstion.
But now I know: it's me. In 1944, the idea of a row of brides in white flash frozen in somnambulistic trances meant something - for this was a kind of forlorn soldier's hope, that his bride's recently awakened sexuality would "keep" in suspended animation until he returned; but playing around this deep freeze we have Lugosi, a sad, mad genius struggling to restore life to his catatonic wife via soul energy transference from these hypnotized brides (quite similar to another Lugosi film, THE CORPSE VANISHES). For like such a mad genius, VOODOO MAN suffers from disrespect and the hostile derision of lesser mortals. For indeed, the poverty row horrors of the 1940s were dissed by everyone, even their own makers (the writer hero disparages even his own past 'voodoo movie' scripts); a sad state of affairs when the director and writer admit throughout the film that they don't give a damn about what they're doing and you shouldn't either. But we were used to being told stuff we liked was crap. And we raged against boredom and against every bedtime and in this refusal to kowtow to life's petty rules we really found a kinsman in Lugosi. It didn't matter how bad everyone else was in front of and behind the camera in these dull murky dramas, Bela was the star and he gave it 120 proof.
And he has George Zucco.... in a headdress, acting up a solid 1/2 a shit storm of no tomorrow with mouthfuls of gobble di-gook probably made up on the spot. Is it possible to love anything more? Not even John Carradine's painful hamming as an imbecile assistant (which I realize is for the censors--so he scans too childish to molest the zombie brides beyond petting their hair), or the condescending attitude of the hero, can dampen the glow, the passion, the moistening in Bela's eyes when he thinks he's finally waking up his sleeping beauty. (more)
7. HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES
(1922) Dir. Benjamin Christensen
**** / Amazon Image - A
The definitive documentary / dramatization on the 'science' of the Middle Ages, where the problem of overpopulation and unmarried old bitches was solved through witchcraft accusations, though something doesn't quite add up considering how impossible it was to be found innocent and how many accusations were flying around. We follow two different relatively minor incidents--a father is dying of some unnamed malady, the wife suspects witchcraft, and event follows event and soon the entire household is rounded up and burnt at the stake; in another a horny young monk can't stop fantasizing about some local girl, therefore rather than pray against temptation, the elder monk flogs him and then denounces the girl as a witch. So of course, she's tortured to death to make her confess. Shit is hard to watch, but luckily sooner or later all the women confess lurid fantasias of a Bosch vision of Hell coupled to a Bruegel drunken peasant mass came to life it would look just like these crazy scenes, while the scenes of the monks laughing and drinking while torturing poor old women to death is pretty gut-wrenching but the eventual confessions make it all worthwhile: witches kissing the devil's filthy ass like it's a new bride reception line; a devil feverishly churning his witch pole and flicking his tongue with enough lascivious obscenity to shame a Pazuzu-possessed Regan McNeil; flying witches, stop motion imps breaking through doors; flying gold pieces always just out of reach, banquets that turn to rancid toads at first bite --all like some wild datura root nightmare come to life.
(2015) Dir. by Roxanne Benjamin, Radio Silence,
David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath
David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath
*** (Amazon Print: A)
9. LITTLE WITCHES
(1996) Dir. Jane Simpson
**3/4 (Image - B)
It's in full screen if you can believe that but damn, maybe it was never in anything else. I certainly don't remember it in theaters though I imagine it tried to ride the success of the very similar high school girl clique coven flick, The Craft.Much as I like that film and much as critics disparage this one online, I think Little Witches is better. The only advantage The Craft has is that career-defining badass performance by Fairuza Balk. Well, this one has a pretty damned good evil witch performance too, from the lovely dark-haired Sheeri Rappaport. The plot is similar, but also resembles Satan's School for Girls which by now you know I have a soft spot for. The girls this time are cast-offs who for whatever reason are staying over at the Catholic girls' boarding school over Easter holiday (spring solstice, y'all). Events are set in motion when a hot construction guy uncovers a walled-off room in the rectory housing, as in The Church, a deep well/pit to who knows where and a skeleton, the girls, bored and restless prowl over to the uncovered room in the dead of night, driven to perform unholy rites for reasons that would make no sense to the layman (the spells exist already, they draw subjects to perform/say them like magnets drawing paper clips - you might think you're just playing a slumber party game but I assure you the idea is not your own)
It all starts with Mimi Rose as a brainiac shy girl who conveniently happens to read Latin fluently and is bunked into the same room with the popular wild child (Rappaport), there's some jealous disputes over the sexy construction guy, allowing for lots of nudity from Rappaport, which is a rather startling contrast considering these girls in their little uniforms read pretty young within the scope of things; rocking an insane midriff and baring her (thankfully un-augmented) breasts with diegetic abandon, and without undue ickiness (it's directed by a woman which I'm sure helps). The cast includes such cult horror royalty Jennifer Rubin (Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Bad Dreams) is the cool nun in charge of the girls; Jack Nance is the priest (though still doing his Twin Peaks fisherman schtick); Poltergeists's Zelda ("this house.... is clean") Rubenstein is the requisite blind nun with some holy Sentinel-style duty; one of the girls is a very young Clea Duvall. Either way the unholy powers are summoned and the Good Friday solstice convergence threatens reality as we know it (the tentacles monster thing comes at the end like a checkered flag) and all is well. I'm not sure why this film gets such derision, as Arrow in the Head notes that the film is too on the fence about what it wants to give us: "the sex is too soft (no lesbian scenes or sex scenes) to satisfy the [XXX] hounds and the horror too weak to thrill the genre fiends. I don’t even know if the film is supposed to be a comedy or not." But to some of us that's the whole point. Once it's a comedy or a sex film or a gore fest it's boring. Anyone can do that shit. What Little Witches has that's unique is the naturalistic Hawksian overlapping rapport between the girls, the freedom from all the typical characterization shorthand (i.e. no dumb pranks, gross gags, or slut-shaming) and a sense of the supernatural arising slowly and naturally, almost like a joke at first but then, like the frog in the boiling water, too late to escape. I'd say anyone who hates on this film is a misogynist idiot whose fate is decreed by the unholy rainment of the Illuminati Sistren shish boom blah blah blah. Whatevs, playa, Sheeri Rappaport rulez!
 |
| I'm a sucker for Rappaport's Linda Fiorentino-ish brunette feline fierceness |
10. CHANDU ON THE MAGIC ISLAND
(1935) Starring: Bela Lugosi
** (Amazon stream Image -D+)
** (Amazon stream Image -D+)
It's sometimes hard to figure why Bela Lugosi got such mean treatment in the studio system but films like this may offer a clue; a lifelong drug addiction can be controlled, even harnessed, with an endless prescription or enough quality product $$ and conncections to keep you "straight" as in not taking too much (so you nod off and miss your cue) or too little (so you're a twitching, sweaty mess). But if you run short (and sooner or later you always do) then you're in deep shit---screaming about zee bats eating zee little wall mice --- what music they make! The drugs is the life, Mr. Renfield. Perhaps a simple booster from a big studio doctor could have knock Bela into the outfield of calm centered brilliance and he wouldn't have to drink embalming fluid to get his screaming under control, but there was no magic doctor on a B-movie serial set like that of the 12-chapter Return of Chandu. Probably not even a trailer; you were on your goddamned own. Shooting up between the potted fronds when the gaffers aren't looking, barely keeping it together, you're only solace is that unless you really fuck up your lines the number of takes on a given scene seldom passes the 'one' mark.
I generally warn you away from Amazon streams with the poor image quality on this Prime print but I've never seen a good version--my old two-tape set of the original serial looked just as bad--and the distillation works well (the original is mad boring) and the blurry pixelation strangely enough works for the diegetic smoke and mirrors and soul transference projection crystal ball and stirred fountain effects. And most importantly, not only is Bela the good guy (confusing all the kids who loved him as the bad guy in the Fox's Chandu the Magician from 1932), he has a girlfriend! Me I can't help but see how poorly that role suits him. He was alive and sexy in the same year's The Raven at Universal but here he's sweating. bloated, overwhelmed with panic in his eyes. His pain can be hard to look at, so just pretend Bela's Chandu really is a junkie and that magic and trippy visions are the same thing and that the princess Nadi is really his smack dealer and the bad guys with the funny hats are Reagan's draconian 80s drug policy-enforcers. And only by renouncing her love is he granted the biggest spell of all, which brings the evil temple down upon them - and that means only one thing - he makes a conscious decision to turn his will and his life over to the care of a higher power, which just takes willingness. And I pretend the big cat sculpture is the one from the Viaje al cielo de los gatos and all is well with the "world." So even if at times you'll want to bitch slap Lugosi's character for just standing around letting people get hurt rather than speaking up or launching a spell of some kind -- toting a big ungainly diplomat family around subjecting them to danger and nonstop hostage-taking while he just stands around sweaty and horrified and passive, forgive him as I have. I'd rather light a cigarette than curse your nicotine withdrawal darkness. Even so, when I get the screaming yips again, which even now happens so regular you can set your watch to it, I'm glad this film is handy, like a forgotten spell remembered in the nick of time, only just.
11.WITCHHOUSE
(1999) Dir. David DeCoteau
** (Amazon Image: A-)
A simple story set in a very cool mansion (stuffed with interesting bric-a-brac and natural [candles, oil lamps, string] lighting) about a small solstice gathering held by well-heeled Goth girl Margaret (Ashley McKinney) for a disparate bunch of Dunwich schoolfriends, couples mostly, some who barely know her. They don't even know about her ancestor Lilith (Arian Aulbright), a 'buked and scorned (and burnt) Salem witch who levied a terrible curse upon her Puritan executioners 300 years earlier--and she's been revived for the party and the guests are descendants of those Puritans! Mwah hah hah! Sure it's shot on high def video but it looks pretty great anyway, filmed by patient Romanian craftsmen (Romania, home of the ex-pat Charles Band empire!) it has the vibe of some slightly awry unaired pilot run at at the 4 AM witching hour with no mention in the TV Guide--as if some sleepy Cabin in the Woods titan in the center of the Earth alone is watching--there's all the requisite types he likes: the stoner comic relief, the dumb jock and his hot blonde sexed-up girlfriend, the nebbish bookworm hero and the bookworm girl he just met who doesn't know how cute she is and wears glasses or is afraid of sex or something, gosh - gee, etc. But this is from 1999, when we still partied like it was... just that year... even in the wilds of.... Transylvania (or wherever in Romania this was filmed). And though this is the lamest party I've ever seen (both the pot idea and the whiskey idea are kaboshed by buzzkill girlfriends); an uptight film major is the first to get zapped and he's the loudest at just saying no - preferring to stay all tense and bothersome. And the stoner's girlfriend kicks the witches ass ("I coldcocked her and locked her in the other room," she casually announces). So surprises still abound to make up for the lack of convivial mood.** (Amazon Image: A-)
 |
| L-R: ---Brooke Mueller (the rocker type); seance; Monica Serene Garnich (the cute nerdy type) |
Like Little Witches above, it's an innocuous little film that seems to me gets unwarranted negative reviews-- it may not be that great but compared to what? It's not trying for anything it can't achieve. So what's it trying to be, then, exactly? I'm very bad you axed! In the low-key acting of some of the characters--how innocuously yet lovingly the cinematographer keeps the candlelight in proper atmospheric balance--Witchouse works as a more or less PG-14 spookshow with nothing to upset the sleeping ancestors; though some sex is implied and there's some gore, there's no nudity and the romance budding between mega engineering major super nerd and the lovely glasses-wearing long blonde hair -wearing history major is actually very nicely acted, with just enough aching "c'mon and kiss her already" tension that it's enough they kissed for five seconds to feel they've bonded forever (no need for a slow-mo grind).
Lastly, it might help to have grown up reading/watching shit like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and/or to really resent the need for gore and graphic sex and sexual assaults rubbed like doggy doo-doo in our Kordovaa Milk Bar-jaded psyches, amping up the intensity as we get jaded from overexposure. Then again, I'm very particular - the list of things I dislike in my go-to horror films gets longer every year, especially if there's any gross eating scenes or any imprisonment or cockblocking or garlic salt. Witch House may not be as stealth great as The Eternal, but is similar enough that I forgive it all trespasses. Plus the bond between Lilith and Margaret is cute - like they're old pals, the cool aunt who visits on the holidays once a year (neither turns on the other as a final bloody twist, for example). Sure the nerds win in the end, but who gets to rock? Witches give snitches stitches and damn right they'll be back, whether anyone shows up to fuckin' ever drink that whiskey or not!
---
![]()
![]()
(AKA "ANOTHER")
(2014) Dir. Jason Bognacki
(2014) Dir. Jason Bognacki
*** (IQ -A)
Proof you don't need a huge budget and a ton of scenes or even linear time -- you just need to have done enough drugs, meditation, therapy, or arguing with a manipulative mother --to know how slippery identity and self perception really is; there's never a guarantee when we 'let go' of ourselves that we're going to get our same self back. Clearly a kind of expanded short in concept, which is fine with me, it tells a pretty easy to follow tale via a series of Lynchian para-sympathetic matriarchal ellipses and horror hallucinations of the aftermath of a marked young woman's 18th birthday --her strange history involving a witchy coven, and a body-hopping immortal imp mother. Inside a dream within a dream souls fight for possession and reunion and evil can never be beaten for long (nor can good, if there is such a thing). The life blood! It is not only thicker than water, it's the sewer tunnel through which eternal beings scurry like rats under the river of the centuries. losing their marbles like Flounder at the Animal House parade. The acting here --especially from newcomer Paulie Redding as the newly 18 year-old pharmacist-intern (my dad was doing the same shit at her age)--with her marvelous range of expressions we can instantly tale who's possessed her at any given time, and the Skelton Knaggs -nosed Maria Olsen, playing either her mother or herself or her ancient ancestor or all of them, there's no difference, it's all in the family even with rebel sort of 'good witch' guardian Nancy Wolfe. Dig the way the director bides for time by slowing the end credit scroll to ten minutes!
13. THE ETERNAL
(1998) Dir. Michael Almereyda
**** (IQ - B)
Like a few other films on this list, I'm shocked at the afforded hostility of the average critic who finds this loose drunkard druid meditation on Irish horror novelist Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars about a mysterious ring on a perfectly preserved lady mummy hand that winds up possessing a young Victorian daughter of a catatonic Egyptologist. The book is great, like Dracula, Stoker seems obsessed with a kind round the clock vigil over endangered hotties whose past lives either are these ancient demons or were in love with them. Either way, that ridiculous faux K-horror erotic video cover is terrible, the title is meaningless, and even the other title 'TRANCE' is bad. Michael! Call me I can help! You could have called it She-druid Drunks of the Iron Age - that's just off the top of m'head. And whatever you have against this film, film critics at large, admit that Allison Elliott is sublime in an array of roles, and the idea of a devouring matriarchal druid ancestor jibes very well with the other films on this list, so even though I've written about it a dozen times already (see: Inescapably Her Iron Age Druid Bog Mummy Telekinetic Alcoholic Hottie Self) I had to include it, do you understand? I didn't have a choice!!
And for Almereyda heads out there, Prime has his first feature, favorite of everyone ever in the world who's seen it (all sixteen of us), 1989's TWISTER, (no relation to the 1996 Jan De Bont action movie). As for NADJA it's buried in a 4-for-1 vampire set somewhere, but worth gettin' even if it does look like shit (non-anamorphic). Where's Criterion when you need them? Almereyda is Lord!
Also:
BLACK MAGIC
(AKA Meeting at Midnight)
**1/2 (IQ-C)
(AKA Meeting at Midnight)
**1/2 (IQ-C)
A Monogram Chan with opening and closing seance, this is one of the latter poverty row Chans but don't let that stop you. I used to loathe the Chans mainly because the children were annoying (his extended family), #1 son Jimmy's competent if easily distracted, while #2 is just a vulnerable spazz and #3 just a face loping after Mantan like a mask stuck to his shoe.
SUGAR SKULL GIRLS
(2016) Dir. Christian Grillo
** (Image - A)
If Phil Tucker (the genius behind Cat Women of the Moon and Robot Monster) took a bet he could film an all-ages girl power spookshow with just his daughter and her friends, a few very odd guest stars (such as Michael Hills Have Eyes Berryman) in one afternoon - then hey - this is similar. For "adults" of all ages who are trying to turn their ten year-old daughters away from the Neon Demon and the hentai watched by their peers and point them towards the Labyrinth / Power Rangers past, or crazier still, grandfathers trying to do the same thing with Ultra Man and H.R. Puf-n-Stuff this might do it. I know I would have tolerated its idiocy if I was like eight or nine and this came on TV in the dead of night - that zone where most TV stations have already signed off but some are showing late late movies or early early kids' movies imported from Sweden with terrible American dubbing. It's the kind of thing that might come on during the old USA network 'Night Flight' or on a plane.
demonic Power Puff contingent for the freshly pierced. Something the less mature children can show their younger siblings after trick-or-treating - to both laugh at and laugh with, and even get the gist of what good Brechtian so-amateur-it's-genius is all about (like I used to do on the dance floor to get the crowd bopping - just start flailing around to the music as wildly and terribly as you can - all the shy people relax --no matter how lame they are, they can't be any worse than you. It never failed. As Prospero says in Corman's Masque of the Red Death, the best swordsman in Europe wouldn't fear the second best, he would fear the worst. If put over with enough gusto, terrible pacing, clunky editing, amateur acting and muddled writing can be overcome through pure muttonheaded moxy. I also will ascertain at this juncture I know no one in the cast or crew, have not been sent a copy or courted via emails to review this, I just found it floating in the Amazon stream, like all the rest. Let us give thanks this day, for in my childhood this kind of distribution was a foolhardy dream. The label putting this out is 'Potent media' and their symbol is an inverted pentagram. Something is amuck, I mean amiss. Yet I found it - floating in the 'similar titles on Prime' and for a hot sec I felt once again like a single digit-aged Ed Wood fan finding a surreal K. Gordon Murray kiddie import on the 5 AM movie.
The DEVIL'S HAND
(1962) Dir. William J. Hole
**
(at least two versions of different quality exist on Prime)
I have tried to see this all the way through a few times but it seems like little more than an Alfred Hitchcock Presents or Karloff 'Thriller' episode padded with a lengthy scene of coven members sprawled on divans watching a floor show of devilish doin's. That said, mileage may yet vary. The incomprable Bruno ve Sota lurks amidst the divans, and look fast for...nah I won't spoil it.
BAY COVE
(AKA [Easy] BAY COVEN)
(AKA [Easy] BAY COVEN)
(1987) TVM - Dir. Carl Schenkel
**1/2 (IQ - C)
The mid-to-late 80s TV movie was mired in Miami Vice-style pastels, full of yuppies in Ray Bans; ugly perms on shoulder padded, stirrup-panted girls, and greed and self-interest coupled to bad synthesizer and soft focus slow motion grappling. It needed a fresh start, to go back to the land of pagan sacrifice and covens (Children of the Corn came out in 1984) and get away from the rat race. So Bay Coven, or Cove --an isolated island community only 45 minutes away from the city where an unholy pact has resulted in all the original members still living, sacrificing descendants of their auld persecutors and not forgiving them a single fiery trespass. Time to recruit Timothy Hutton and and his sexy wife (Pamela Sue Martin!), and to welcome them a little too thoroughly for comfort. Has she really flipped or did they use their magic to kill her brother (Woody Harrelson)?
![]()
If you can take Martin's post-New Wave shoulder pads and unflattering Cherry Hill perm and don't mind the movie's stubborn refusal to try even one original plot point on its own instead of "borrowing" everything (right down to the dream sequences) from Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Crowhaven Farm, and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, or to stray from its muted blue-and-grey shot-on-video pallette (deliver us from 80s venetian blind lighting effects) then you shouldn't mind riding out this movie, especially if you're doing something else at the same time. Maybe that's the whole reason we used to love these old TV movies - they were never meant to be original or riveting - never meant to absorb our full attention or bum us out. They knew what they were designed to do, keep us watching, mildly absorbed but never fully 'checking out' the way we do know when we can watch entire seasons in one sitting, no commercials, no respite, no return from reality. Now I am become Tivo, the destroyer of worlds.
Even so, there's a huge difference between the warmth and beauty of celluloid uploaded to digital stream and video uploaded to digital stream.
If you can take Martin's post-New Wave shoulder pads and unflattering Cherry Hill perm and don't mind the movie's stubborn refusal to try even one original plot point on its own instead of "borrowing" everything (right down to the dream sequences) from Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Crowhaven Farm, and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, or to stray from its muted blue-and-grey shot-on-video pallette (deliver us from 80s venetian blind lighting effects) then you shouldn't mind riding out this movie, especially if you're doing something else at the same time. Maybe that's the whole reason we used to love these old TV movies - they were never meant to be original or riveting - never meant to absorb our full attention or bum us out. They knew what they were designed to do, keep us watching, mildly absorbed but never fully 'checking out' the way we do know when we can watch entire seasons in one sitting, no commercials, no respite, no return from reality. Now I am become Tivo, the destroyer of worlds.
Even so, there's a huge difference between the warmth and beauty of celluloid uploaded to digital stream and video uploaded to digital stream.
SEASON OF THE WITCH
AKA "Hungry Wives"
AKA "Hungry Wives"
(1972) Dir. George Romero
** / IQ - C
This doesn't get a lot of love due its dream logic kitchen sink symbolism, depressing look, and glum acting. Sure it's from George Romero, sure made between Living Dead and The Crazies, but it's too dingy and didactic to work as either horror or 'cracker factory' polemic. It's like hey, we get it, like so many in the early days of women's lib, housewife Joan (Jan White, in terrible greasy make-up) is bored and sexually frustrated, with a husband who barely seems to notice her (and vice versa) and a penchant for lazing around dreaming in surreal shorthand. Even her witchiness is boring--doing it mostly alone at home = too sad for school. Honey, we all have to suffer against the sucking tide of societal indifference and our own inertia, toying around with New Age accoutrements is just another form of isolation consumerism. And no offense to Romero, but do we really need another man telling a story about the troubles faced by women stagnating within the confines of their white middle class suburban mores? Instead of just laying around in bed all day dreaming of being led around on a leash by an uncaring bored (impotent) husband, why not get a job?SEE ALSO:
on Youtube (last I looked) THE WITCHING starring Pamela Franklin!