Post by No Personality on Apr 24, 2010 8:30:15 GMT -5
If Filmirage's insane masterpiece of 1990's cinema, Troll 2, taught us anything it's that - at least within the confines of an Italian-American low budget, direct-to-video co-production - acting is not the most important element to a good bad movie. I'm sure some people just live for good acting. But when you're a fan of the horror genre, you have to take what you can get. Case in point: Halloween. The film features at least one legendary performance by an incredible actor. But look at the supporting cast. Friends, nobodies, and a couple of skilled people with not much mainstream exposure. There are times in that movie where the acting genuinely hurts to watch. This is a hallmark of low budget horror. Acting is not the most important element to a horror movie. And so, thank God for that. Because the acting in Witchery is so terrible, it gives Troll 2 a serious run for its' money.
The problem with both movies is that it feels very much like the Italian person who cast this movie just went out in public and said (by himself or with the aid of an interpreter), "who wants to be in a movie?" Then everyone who raised their hands- he picked. So, the way things seem to go with Filmirage is that they film their horror movies either in America or some other place foreign to Italy and cast very unknown actors from said place. But for Witchery, they wanted a star. Now, David Hasselhoff wasn't Baywatch-famous yet. But he was a huge music sensation in Germany. And funnily enough, the movie's villain is played by another German actor, Hildegard Knef. As far as I can tell, the movie's plot takes place in Massachusetts. Because of the historical legacy of America's Salem Witch Trials. And witches made a bit of a comeback in the 80's. Usually in harmless children's films like The Worst Witch.
The real reason I find this film to be something of a hidden gem is because of how freaking bizarre it is. Actually, it's not a hidden gem. But since it will remain pretty obscure forever, I don't really have to worry about anyone making fun of me for this particular dedication page (I still can't quite call these Spotlights reviews, can I?). And the funny thing about even calling it bizarre is... all Filmirage productions are bizarre. I'm starting to think that's why they made them. Even the name of their company suggests each movie should be seen as a kind of fever dream. Lucio Fulci got away with that for almost 2 decades. And Witchery is actually very close to a Fulci film because it's technically skilled but an utter failure in terms of storytelling. Actually, it's cheap even to the smallest detail. But it's a trade-off. The special effects here are a lot less flashy and therefore, they don't interrupt the film as much as a gore scene in a Fulci film.
I should think Witchery aspires to be more of the Argento school than Fulci. But Fulci kind of polluted the market and as a result, I understand every executive around in Italy wanted a gorefest that they could sell as a cheap rip-off of either Argento's Suspiria or Fulci's The Beyond. So, Filmirage got someone to combine the two and voila- here we find ourselves. This movie also has a thing for The Exorcist. And they prove it by casting Linda Blair who had tried to walk away from horror after 1981's Hell Night by doing action films, thrillers, and TV; sound familiar (Jamie Lee Curtis)? She again becomes possessed, only now she's a pregnant mother-to-be. Even though we know what they do with her here has a tie-in with the prologue, as a child I was obsessed with the imagery of her at the end with that huge electrocuted-'fro and the white night dress. And the scene where she jumps out of a window to her death over the hard ocean rocks. Obsessed with that, I had to see the movie again.
The story of how I came to be exposed to the movie is probably yet another Cinemax experience (they also had a thing for Troll 2). I was a huge pussy back then too. I was a kid and kids' minds have freaked over The Exorcist- a film with a great amount of nuance and character. Just try to imagine how a kid reacts to a woman being sucked down into a hole in the wall and taken into an underground chamber where demonic gypsies sew her lips shut, then hang her upside down in a chimney above the fireplace as someone starts a fire. Yeah- I was so freaked out, I bolted and never finished the film. I just stopped right there. That was too much for me. Previously, I'd seen Children of the Corn and Psycho. To a kid, those films are Barney and Friends compared to this! (Although, I now think the cafe massacre scene from Corn was one of the most disturbing scenes I remember seeing)
One of the reasons films like this and other low budget mid-80's direct-to-video movies were much scarier to me was that they didn't try to scare audiences the same way as theater-released movies did. In a movie like this, you could expect anything to happen at any time. And it's possible. No one is safe. Any character could die. Things that are unpredictable are scary to me. In a Hollywood movie, a serious character film and especially movies about ghosts, the story can't allow for anything unpredictable to happen because it's not fair to characters. Well, that's all well and good. But it's not as scary as a true threat that can tear through a group of people as this happens in real life. I appreciate creative plot anarchy. In that, it's good for when you're tired of the predictable horror films where the result of the terror is too controlled.
Death isn't necessarily scary in a movie, but watching someone die painfully can lead to a fear of what will happen to another character before the movie targets the next victim. This is something that helps to create dread in films like The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, and Argento's films. If you are able to place yourself in a movie situation, which I did when I was a kid. And the more unpredictable and crazy the situation, the more nightmarish it is. People place a lot of emphasis on realism in horror. Reality causes me stress, but it's not actually scary. Nightmares are scarier. Because anything can happen. Imagination is scary. Using your brain is scary. I've noticed that realism works depending on how much you personally rely on trusting other people in your life, counting on them to help you instead of hurt or betray you. Though I admit to believing goodness exists in everyone, I don't trust many people.
I'm almost starting to believe that the push for realism to take over horror is a signal of people thinking the end of the world is almost here. I can understand that. After 8 years of Bush Jr. and what is soon to be a global coprorate control of all news media, anyone would think the world is on its' last legs. But the childishness (the feeling of need-to-have trust in human goodness protected) inherent within the support for realistic-horror as the dominant tone within the genre has almost killed it. As more remakes and worthless survival horror movies come out, all that happens is majority opinion of the great horror films of decades past is getting lower all the time. Of course, that has nothing to do with Witchery. And even without the Saw's and Dawn of the Dead '04s, people would still laugh at this movie. Rightly so. But I doubt they'd laugh at that lip-sewing scene.
Which of course leads me to say- why don't they just remake movies like this?! The realism movement could be used to enhance scenes like the lip-sewing one. Which is only flawed due to the fact that the lips never move and the woman never opens her mouth to scream (if someone were doing that to me- I'd be hollering so much that they'd have to whack me over the head with a hammer). I noticed something else when I was watching the film. For a story that concerns Americans, I have got to say I have never heard a single person in America say the word "esoteric." I'm not sure we even recognize it as a "science." Much like alchemy, it's a wee bit European for America. And now I'm dork-duty bound to bring up another childhood witch movie, Wicked Stepmother (1989). I just Googled "alchemy," and immediately I can see how it's relevant to movie witches.
Argento's characters mention it by name in Inferno (1980). But it would seem this alchemy has a tie-in with witches being the horror version of the Greedy-Jew stereotype. They have a separate religion from those they seek to harm (again, I'm only referencing a stereotype - I don't personally see a word of this being true) and are on a mission to use people to get them money. Suspiria started something it didn't (nor did Argento's Three Mothers "trilogy") finish by bringing up the subject of witch-greed. But it does reappear in Stepmother when the Barbara Carrera character sends her husband on the game show circuit to rake in her fortune. What happens then? We never find out. We have to imagine witches just wanna kick back and relax, maybe on a beach somewhere. Or in this movie, at a crappy, rundown, desolate old hotel.
Then the movie pulls a Rosemary's Baby and suddenly, the story's virgin character (not the same as Ms. Woodhouse, of course) is nightmare-violated by some kind of freak-nasty gross-ass thing-person creature-guy. There are just no words for what it is. Sort of like one of those vampire men with their hair greased back into a bun. But since he's doing something terrible to her and something supernatural happens to her by film's end, he's not human. But this thing-guy sure isn't any kind of royalty in the realm of the post-human / pre-... whatever rapture translates to in Hell. This thing-guy's probably another dead demon-spirit servant who volunteered to do some dark deed for a good word when whatever's inside virgin-Leslie comes out of her. Sounds like it's time for an abortion. Too bad there wasn't a sequel. They could have done this whole thing about putting her away in a haunted madhouse because they think women who want to abort their babies are insane.
For all this movie's talk about the-esoteric (a phrase I love now, coined by Argento's Deep Red), it's at least able to tap into dreams. I noticed two strange coincidences that link this to the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels of the time (both of them featuring the Alice character - definitely a reference to Alice in Wonderland - as opposed to Heather Langenkamp's "Nancy"). One is where the Tommy character asks the old hag witch who's cursing everyone in this movie, "Do you live here?" She answers back, "nobody lives here." That exact exchange happens verbatim in The Dream Master (1988). Then, the fact that Linda Blair's character is pregnant is an obvious reference to Rosemary's Baby. But also it's uncanny that it predicted the vision of a boogeyman type figure (which I count both witches and demonic gypsies as being a product of) trying to control the baby of the pregnant protagonist in 1989's The Dream Child sequel.
There's also a mystery involving who the witch used to be. A character rattles off something about her being an actress ("like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard" - weird, huh? I did not remember this film when I decided to Spotlight it here), going a little crazy, and disappearing or being too old to still be alive. Thanks to Masters of Horror's "Dreams in the Witch House" episode, I now know a little about witches and babies. In the mythology about witchcraft, it's written that witches really wanted babies to use in rituals, sacrifices, and that sort of thing. Though on The Worst Witch DVD bonus features, they inform me witches are typically more pagan and use materials of the Earth, usually plants, for spells and potions. Is the witch in this movie a response in some way to the fears that caused the mobs of ignorant villagers to persecute them? Does she want revenge?
I guess I assumed because when we first see her, I found Hildegard Knef's character to be likable somehow (the same way I felt about Barbara Carerra in Wicked Stepmother), I thought she just wanted a baby and couldn't have one. Then along come the characters to the island. They're trespassers and she needs sacrifices. It's a great match. I can see where she's coming from. But the issue of her cruelty is something else. I know why she's cruel but it clouds the theory that she wants a baby because she couldn't have one by herself. I still think there may be something there. I remember learning something from 1990's The Witches (with Anjelica Huston) that in literature and legends of witches is actually very true. They're well-known for their cruelty and they're really nasty. Suspiria was the first supernatural witch movie I'd seen that showed this through violent content. And Witchery intends to be a step up from that. Hence the gore.
As for the trespassers, well here's where the curse comes in. Here's how it works (from what little we're told): in very Fulci's The Beyond territory, there are "3 doors" which need to be opened to give the witch access to possess one of them and use the others for sacrifices to turn Linda Blair's baby into her baby (I'll explain in a minute the difference between Linda Blair and the virgin character being nightmare-raped because you know now they're not the same). This is symbolic of 3 ingredients she needs to get what she wants. Each of the "doors" has a name. She mentions them two times in the movie and they're not the same each time (that's clearly a problem that stems from the English translation of the script to the English-speaking actors). The first is "greed," the second is "lust," and the third keeps changing. The first two are obviously among the 7 sins. This third changes from "ire of the persecuted witch" to "blood of a virgin" to "fruit of the woman in labor."
She sort-of clarifies that at the end by saying she needs "one element that unites." Basically, the "blood of a virgin" and "fruit of the woman in labor" are the same thing and they are the uniting element. And I gather now that she meant to transfer the baby in one character to the body of another, which she sort-of does by re-enacting the prologue at the end of the movie just before the coda. It's a prophecy that she works like a puppet master. She set up this situation by gathering the trespassers up and bringing them into the hotel to sacrifice and get her what she wants. So, that blows my theory about killing the trespassers because they don't belong there. To her, they do. But not as guests. Instead, they're ingredients. Which is pretty horrible and heartless. Now, the significance of her clues seems to make sense though the 7 sins connection is irrelevant. And the 3rd door still doesn't have a name for itself. The last thing I think is very interesting about the movie is the very 80's theme song it seems to have. The lyrics:
My dreams are back
Day after day, the light
Night after night, the dark
Are all my dreams your nightmares?
And some day, somewhere
You can dream and he'll be back
I want to see you, my love, born again
You know it's now time
Dreams are back
Tears after tears, the rain
Years after years, the pain
Maybe this is where I got the idea that the witch was just a normal woman with a sadness about not being able to have a baby. Who else could have been "born" in the first place? The prologue features a pregnant woman whose baby is killed because of the mob of pitchfork-toting villagers who want to kill her. They got their wish and now, in the present day of this story, there's a persecuted witch (her words) who wants a baby for some reason. This song might lead us to believe that reason has something to do with either love or the same evil plot as in the present day. But, I'm leaning more toward love. What other reason would she have "ire" over being persecuted? Obviously, she was either persecuted because she really was evil or she wasn't evil and they persecuted her anyway. Which might make her spirit turn toward the dark (thanks: The Craft) and give her the ire / anger which she uses to savagely kill the victims here.
The lyrics are quite intriguing just because of lines like "he'll be back." He-who? The baby's father? Some kind of dream prince? The baby itself? I doubt that line translates to the movie through the screen-specific plot. But "are all my dreams your nightmares" does seem to have some relevance. Linda Blair's character awakes in the beginning after having a bad dream, a dream of a woman that isn't her. So, one person's dream is placed in the nightmare of another character. Two other characters, to be accurate. Two different nightmares. The reason I'm going over all this is purely curiosity. The movie's really not that bad. For its' type. Filmirage movies get a lot more nuts than this. Even the trailers are so crazy, I fear for the sanity of the people who merely edited them together. So, I leave this review taking only a passing glance at the Hasselhoff-cheese factor. The only thing I have to say about him is - what's this thing with filmmakers being obsessed with him going shirtless? Which he does frequently.
