Say what? Linda Blair… David
Hasselhoff… same movie? Could this possibly true?
It's True! It's True! Say what? Director
Fabrizio Laurenti's witchcraft epic 'Witchery' is awful?
No way… I mean it has Linda Blair… and The Hoff in it, so that
can't possibly but the case. Tragically, 'Witchery' is
not very good, more leaning on the side of lameness that
outright gawdawfulness and given a choice I'll usually take
the gawdawful over the lame because the gawdawful tends to
entertain despite itself.
Gary (The Hoff) and his girl Leslie (Leslie Cummings) are on a
remote island, at an abandoned hotel, so that Leslie can do
some research on some wacky project she's working on while
Gary the professional photographer snaps pictures. Just
so you know, actress Leslie Cummings is really, really
pretty. Think of actress Daphne Zuniga if Daphne Zuniga
was really, really pretty. Not that Daphne is
unattractive or anything. We just had qualify Ms.
Cummings beauty because her lack of acting ability is
unquantifiable. This beautiful woman's ability to act
would have to be measured in picograms it's so
miniscule. But she's pretty. Back on point, sexy
Leslie refuses to have sex with Gary, despite his awesome
manliness and his overt advances, because she's a virgin and
stuff. Like a woman could resist The Hoff… believability
factor… out the window.
Somewhere else on the Earth is Jane (Blair) who is
pregnant. Jane is also being stalked, unknowingly,
by a crazy witch (Hildegard Knef) who seems want to kill her…
but she needs her to be a portal of hell death or something…
so we don't why she was trying to kill her early on in this
movie. Jane also has a little brother in five year old
Tommy (Michael Manchester). We could ask why a thirty
year old woman has a five year old brother from
parents who look to be in their mid sixties,
but we won't ask this. Also, little Michael
Manchester, God bless his tiny heart, could very well be the
worst child actor ever. But just like Leslie Cummings
skates by on being pretty, we're not going to beat up on young
Mr. Manchester because he's just a little
kid.
How does Jane, little Tommy and their distasteful parents make
it to the island? Well Mom (Annie Ross) wants to buy the
hotel as it looks like a solid business opportunity, so they
all load up and meet Freddy (Robert Champagne) the smarmy real
estate agent Linda (Catherine Hickland) the super slutty
architect at the island for a breakdown of the
possibilities. The Witch is there as well.
Finally, after a virtual eternity of almost nothingness except
trite dialog, the weirdness starts happening. At first
there seemed to be some kind of method to the madness of the
witch killing these people, like the mom got her mouth sewed
shut because she talked so damn much, and then Linda the slut
suffered whatever fate sluts suffer from. But after
that, the movie just wanted to get these people dead.
But to what end? That's a damn good question.
Something about a virgin, a pregnant lady, and something that
happened centuries ago. Or yesterday. Who
knows.
Clearly the calling card of 'Witchery' is the fact that The
Hoff and Linda Blair are in it, though that probably means way
more to us in the year 2013 than it did to the movie watching
public in 1988 who I imagine could've cared less about The
Hoff and Linda Blair at that time. The good thing is
that Linda and David didn't disappoint, better still once the
goreified murders started taking place, 'Witchery' almost
became watchable. Not quite, but almost.
Sadly it wasn't near enough to save Mr. Laurenti's
movie. The story my man is telling takes far too long to
develop, that's working on the generous assumption that it
ever did develop, which means we're stuck looking at actors
who largely can't act in situations that we have very little
clue about. And mind you, while we don't want to
be too hard the very pretty Leslie Cummings and the terribly
cute and adorable Michael Manchester, they did have an awful
lot screen time which they used to maximum effect to doom this
movie. Doomed I say!
Of course it's not their entire fault as the slow pacing
didn't help, the ill defined characters didn't help, and the
scattershot narrative certainly didn't help in the
least. But watching David Hasselhoff get a facial from a
pulsating neck boil was semi-classic cinema, and to the
surprise of no one, somehow Linda Blair got possessed and
starting talking like the devil. And that elongated
demon rape sequence was terribly disturbing.
Obviously if the best thing we can say about our movie is that
The Knight Rider got a blood facial from a pulsating neck
boil, as awesome as that may be, there's not a lot good we can
say about your movie. And unfortunately there's not a
lot good we can say about 'Witchery'.
