Reviewed By

Christopher Armstead
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
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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'.
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