Census Bloodbath: Screams In The Witch House

Year:
1989
Director:
Fabrizio Laurenti
Cast:
Linda Blair, David Hasselhoff, Leslie Cumming
Run Time:
1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Witchery is set in a sprawling hotel on an island off the coast of Massachusetts that the locals say used to be the home of a witch. They say this because it's true! Said witch (Hildegard Knef) is still haunting the place, and she begins to enact a murderous Satanic ritual upon a group of people who find themselves stranded there.

It's been a while since we've gotten to do this properly, so let's Meet the Meat: Leslie (Leslie Cumming of Zombie 5: Killing Birds), who is studying the legend of the witch; Leslie's boyfriend Gary (David Hasselhoff, who you'll remember best from Terror at London Bridge), a photographer who is pissed that Leslie wants to remain a virgin; horny architect Linda (Catherine Hickland); nepo baby realtor Jerry (Rick Farnsworth); and a rich family that is looking to buy the property, namely cruel matriarch Rose (Annie Ross), lecherous father Freddie (Robert Champagne of Ghosthouse), pregnant stepdaughter Jane (Linda Blair, who you'll remember best from Hell Night), and young son Tommy (Michael Manchester).

Analysis: The thing that is by far the most interesting aspect of the English-language Italian horror movie Witchery is the fact that it is part of the La Casa franchise, so let's spend some time drilling into that. The series is maybe the most "Italian horror" thing to have ever happened, after all.

So, remember 1981's The Evil Dead? I bet you do. It takes place in an isolated cabin in the woods, so the Italian title for it was La Casa (The House). Six years later, Evil Dead II comes out. What do we call that in Italy? Easy. La Casa 2. That movie's a hit. But Sam Raimi isn't making more Evil Dead movies just yet. What's a film industry with rather lax titling rules to do? If you know even a little bit about Italian horror, you can probably guess what happened next. That's right, they found a series of random, unrelated movies that took place in houses and pretended they were sequels to the Evil Dead movies.

Witchery is La Casa 4, whereas La Casa 3 is 1988's Ghosthouse and La Casa 5 is 1990's Beyond Darkness. La Casa 6 and La Casa 7 are, respectively, 1987's House II: The Second Story and 1989's House III: The Horror Show. Weirdly, the original 1986 House was completely ignored by the faux franchise.

This is the perfect franchise for Witchery to have become a part of, because I'm sure the movie felt right at home in that chaotic, unsupervised free-for-all. Because let me tell you, Witchery is all over the damn place.

Honestly, I wasn't sure going in if it was going to end up being slashery enough for me to include in Census Bloodbath. It's a supernatural horror film about a witch, after all. 45 minutes in, I was still completely unsure about how to categorize it. 

The cast is killed off one by one, yes, but they're mostly pulled into a nether realm (by one of the worst visual effects I've ever seen - a sort of cherry red spiral tunnel that looks like someone flushing a tie dye kit down the toilet and which is given a lavish amount of screen time across multiple scenes) to be tortured and sometimes killed, only to be returned to the real world to either have their deaths continue or happen again in a new way. It doesn't make all that much sense, and it doesn't lend itself to the clean simplicity that I prefer from a slasher body count.

That said, the reason you're reading this review at all is that Witchery assembles just enough of the right slasher tropes in the right order (most notably the cast of Meat being stranded in an isolated location).

The fantasy elements really only work when they lean in on being as Italian as possible. I'm talking witchcraft being visually represented by a flashing brooch that appears in jarring close-ups that interrupt the tempo of the scene, the campy German diva witch showing up periodically just to chat with Tommy when nobody else is looking, and so on. There are also a few moments of demented Italian horror visuals that genuinely work quite well.

Additionally, for fans of bad-good movies, the stilted English dialogue hits that mark more often that not ("I'll never understand which you love more: work or sex"), as do the tremendously inconsistent Boston accents sported by half the cast (neither Hasselhoff nor Blair were paid enough to even attempt accents).

However, none of this prevents Witchery from being a complete waste of time. There are too many characters milling about in this hotel, and not enough happens to them for the first hour and 10 minutes of the movie. Plus, Leslie Cumming is giving a shockingly bad, vacant, bleary performance. This was her last credited acting role, which proves that there is indeed a moral arc to the universe. 

To be fair to Cumming, nobody is directed well enough to deliver a convincing performance (least of all Michael Manchester), but unless her direction was specifically "imagine what Daphne Zuniga would do if she had no rizz and was doped up on horse tranquilizers," she is failing to fulfill the assignment in a most extravagant manner.

Killer: The Woman in Black (Hildegard Knef)

Final Girl: Leslie (Leslie Cumming)

Best Kill: When Freddie is killed via voodoo doll, he begins asphyxiating while the veins on his hands and then his neck bulge and burst. Gross!

Sign of the Times: A licensed Sesame Street tape recorder toy is instrumental to the plot.

Scariest Moment: The group lights a fire, not realizing that Rose is strung up in the fireplace, unable to scream because her mouth is sewn shut.

Weirdest Moment: There is a little girl in a wheelchair who shows up in exactly two scenes that accomplish nothing. One is where she introduces herself to Tommy. The other is where she spots the island's emergency flare and tells her dad, who promptly ignores her. (This scene was my alternate pick for Sign of the Times, because his nighttime routine is apparently to smoke a cigarette in bed while reading The Godfather - what a mensch!)

Champion Dialogue: “They've got a lot of legends about this island. Witches and rainbows and shit."

Body Count: 8

1. Pregnant Lady jumps out of the window in a scene that is either a flashback, a movie, a nightmare, or all three.
2. Sailor is killed offscreen.
3. Rose has her lips sewn shut and is burned alive.
4. Linda is tied up to death (don't ask) and is later found with her neck impaled by a swordfish.
5. Jerry is crucified on an upside-down cross and burned.
6. Freddie asphyxiates and bleeds to death via voodoo.
7. Gary is impaled through the back with like a candelabra or something.
8. Jane jumps out of the window.

TL;DR: Witchery is an aimless supernatural slasher that is only worth watching in infrequent spurts.

Rating: 5/10