Witchcraft II: The Temptress - 1989

 Somehow having the next release year after Witchcraft 1, one wonders if this is a legit sequel or just you know a movie that got retitled to capitalize.

No information about that on the Wikipedia, but this does feel like a different movie.  Will Spanner is played by a new actor in this movie and he is receiving a box at his front door which contains writing on something that may reveal part of where Will was born and his original parents.  There is also a evil temptress lady around trying to seduce him, and it could be because eventually it's revealed Will was created by demons.

Why did this feel like a step down and so particularly long?  Could be that I just overdid it with watching a bunch of these, could be this movie sucks, could be many things really.  But yeah, this one did feel like a bit of an endless chore.  For 88 minutes long, that's bad.  It felt like it was getting to the meat of the plot quickly but then it just kinda repeated the same ideas for about 45 minutes til it got to the end.

Tiny amounts of nudity and some ok music and acting, this one feels less like a truly awful movie and more just so blandly middle of the road you're left without much to say.  I didn't like it.  I'll give it 1.5 stars.

Witchcraft - 1988

 So...  you're telling me this is the one that spawned it all?  16 sequels to this movie?

I'm not saying his is worse than those hacky no actor follow ups.  I'm just saying weird and why.  According to the Wiki, this movie did well on physical release and so Troma who produced it made a sequel, Witchcraft 2: The Temptress.  

But really, does this deserve to be the horror movie with the most actual sequels to it's name?  

Witchcraft is basically warmed over Rosemary's Baby light in which a couple has a son named William and soon start to give the mother a disgusting tea which makes her sick and seems to cause visions of demons and such.  It's not the tea.  Because there are demons and such.  So one wonders, what exactly does the tea in these movies do anyways?

It's fine.  Bigger budget so more effects, more of a commitment from the actors and they were probably shooting on film instead of direct to tape.  Maybe more than one take, even?!  This is a pretty fine down the middle horror movie in most ways concerned.   

I'm not promising to watch all of these, but we'll see how far I go.  I give this one 3 stars.

Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood - 2000

 I'm reading little blurbs about these as I watch them, and I am also tempted to keep going out of order, but the next one I'm going to watch is the original.  But according to the reviews of these, this is one of the better in the franchise.

I see it.  It is poorly acted, it is dumb and low budget, but it's super linear, brings back a bit of the nudity, and has good music.  I did forget to mention the music in Witchcraft 10, and it was good.

Witchcraft 11 has a slimy film or stage producer hire 3 women to roles where they're going to act as witches and open a portal to hell.  They go out into the woods, topless and without the producer(?) and do the ritual, except it actually works.  Now, a witch has infested one of them and begins to turn people around them.  Its up to Will Spanner, who can see the demons for what they are, to stop it.

These is some awful dubbing, some amateur acting, but really, I mean, this shit is not that bad.  These are all ratings in "what these are aiming for" again I am not comparing this to fucking....The Shining.  These are extremely Z grade low budget horror made direct to VHS without any talent involved and they should be judged as such.  

Within that context I give this 3.5 stars.

Solaris - 1972

 When I first rented Solaris, there's a good chance it was my first Tarkovsky film.  I think it was one of my phases where I wonder something like "what does genre X look like when its from culture Y?"  Such as what is Korean death metal?  What is Indonesian horror?  Or what is Russian Sci Fi?

Solaris was Tarkovsky's third film, and in some ways a response to Stanley Kubrick's 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  I've watched 2001 recently just coincidentally and the beginning especially I clocked as a response before I logged into Wikipedia and saw that was cited on there too.  I have called 2001 perhaps my favorite film of all time, and so I watched it with that idea in mind for a great amount of Solaris, though I will admit my mind wandered at times.

It's interesting that as Tarkovsky went on his films became more esoteric and more personal, and though he infuses Solaris with some of his personality, it does feel a lot more like an interpretation of a thing versus an organic thought that came from his mind.  I haven't read the original novel, but from what I read Tarkovsky added the Earth segments and some of the relationship stuff, as a response to 2001 which he felt was too clinical and interested in technology over human experience.

Solaris is a planet where scientists have a space station in orbit, and our main character Kris Kelvin is sent there after scientist Gibarian dies.  He quickly uncovers that something odd is happening, and it has to do with transmissions sent to the ocean below them on Solaris.  It seems that the transmissions are being interpreted in a way, and the planet sends Visitors to the crew, built on their thoughts and dreams and feelings, and those Visitors interact in bizarre and psychological ways.

Thematically there is some stuff about sacrifice, about deception of ourselves and our reality, about inner happiness and external happiness, and of course about martyrdom.  

In a way, this is the least Tarkovsky of the Tarkovsky films.  Andrei Rublev is very much about Tarkovsky's interests, Mirror is extremely dense and esoteric, Stalker dives head first into weird expressionistic diversions, Nostalghia is extremely Tarkovsky, and then The Sacrifice could be the most self aware of his films.  Only Ivan's Childhood could rival this one, which I will rewatch after I rewatch Andrei Rublev.

There is a moment of unintentionally funny translated dialogue here, who knows what was actually said but what the subtitles show is:

Mother: "Are you happy?"

Kris: "Happiness is an obsolete idea."

Mother: "Oh.  That's too bad."

Solaris is really good, really eerie in parts, slightly tipping into the horror that will be present in Stalker as well.  It's the most straight forward of his major works, and in that way I like his personal stuff more, but I'll still give this 4 stars.

Witchcraft X: Mistress of the Craft - 1998

 I maintain it might be more legitimately interesting to do a documentary about the making of a movie like Witchcraft X than some Hollywood films.

There is so much about this weird no budget schlockfest that I'd love to know:

Were there multiple takes and it just doesn't look like it/seem like it?  Where did the director find these actors?  How is it possible he didn't get even ONE person who could act, didn't they scout from at least theater troops?  Did the returning actress Stephanie Beaton get a pay bump for being in a sequel?  For that matter, did anyone make ANY money from this?  Could they not afford to get any of the women to show their breasts or did they not want to?  How is it possible that there are 16 Witchcraft movies - didn't the original creator have to be compensated for building onto their idea?  

To see how they found the $16,300 budget, to see the filming locations and to watch the setups.  To know the ins and outs on a film like this would be very interesting.  If you like to listen to podcasts, check out I Was There Too, about small parts in big movies.  Often the other stories, the ones we don't know about are very interesting.  

16 official entries into the Witchcraft film series makes it one of the largest horror entries of all time.  I sorta would love to watch all of these.

Year	Film	Budget	Runtime
1988	Witchcraft	N/A	86 minutes
1990	Witchcraft II: The Temptress	$80,000	88 minutes
1991	Witchcraft III: The Kiss of Death	N/A	85 minutes
1992	Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart		95 minutes
1993	Witchcraft V: Dance with the Devil	$50,000
1994	Witchcraft VI: The Devil's Mistress	N/A	88 minutes
1995	Witchcraft VII: Judgement Hour		90 minutes
1996	Witchcraft VIII: Salem's Ghost	$48,000
1997	Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh	N/A	92 minutes
1998	Witchcraft X: Mistress of the Craft	$16,300	90 minutes
2000	Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood	$40,000	95 minutes
2002	Witchcraft XII: In the Lair of the Serpent	N/A	88 minutes
2008	Witchcraft XIII: Blood of the Chosen		89 minutes
2016	Witchcraft XIV: Angel of Death	$25,000	81 minutes
	Witchcraft XV: Blood Rose
	Witchcraft XVI: Hollywood Coven		82 minutes

Read my review of the 5th entry here.

Witchcraft 10 here is some vampire movie that doesn't really have witches in it but it does apparently have a returning actress from the previous movies.  What a bizarre series!  I have to say, this is a completely amateur movie with no budget but it still made me interested to see more!  Maybe I'll go through all these... we will see.

Basically rated R for language, its a long and boring movie with some light lesbian action to keep me watching.  Its thoroughly stupid and makes no sense but it could be worse.  I'll give it 2 stars.

The Sacrifice - 1986

 Tarkovsky's last film and one that is basically about martyrdom again, I revisited The Sacrifice.

This is the film of his I have always remembered the most clearly besides Solaris.  I would say in a filmography of iconic images, somehow this film has some of the most standout.  

We begin with a image of incongruity: a tree that is not supposed to live on the Swedish shoreline and has been planted there by main character Alexander and his son Little Man.  From there we eventually wander back to their home on the marshes where a TV signal announces the oncoming nuclear apocalypse and end of the world.  Everyone handles is slightly differently, the key being Alexander promising if this apocalypse does not happen he will make various sacrifices.

The film is chalk full of some of the, now, I notice, repetitive thematic imagery of Tarkovsky:  everyday objects in pools of water, fleeting dreamlike imagery, phantom people appearing in shifting timelines, elemental power, and God-focused dialogue.  There is I believe only one poem early on in The Sacrifice and maybe a bit less of the wandering camera with non-related dialogue.

The themes here are really interesting, and there is much conjecture over how much Tarkovsky knew of his imminent death.  He'd wanted to use the actor from Stalker again, but the man was already dead from the same cancer Tarkovsky had.  Each film feels somewhat doom-saying and apocalyptic however and this one doesn't stand out as more than or less than any other.

Instead I gleaned something else from this, which I also thought of for Nostalghia.  These movies are like single lines from the Bible extrapolated into an entire film.  Some random one off sentence like "And his son was tasked to make a sacrifice and thus earned salvation" I'm paraphrasing here but there are so many weird one off vague notions the Bible and indeed legends and lore and fable put forward that you never think to wonder about but have an entire story unto themselves.  This movie is like taking one of those and imagining to completion.

Another thing that this movie is like is taking the notion of "God told me to" or "God spoke to me" and showing how that might feel or look.  Is this a movie about God coming to a man, is it a movie about a mental breakdown, is it a movie about insanity itself, is it about the value we place on our own lives, is it about how we justify our actions and our crimes and our transgressions against God, or is about all of these or none of them?

Rewatching these movies I was surprised that this one felt somehow the most A to B with the least diversions, it is very very different from Stalker, Mirror and Nostalghia in that way.  I haven't decided if I'm going to rewatch Andrei Rublev, I will certainly rewatch and review Solaris.  I'm thoroughly enjoying these and this one I feel like is a TAD under what those others are, but I find it hard to define why.  Maybe because it's so linear, maybe because if feels less hermitic and mesmerizing.  But I'll give it 4 stars and say it is absolutely amazing.