Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh - 1997

 Thiiiiiis is what I'm fuckin talking about!

I delved into the beginning of the series then I took a detour to the very end and met in the middle and its movie to the epitome of my point in the review of Witchcraft 3 and 4.  

Sleaze.  The first 31 minutes of this movie are basically nudity city as we follow a prostitute on her job.  Will Spanner is dead and his ghost is walking around in stupid but fun shenanigans, and this lady is fucking random dudes in scenes which are way too long and have nothing to do with the plot but do have nice breasts and lingerie.

Will discovers that she can hear him, due to a coma she had (?) and he is now needing her to help him out.  This movie introduces us to detective Lutz and Garner, who I guess are in Witchcraft 7 and not 8 which is a standalone film.  Ladies and gentlemen, I might skip right to Witchcraft 7 after this to watch the Lutz Garner trilogy.  Oh never mind.  Apparently they're in a ton of these, including Witchcraft 16.  Did I blink and miss them?

This is a welcome return to the style I first saw in these films, and really a style which established itself more in the sequels.  Apparently I picked the exact right place to begin watching these movies.  Number 5 may be a real standout.  Witch 9 is really good, the sleaziest so far, and with the ghost aspect thing going on, its a fun watch.

Multiple buxom women getting topless throughout, multiple rape scenes, multiple pointless sex and strip scenes.  I wonder if any women like movies like this.  I love it.  4 stars.

Witchcraft XVI: Hollywood Coven - 2016

 It seems that 3 Witchcraft movies were all filmed around the same time in Los Angeles and the franchise has now lain dormant for 9 years.  I saw online Witchcraft 17 has been greenlit but who knows.

Witchcraft 16 is a really bad movie.  It's plot revolves around a group of actors who are all trying out for a long running horror franchise called Crystal Force and its the best this shitty script can do to try and be meta, also by giving terrible actors awful dialogue about being terrible actors who have awful dialogue in these movies.  

It seems they watch Crystal Force movies and vaguely somehow different people have power and somehow something else is going on, I could not tell you at all what the plot in this movie is.  Because in part this movie feels impenetrable, and in part the movie within a movie and the movie itself scenes are indistinguishable.  Perhaps on purpose, but still I have no fucking clue what is going on.

What happened to the nudity, what happened to the good music, what happened to the fun D grade level?  Well its kinda just not there, and something have been replaced with the 2016 equivalent, such as awful CGI.  I can tell the Witchcraft series will slowly turn into this, so all I can say is that I'm glad I have like 6 more movies to go that're filmed in the 90s and still have some DIY charm.

This movie is not unwatchable.  But it's close.  Half a star.

Witchcraft III: The Kiss of Death / Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart - 1991 / 1992

 I think the key part of my enjoyment of this series is something I just landed on and is a clear differentiator movie to movie but also the key difference of what makes these low budget schlockfests different from the Hellraiser low budgets - sleaze. 

The Hellraiser films certainly dabble, especially the first one, and the ones that are into that are the best, and the thing with the Witchcraft movies is that most of the are into it, and most of them are good, so far.

We can even trace it back to the first and second Witchcraft films, which are incredibly light on sleaze and though I appreciated Witch 1 for what it was, it was not sleazy and it was not in the same vein of enjoyment as say a Witchcraft 5.  Witchcraft 3 and 4 here are both pretty fuckin' sleazy, grimy movies which really REALLY match well in that ultra low budget, amateur made film sorta way - these things just absolutely go hand in hand, and really amp up the levels of enjoyment here.

Witchcraft 3 involves a dead lady that maybe her 15 year old younger lover murdered, and Will Spanner is a newly graduated public defender or something who is involved in the case.  The plot is heavily involved in the slow seducing of Will's girlfriend by the evil guy Louis, and the cuckold angle and the weird sexual dynamics are where the sleaze comes from.

Witchcraft 4 is concerned with Will getting involved with Belladonna, who works at a strip club and is involved in a case with a dead woman.  He uncovers a sinister plot where people are selling their souls, and there's a couple creepy rapists and weirdos.  Definitely a bit more of a noir-inspired smoky hazy detective flick, this one is a tone shift from the first 3.

I mean, again, these aren't worlds better than your average Hellraiser sequel and these are lower budget and sometimes a lot less propulsive, definitely less scary violent or gory...  But somehow I am still having a good time with these.  I give Witch 3 a solid 3 stars and Witch 4 a 2 for being a lot less exciting in tone.

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.

Mirror - 1975

 One of the original thought processes behind the film blog here was because I have a pretty bad memory.  When I was in high school I wanted to watch all of the Godzilla films, as well as Zatoichi.  I would watch one of these, say, Zatoichi's Vengeance, and then like a week later or whatever I would be like, which ones have I seen again?  The titles (case in point in this example) might have nothing to do with the plot, so I would end up forgetting and end up having to rewatch or waste a rental or watch out of order.

Mirror, another example of a title which you really can't say anything about, is possibly a Tarkovsky movie I had never seen before?  That or I completely did not remember it.  Either one is completely possible.

Random thoughts of reflection after just having watched Mirror:

1. What did this script look like?  I wonder what Tarkovsky had to give investors and such in order to secure funding.  If one thinks that likely the poems infused into all of his work were likely not in the script, were they just pages describing shots or the minimalistic movements of characters?

2. What is a tone poem, when was it popularized, and do we have at least a partial amount of our awareness of them because of Tarkovsky?  I feel like these movies are in a large part essentially tone poems, enigmatic, atmospheric, interpretive, and esoteric. 

3. Does visual beauty make us relate to minimalism more?  Large expanses of nature, minute nuances in music or painting - do we look deeper into these because of their seeming slightness, does that connect with us....  Or really, to answer WE DO, and then the real question is WHY?

Mirror is perhaps Tarkovsky's most nonlinear and most esoteric work.  A chance meeting in the beginning of the film between a travelling doctor and Maria sparks a largely internal journey of a dying poet to recount his childhood, his relationships with his parents, and his turmoil.  That's basically the plot.

I also want to mention the editing.  Perhaps it is only the strict contrast between Mirror and some of Tarkovsky's other work, but there are several moments where something changes in the last millisecond of a shot, and exactly then is when it edits.  I believe this is extremely powerful in the film.  I think it says something very interesting about memory, about feeling, about the notion of "unfinished business" or death or life, or all of it.  Oddly enough, this feels a lot more like a film about death then The Sacrifice, but I'm also going to rewatch that and get back to you on that.

But like I said, the "plot" here is really nothing.  What this is, instead, is a visual and auditory journey through symbolism, emotion, artistry, nostalgia, memory, and near worship of the power of a moment.  This movie is basically meditation, it is the goal and the experience of meditation, at least for me.  It's self-exposing, complete interpretive minimalism is exactly what I believe the goal of such a task is.

Mirror thoroughly confused film critics, confused me, and sat in relative obscurity until being placed in the Sight and Sound top 100 and being hailed as a work of artistic genius years later.  The meaning behind and the examination of it is solely up to the viewer, and what can I say besides, genuinely, everyone will get something different out of this.  And for that, Mirror gets...

Stalker - 1979

 There is a inevitable end to all things, whether it be Stalker, a film blog, life itself.  

Tarkovsky and I, well, I don't know where to start.  I don't specifically remember when but I watched Solaris, which I did rewatch in the last 5 or so years, and I guess I did not review.  This led me to Stalker, which probably leapt up to the rank of favorite, and eventually I ended up watching everything except I think The Steamroller and the Violin.

Stalker is a bizarre, sci-fi infused philosophy film that really masters that hypnotic feeling which Tarkovsky was the ultimate master of.  I spoiled it to my girlfriend while we watched, and I'll spoil it here sort of - nothing really HAPPENS in the movie, and yet there is the deepest feel of dread, of enraptured wonder, of freedom and of homesickness, of doubt and of bizarre reality in the film.

We start with the main character the Stalker waking up at home.  His home is depicted as is the entire sequence in a bizarre sepia tone which seems to accentuate every scuff and dirty patch on the filthy walls and floor.  Eventually its revealed he is going to be leading two men, the Writer and the Professor, into the Zone.  There's almost an action sequence as they get into the Zone, and from there the film evolves into a high esoteric, atmospheric tonal piece with drowning thoughts about philosophy, human nature, and the concept of life.

It's odd because one would really want to use the word "quiet" to describe Tarkovsky so much, but his movies are anything but.  They are practically wall to wall dialogue, with dreams and philosophy and poetry flooding out the characters mouths.  Yet, the themes and the visual language is so minimal and so stayed that the word quiet would be used to describe THOSE and be correct.  

There is imagery in here that has always stayed with me.  The sand dune sequence, the owl, the train car, the water....  I was thinking while I watched this that this film is water, maybe Nostalghia is land, The Sacrifice is fire... I wonder if this could be applied to more of this films.  Relating them to an element.

The film is an absolute masterpiece, one of those that make the argument between the concept of "film" versus "movies" or "flicks".  This is a reminder that true, emotional, ambiguous art CAN exist in film.  It's for sure 5 stars.

I really don't know if the blog is over or not.  I feel like it is this time.  I haven't been watching very much honestly, and even in the dead of winter, just not feeling like writing.  Movies are really interesting in that they illicit and inspire a thought process, at least the good ones do, and I appreciate that about them exponentially, but really, I feel like I am pretty much "over it".  

I want to reread a lot of my posts as I find the process of seeing these interesting.  Maybe one day I'll do some sort of retrospective.  Until then, I hope that you the reader enjoy these odd 10 years of my life where I decided to write about what I watched and include some asides about my own life and ideas.  If nothing else, I did create the blog to contain those personal moments.  Maybe, one day, I'll return.

Theo