Witchcraft

As Grace Churchill (Anat Topal-Barzilai) gives birth to her son William, images of a pair of witches being burnt at the stake flash through her mind. On leaving hospital, Grace's husband John (Gary Sloan) informs her that she will be staying at his mother's home for a while until she is ready to cope by herself. Before long, Grace starts to experience strange occurrences that eventually lead her to believe that John and his mother, Elizabeth (Mary Shelley), are up to something strange.

Rather unbelievably, this tepid supernatural thriller, which clearly takes its cues from Rosemary's Baby, has spawned fifteen sequels to date, apparently finding an appreciative audience by including plenty of nudity and soft-core sex. This first film, however, offers nothing in that department: it's dull, uneventful drivel for most of the running time, only coming to life in the final ten minutes where extremely patient viewers are rewarded with a spot of much needed gore, including a decapitation and an impalement.

As a horror movie completist, I now feel compelled to watch the rest in the series, no matter how bad they get: wish me luck… I get the feeling I will need it.

"Witchcraft" is a relatively unknown underground horror flick. Though the film has been received extremely bad reviews, it managed to spawn a total of twelve sequels (to date, at least).

The plot of the film is similar to the earlier "Rosemary's Baby". Grace Churchill has given birth to her first child, when her husband temporarily moves them in with his mother. While staying in her mother-in-laws creepy, old mansion, Grace begins experiencing bizarre incidents that lead her to believe her new family isn't what they seem.

Honestly, I'm not sure why this movie got such bad reviews from people. The only real problem I found with it was the editing style - which gives the film the look of an episode of "Murder, She Wrote". The sets of the film are quite creepy. The acting (by a primarily newcomer cast) is good. The music (though performed on a synthesizer) fits the tone of the film.

All in all, "Witchcraft" isn't an Oscar winning film, but it's a interesting way to pass 90 minutes.

Witchcraft is the first of no less than 16 movies and that is highly impressive!

It tells the story of a woman who goes to stay with her mother in law after she gives birth to her first child. Trouble is her husband and mother in law aren't what they seem and have ties to the occult.

Watchcraft first of all is unforgivably boring, very little happens. I think it's doing this for the purpose of building tension but it fails miserably.

When things do happen they look so poor as intended impact is lost.

I do hope the franchise improves as I'm 1/16 and suffering already.

The Good:

The fact that the franchise lasted so long is impressive

The Bad:

Very boring

Unoriginal

Generic cliched finale

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Witchcraft must get better or it wouldn't have lasted so long, right?

My review was written in January 1989 after watching the film on Academy video cassette.

"Witchcraft" is an underwhelming supernatural horror piece, released direct-to-video (with video post-production and credits).

Unrelated to another new (Italian-backed) scream pic named "Witchcraft" and toplining Linda Blair, this film adds a dash of "Rosemary's Baby" to the hoary formula of a new mother's fears and the oppressive move to a gothic mansion.

Pretty Anat Topol-Barzilai is the new mother of a bouncing baby boy who haplessly finds herself moved in with a decidedly evil-seeming mother-in-law (Mary Shelley is the actress' gothic stage name) in an ancient house. She starts seeing visions, particularly in mirrors, and wisely fears for her newborn's safety. Following a burn-at-the-stake prolog, it's finally revealed that Shelley and Anat's huband Gary Sloan are reincarnated witches and they're definitely after the kid.

Pert Deborah Scott adds some life as the heroine's best pal, but pic is mainly a string of genre cliches executed by helmer Robert Spera with very little imagination. Pace slows to a crawl in the second half.

Topol-Barzilai is pleasant to look at, with her ample figure kept under wraps here even in scenes (such as human sacrifice climax) when a bit bolder approach is in order. Shelley, despite her apt name, fails at achieving a transition from menacing to out-and-out evil.

The opening of the movie intercuts a man and a woman being burned at the stake for witchcraft during colonial American times with a woman giving birth. That burning scene is repeated in a number of the sequels (more about them later).

Grace Churchill is the mother, a woman who emigrated from Poland with her parents, who died in a murder/suicide. She's a former junkie (if I heard correctly), but cleaned up and was surprised to find John Churchill one of the state's wealthiest men was interested in marrying her.

After the birth, they live with his mother in her huge house. Parts of the house are dusty, with things covered with sheets, and she's not supposed to go into that part. The family butler shows up to block it off when she tries to show it to her friend Linda. He becomes a little friendlier when given a fresh flower from the garden, and then isn't always there to guard the off-limits room.

That room has a mirror in it, in which she can briefly see colonial people, and also has visions of the future, though she's not sure she really saw them. She also has a dream, or maybe it isn't, in which she wanders outside at night and finds two people engaged in a ritual, and her mother-in-law Elizabeth is one of them. Blood drips out of Elizabeth's mouth.

The family also has a bunch of strange friends, older people who don't talk much. Grace's priest comes to the house to baptize William and he has a vision of flames, and becomes ill.

To some extent, as some have said, this borrows from Rosemary's Baby, which is certainly the better movie. There's even a steal of a famous shot of that movie, where the camera points through a doorway, partly showing a woman on a phone. However, the camera here actually does peer around, whereas in Polanski's film, the shot makes the viewer want to try to peer around.

Rosemary's Baby was followed by a little-seen and reportedly poor TV movie, Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby. Witchcraft is followed by a surprising twelve sequels so far (most of them relatively poor), though the last of them has not been released yet. Possibly the only horror series to have out-sequeled this one is the Asian anthology series Troublesome Night.

Witchcraft II picks up about eighteen years after this one, and does feature a number of flashbacks to this. Most of the sequels can stand on their own, but due to the number of flashbacks in II, it might be best to start here.

Witchcraft II also features some nudity, while there was none in this one, unless there is more than one version of the film. Some of the later Witchcraft sequels stray into erotic horror, and some feature scenes that could be considered softcore I suppose.

The main recurring character in all but two of the sequels (8 and 10) is Will Spanner, who is baby William Churchill in this one, and William Adams in the second - there's never any doubt in the movie that the baby will make it through, just what he'll be like when he gets older. Though none of them are brilliant, I don't think they're quite as bad as many others do. When in the mood for a cheap horror movie with lots of nudity, they're OK.