Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart

In WITCHCRAFT IV: THE VIRGIN HEART, a woman is abducted and it's up to private investigator / warlock, Will Spanner (Charles Solomon Jr.) to get to the bottom of things.

Spanner's search leads him to a club called Coven. This is a rough place. How rough? Well, it's filled with industrial smog, and the bartender wears nothing but waders pulled up to his man-nipples! Now, that's rough!

Thankfully, a dancer called Belladonna (Julie Strain!) takes the club stage. It's not long before her clothing dissolves into memory. Henceforth, we realize that this is Ms. Strain's movie, for our minds are filled with nothing else! Fans of this Amazon, warrior-goddess take note: She's really good in this! While one could simply watch her standing mute, for hours, she proves herself to be more than the sum of her magnificent parts!

As Spanner delves into Belladonna's dark world, he becomes increasingly involved with her.

Mostly a mystery / detective story, those expecting a straightforward occult film will be sadly disappointed. For a movie called WITCHCRAFT, it seems absurd to save almost all of the supernatural stuff for the final 20 minutes!

Those expecting a non-stop, Julie Strain-naked-extravaganza will be only mildly satisfied, since she's interrupted constantly by the long-winded story! Seriously, it's ludicrous anyway, and could be told in a 10 minute, short film!

MOST UNBELIEVABLE SCENE: When Belladonna is abused by some mere man. You'll keep yelling, "Why doesn't she just kick his a$$?!", at the screen...

Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart (1992)

* (out of 4)

The fourth film in the series finds lawyer Will Spanner (Charles Solomon) involved with a new girl (Julie Strain) while trying to investigate a case involving a man accused of killing his girlfriend. It turns out that the devil's son is also working the music scene by having young musicians sell him their souls in exchange for fame. I'm honestly not sure how those two stories were supposed to connect but WITCHCRAFT IV tries to do it but of course fails miserably. The first three films in the series were bad but each of them featured something strangely bad that made them entertaining. This fourth installment is clearly the worst of the bunch and you can't even say it reaches a so bad it's good level. The biggest problem is that there's just not much of a story here and what little there is gets stretched to a 93-minute running time, which is about 73-minutes too long. The film does offer up some rather funny moments including the scene where our lawyer-warlock goes up against the D.A. trying to say his client is innocent. The dialogue for these two going back and forth managed to get me to laugh. It's also funny hearing the lawyer tell the talented stripper that she should join a band and sing for a living. And let us not forget the scene where our lawyer buddy gets backstage at a strip club by claiming to have gotten lost looking for the bathroom (I hate when that happens). The performances, as you'd expect, are all pretty poor and even Solomon comes off rather bored here. Strain certainly can't act but I'm fairly certain she was hired for her breasts, which she shows a few times throughout the film. WITCHCRAFT IV just drags along so badly that it's really hard to find any sort of entertainment in it.

WITCHCRAFT IV: THE VIRGIN HEART is the worst WITCHCRAFT film yet, and all four have been pretty bad. This sees Charles Solomon Jr., the main actor from the last two films in the series, coming back for a final time essaying the role of the good-guy warlock facing up to the forces of evil.

This effort tries to tell some sort of politically-tinged tale but the budget is far too low to convince with any of the court house scenes. The emphasis of the story is on rock music so there's lots of the expected padding and little in the actual way of story telling. Once again the devil is getting folk to sell their souls to him and only our hero can stop him.

The most notable thing about THE VIRGIN HEART is the willingness of starlet Julie Strain to show off her bare body, which she does on regular occasions playing a devilish stripper character. While Solomon Jr. would thankfully quit the series after this instalment, unfortunately it would continue to run and run without him.

The fourth part of the epically lengthed Witchcraft franchise gives me the impression that their quality isn't going to improve anytime soon.

Once again we have yet another truly awful attempt at a horror following the "Adventures" of our warlock Will.

I'm fast starting to think that along with being one of the longest movie franchises in history that it may well be one of the worst.

Also starring Julie Strain this is another barely followable crapfest.

The Good:

At least they follow on from each other

The Bad:

Poor sound balancing

Film noir attempt is dumb

Terrible plot

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

In reverse land Julie Strain wears clothes in films!

The fourth film in the neverending Witchcraft series finds Will Spanner (Charles Solomon) hired by Lily Wild (Lisa Jay Harrington) to help her brother Pete (Orien Richman) when he's the number one suspect in the disappearance of his girlfriend Norah (Sunset Thomas).

Will and Lisa find a matchbox for a club, the Covenant, at the scene of the crime. Will goes to the club to check things out and finds an attractive stripper named Belladonna (Julie Strain). Mr. Spanner becomes fascinated with Belladonna and what secrets the club may be hiding. His search leads him to a musician Santara, who may or may not be the key to things.

Boring!