Witchboard
Supernatural horror movies (with whatever the actual âsupernaturalâ creature involved being any one of a number of different things) had kind of cooled off in The 1980s with the advent of the slasher movie boom after the superpowered shot in the arm they had gotten in the 70s from The Exorcist and The Omen. But they continued to show up in the 80s from time to time with this 1986 release being one of the more fondly remembered from the decade. Writer / director Kevin Tenney shamelessly cribbed elements from The Exorcist (which had shown Linda Blairâs character using a Ouija Board during the early stages of her possession) to create his story here, obviously using a Ouija Board as the main item of contention to unleash the evil spirits and engage in that most lasting of occurances in the supernatural horror subgenre, the much ballyhooed âaccidental deathsâ in which some poor bastard who is either directly or indirectly connected to the main story meets their demise via some freakish, unnatural means, confounding everybody even as the viewer knows that there is much more to it than the characters realize. The most interesting (and of the most interest to fans of this film) factor at play here was in the casting of the main female character for whom the evil entity has made their target for possession. Tenney chose to cast Tawny Kitaen, the red headed sex kitten best remembered for her sultry dance in the music video of Whitesnakeâs Here I Go Again (alongside her husband in lead singer David Coverdale) but whose film career was rather sparse when taking into account how famous she actually was back then, scoring as Tom Hanksâ spunky fiancĂ©e in Bachelor Party and then in the nearly softcore adventure spoof The Perils Of Gwendoline before fading from the scene and being given the dreaded âproduct of her timeâ label, but her performance here actually borders at times as being sublime, not playing herself up for sexualityâs sake (although she does do a shower scene) and ironically coming across at being her hottest when sheâs in the full grip of the evil spirit that is controlling her. But there are other factors at play here besides Kitaenâs presence (even as she has reportedly been described by many who have met her as being one of the most sensual beings to ever live). The story begins with a house party being thrown by Kitaen and her somewhat underachieving carpenter boyfriend (future character acting stud Todd Allen who carried on a tryst with Tawny during filming) who feels a bit put out by some of the more fancy dressed, high society guests, none moreso than Kitaenâs obviously cultured, educated ex boyfriend (future daytime soap opera stud Stephen Nichols). When the ex boyfriend (who proudly proclaims himself to be an atheist) claims to have been in contact with the spirit of a dead child named David, this draws a hail of snickers from the other guests in the room until he suddenly pulls out his own personal Ouija Board that he apparently carries around in its own case, claiming that it is the sole gateway for contact with the little boy provided that he and one other person use it to achieve that contact. Using Kitaen as his âvolunteerâ, they attempt to have a nice little conversation with the spirit, but Allen winds up cracking so many jokes over the whole display that some strange things happen which breaks the party up for the night. Turns out during a subsequent conversation scene that almost feels like a plot twist that the current boyfriend (Allen) and antagonist ex (Nichols) of Kitaen are themselves former best friends going back to childhood with the fact that Allen is currently the guy who gets to touch Tawny the apparent cause of their huge falling out. Anyhow, the Ouija Board itself gets left behind at the house after the party and Tawny (who apparently has nothing better to do with herself all day after her man goes off to work) starts playing with it by herself (reportedly the most dangerous thing that one can do with a Ouija Board since there should always be two people using it). She starts to believe that she is developing a special relationship with the dead little boy, but really she has encountered something much worse: a serial killing axe murderer and occultist who was gunned down by the police in 1930 and is now looking to be reborn, preferably in the shapely form of Kitaen herself. Sadly, those looking for the next great horror villain of our time will be sorely disappointed as the very revealing of his true identity after convincing both us and Kitaen that he was the little boy all along almost comes as being an afterthought and with Kitaen spending much of the running time sidelined from having too much stress over being slowly entrapped by the evil spirit, we get introduced to a couple of other characters, including an idiot homicide cop (Burke Byrnes) who carries on an annoying schtick about having a love for magic and illusions while hassling Allen about a number of the accidental deaths which he somehow surmises that Allen is responsible for (which is pretty much done just to have a cop character present in the movie) and then there is Kathleen Wilhoite (probably the best actress in the whole film) going WAY over the top as the psychic medium brought in to evaluate and exorcise the spirit with the goofy looking Wilhoite literally behaving as if she is in a completely different movie than everyone else. But the most surprising thing here is in the filmâs centralized conflict and resolution, that of the two former best friends (forced to join together in order to try and save poor Tawny) talking things out and ultimately coming to a reconciliation with each other in a plot development that might actually have come across as being touching if this were a drama and not a horror movie but the sudden way in which the bromance angle of the plot just takes over everything completely (with the two made up best buds now bumbling around a cemetary in the middle of the night) is rather disconcerting since Tawny is still the reason why most people are watching this. There are a couple of interesting plot threads which are brought up and then hastily discarded most notably the one where the two heroes are investigating the life and backstory of the dead child only to learn that BOTH of his parents had been killed ONLY A COUPLE OF WEEKS PRIOR TO THE EVENTS OF THE STORY with absolutely no followup to this development whatsoever including the actual causes of their deaths (Was it the axe murdererâs spirit? Coincidence?). With the idiot cop always turning up and acting stupidly eccentric like a TV cop would and a couple of scenes with Allen and his more laid back beer drinking buddies, it sometimes feels like the whole thing is getting a bit too removed from its designated horror status if not for Nichols as the ex trying to at least bring a little frightened gravitas to the whole affair as his reasoning for having concern for Tawnyâs well being is in him never having any trouble freely admitting that he is madly in love with her while his former / reunited best friend Allen has never been able to utter even so much as a simple âI love youâ in her general direction, much less have real concern for much of his life for anybody in particular (said to be the reason why he dropped out of med school since he didnât want to be burdened down with having to care for the welfare of too many patients). Of course, intensive, psychoanalytic character development such as this is not something which you expect to see in any horror movie and a low budget one at that. But except for Tawnyâs shower scene, this would have to be one of the least sleaziest or exploitative horror movies of the era with even the somewhat gory freak accident kill scenes coming off as being shot in a clinically efficient style rather than scary. Itâs all well and good but when the primary villain of this entire piece is finally brought onscreen and into the story (just imagine The Tall Man with a thick beard) and is really only around for mere seconds (before he âentersâ Tawny and starts telling lies) after we just got done watching a poignant story about two old childhood friends rekindling their lost connection (and veering dangerously close into Brokeback Mountain territory), we almost start to wonder just which section of the video store that this one belongs in, Tawnyâs beauty be damnedâŠ
5/10