Directed by Ulli Lommel
Starring Donald Pleasence Suzanna Love
Remarkably weak horror film opens strong, with a trio of 17th century witches facing brutal deaths at the hands of colonial puritans. One witch is tied to a wheel which is then rolled down a hill after being set afire. The other is simply burned at the stake. Flash forward, naturally, three hundred years to the present. One of the witches returns to the town of Devonsville as a smartly dressed schoolteacher who tells her elementary school class about goddess worship and swifly finds herself in trouble with the overly conservative Christian community she's moved into.
Of course, history repeats itself and a group of townsfolk (remembering a legendary curse one of the original witches cast on the town 300 years ago) go about killing the three women in town they suspect of being the reincarnation of the witches from 300 years ago. Pleasence is cast in a totally meaningless role as the town doctor. For some reason, he constantly is shown pulling worms out of his arm. It has something to dow ith the curse on the town. You get the sense that Pleasence was available to director Lommel (who also helmed the rather good "Boogeyman") for just a day or two, even though he received star billing.
Love, who starred in "The Boogeyman," is positively dull as the schoolteacher/witch, despite her having a nude scene or two. Skip this flick. It turned up as a double feature on the DVD of "Boogeyman," but isn't worth the time.
<< Back
-- Review by Lucius Gore
|
