The Oracle

Jennifer and her husband move into an apartment formerly occupied by a medium, and Jennifer discovers the writing device the former occupant used to converse with the dead. After dinner with friends, Jennifer uses the device and all kinds of weird things begin to happen, as various characters meet untimely ends and Jennifer has to contend with the widow of a murdered man and the obese lesbian hitwoman she employs to keep Jennifer quiet. Will the madness never end?

This off-kilter little exercise in no-budget filmmaking was directed by Roberta Findlay who, along with her late husband Michael, created a particularly putrid brand of grindhouse fare in the late 60s. Their flicks were virulent cocktails of lesbianism, violence, torture and perversion, and it's nice to see that the passage of time hadn't improved Roberta's filmmaking abilities one bit! Wires attached to books to make them fly off shelves, a man's head being pulled off by big booga-booga Halloween laytex hands, gratuitous disfigurement via noxious industrial waste-- sheez, this film seems like it's from another era. This thing must have only played in the handful of drive-ins and grimey remnant of flop houses that still operated in the mid-eighties, because no savvy viewer then would have accepted this as the gruesome slash-fest it was touted in ads to be. Only slightly amusing in it's incompetence

Caroline Capers Powers finds a leather-covered box and an odd automatic writing set-up -- Parker Brothers wouldn't let them use a Ouija board -- and starts getting creepy messages that lead her to an unsolved murder. No one believes her, of course, especially husband Roger Neil and his porn-star mustache. Her investigations trigger the real killers to target her.

It's a blah movie, distinguished neither by excellence nor ineptness; Miss Powers spends a lot of time screaming. The camerawork is very fluid, and the planchette is sort of interesting, but that's about the limit of this one. For fans of the genre.

.When a young couple move into an apartment, they find a box that belonged to the deceased former tenant. Inside is an ornate planchette, a ceramic hand which holds a quill pen and can communicate with the dead. After using it at a dinner party, the wife (Caroline Capers Powers) becomes psychically linked to a series of murders being committed by an obese killer. There's also an effort by the husband (Roger Neil) to get rid of the planchette, which keeps returning, though usually after facilitating the gruesome death of whoever was unlucky enough to come into contact with it.

This is better than most of the dreck Findlay and her husband made back in the 60's and 70's, when they were two of the most successful sexploitation filmmakers on the NY scene. Michael Findlay was killed in a freak helicopter accident in 1977, and Roberta continued to make movies, mostly hardcore porn, before moving into more legitimate filmmaking like this movie. It's still not a good film at all, really, but it has enough goofy plot twists and chintzy special effects to make it worth seeing once for bad movie fans. Yet I can't just lie to you and give it an average rating.

The Oracle, directed by Roberta Findlay wasn´t THAT bad after all. Ok, it was a bit dull at times but I´ve seen worse films, in fact many of them.The film itself was never really scary but it had its share of gore, so if you´re looking for that you´ll probably be satisfied with what you see.

The production company (Laurel Films,Inc) for the film was also interesting, since the same company is the one behind George A. Romero´s zombie movies if I´m not mistaking.

The version I saw myself was the Dutch release by New York Video. Comparing to the pictures on the back cover, this release seems to be cut since many shots were never to be seen in the movie, as the killing of the lady in the elevator-I didn´t see any blood in the film itself but on the back cover there was a still picture of it.

I´ll give this film **½ of *****. An ok way to waste 94 minutes.

"The Oracle" isn't exactly what you'd call a masterpiece of horror, but it definitely surpassed my expectations and I can't deny having enjoyed it immensely. This movie is like a prototype of super-cheesy 80's horror, with silly plot lines and gooey special effects throughout the entire playtime. As long as you're an undemanding fan of the genre, it'll be pretty difficult NOT to enjoy it, actually. Quite a couple of low-budget 80's horror movies revolved on possession and spiritual media, and even though none of them are able to scare the crap out of you, they always deliver at least some bloody murders and/or atmospheric scenery. The ghostly medium in "The Oracle" is an ancient stone hand carrying the restless soul of a murdered businessman and possessing the life of a newlywed girl that moved in to the apartment where the eerie device was kept. The ghost forces Jennifer to seek contact with his widow as well as his murderers, but also eliminates everyone that tries to help the young woman getting rid of …The Hand. It's very good and original idea of the script to not only follow Jennifer but also the killers right from the beginning. Early in the film, we witness how a genuinely uncanny battleaxe (Pam La Testa) sadistically hacks up a prostitute. We have no idea who she (he?) is at that point, and it's only much later before Jennifer identifies her as one of the killers during a vision. I wouldn't go so far to call this idea intelligent, but it's certainly more creative than I'm used seeing of independent 80's splatter. The massacre of the prostitute is pretty graphic and disturbing, yet the other kills are delightfully cheesy. One guy stabs himself to death because he imagines monsters crawling over his skin, another victim is assaulted by a floating skull and another bloke even has his head clean torn off by a pair of green-clawed hands! It's rather peculiar to notice that Roberta Findlay directed this flick and even in the same year she also made "Tenement: Game of Survival". That movie is completely opposite in tone to "The Oracle", as it's raw and sickening exploitation centering on gang wars, rape & revenge, drug issues and urban decay. I guess Roberta just was a versatile filmmaker...