Spellcaster

there are a lot of opportunities for female nudity wasted in this one. It would have scored much higher if they had taken the opportunities available. The storyline, while somewhat implausible, was not beyond suspension of disbelief. The blond girl who has constant trouble with her shower, keeps bringing guys up to fix it and never put out made me almost as frustrated as the guys "fixing" the shower. Realistically, if the film maker wanted people to actually watch this drivel they would have included the nudity that the film could have presented. The multiple shower/bath scenes where the girls were titillating the male characters would have played much better if they titillated the viewer as well.

I first saw this in the early 90s on a vhs which I owned. I found the film very lousy then. Never played the vhs again. Revisited it few days back. The special effects is by John Carl Buechler n the creatures n demons were all done well but the makers did not utilize em properly. Most of the kills r lousy n offscreen. The movie has a shower scene without nudity, an offscreen sex scene without nudity, a bathtub bathing scene without nudity.

So basically there r no good kills, no scare factor n nudity at all n all this makes it a lousy horror film. The film has a unique transformation scene of a fatter lookalike of Lou Ferrigno into a man pig. Some may argue that the film Willow (1988) has lots of men transforming into pigs.

The ending is again a big meh. We have Albert Band father of filmmaker Charles Band as the wierd cook.

A very bad 80's B-horror movie with awful acting bad effects and some amateur. Adam Ant headlines the movie, yet is in it for 5 minutes camera work. Gave it an extra star for the Death by chair scene, which was a new one for me. Avoid unless you are really bored.

Several youths partake in a Rock TV-sponsored competition at a castle north of Rome to win $1 million, but the lord of the castle has diabolic plans (Adam Ant).

"Spellcaster" (1988) is castle-oriented horror in the tradition of "The Devil's Nightmare" (1971), but mixed with the 80's vibe of "Doom Asylum" (1987) and the cartoonish effects of "Necromancer" (1988). It's cut from the same cloth as soon-to-come flicks "Howling V: The Rebirth" (1989) and "Subspecies" (1991), but it's the least of all of these.

Although the 80's ambiance is good and there's some fun spookiness à la Scooby-Doo (minus the dog), the story's just not very compelling or scary and the characters are rather dull. Meanwhile Adam Ant doesn't appear until the very end (not that I care, but those interested would want to know).

Traci Lind (Yvette) and Kim Johnston Ulrich (Teri) stand out on the female front. Also on hand are Gail O'Grady as the winsome protagonist and Bunty Bailey as the drunken rock star. The other two blondes are basically interchangeable and negligible. Speaking of which, all the women are curiously blondes. How about a brunette or redhead to spice things up?

The movie runs 1 hour, 23 minutes, and was shot a dozen miles northeast of Rome at Odescalchi Castle on Lake Bracciano.

GRADE: C+

I am a fan of, now bankrupt, Full Moon Pictures but this Empire Pictures film by Charles Band just plain sucked. You either like the B-horror or you hate it and this one had HATE written all over it. First why did Adam Ant only arrive in the last 10 minutes of the movie? Hard to say, the only conclusion I could come to is that they couldn't afford to pay him so just hired him for the final scene? This movie was just plain junk, the only thing it had going for it is that it was shot in a castle over in another country. So had some cool scenes but everything else just fell flat on it's face. I do like some of Charles Band's movies but this is NOT one of them. Slasher Reviewer gives this one a thumbs down, and why was is rated R? No nudity, no gore? Should of been rated PG!