Witchboard

After her ex-lover shows off a ouija board at a party, Tawny Kitaen finds it at the apartment and tries it out herself. She thinks she is contacting the same shy spirit, but it soon becomes obvious to the audience that some other, malevolent spirit is speaking with her.

I freely admit I am not fond of straight-up horror movies, with their jump-scares and characters who can't see the obvious dangers that beset them. This one, however, has a good story arc, decent actors (Kathleen Wilhoite as a funky spiritualist is very amusing, until she gets killed by the evil spirit). I suppose I could have done without the moving shots that show clearly there's a mild fish-eyed lens in operation, but it's a pretty good genre piece.

This is one of those movies that proves that you don't need a huge budget to make a quality horror film, or any film for that matter, but we are talking horror here. I had read many years ago that this film was made for less than a million dollars and even in 1985 that is chump change. But this film is so pure with it's suspence that you would think it was done by a major Hollywood studio with a ten million dollar budget.

When a witchboard is discovered it is at first played for fun. But then it becomes an obsession and it takes over the life of the woman that talks to it. A spirit named David is a little boy that may or may not be the spirit that is possessing the Witchboard and sometimes he is nice and other times he is down right nasty. There is also a great horror villains name in this film, Mal Veder, almost sounds like Darth Vader's distant cousin doesn't it?

What Witchboard does so well is it pays attention to detail and it pays attention to what made some of the great horror movies did. And what this manages to do is treat the camera like it is his best friend. The camera lurks mysteriously behind it's actors and beside them and above them and everywhere else. And what this does is it gives you the illusion that there is someone or something there, and that is the beauty of this film, you don't know if it really is someone or something there. This is great homage to some of the greats like Carpenter and Hitchcock.

Witchboard is a great 80's horror film and I like it for the fact that it is much more concerned with atmosphere than stupid blood and guts and unneccesary gore. 90's horror should watch films like this and use the same techniques to scare us. Blair Witch may have watched this but films like the Haunting and I Know.... and Idle Hands sure didn't.

This is a surprisingly competent horror movie, and it is certainly better than most other films of the same genre. That having been said, since very few horror films work for me, it should come as no shock that I found this one to be nothing more than an average movie. It did generally keep me entertained, and there were some clever moments in this film, but the momentum did not last all the way until the end, and so I'd say that it falls a little short of being "good".

A woman (Tawny Kitaen) finds an interest in her friend Brandon's Ouija Board when he brings the occult tool by her party.

This was the beginning for much of the crew. Writer-director Kevin Tenney had never written or directed before, Kenney's college friend Gerald Geoffray had never produced before, nor had executive producer Walter Josten. Indeed, much of this came out of Tenney's film school classes.

Tawny Kitaen was cast because guys in the office were "drooling" during casting when they saw her. Tenney had actually favored another actress, but went with Kitaen because of this perceived charisma. (This casting also was a lucky break, because between filming and release, Kitaen blew up thanks to her infamous Whitesnake videos.) As a side note, O. J. Simpson was dating Kitaen at the time and would visit the set with his red-dyed poodle.

While not the greatest of the 1980s horror films, one has to admit this still holds up well. In some ways, it is more amusing now (2014) than it ever was originally because of all the 1980s hair and clothing. For example, just look at Zarabeth (Kathleen Wilhoite)... that is some weird 1980s style.

But really, this is something of a modern classic because what other horror film really captures the danger of the Ouija? None come to mind for me, and it seems like such an obvious choice... well played Kevin Tenney for going with this.

The Scream Factory disc contains a wealth of bonus features, including two audio commentaries. One of them features Tenney, Gerald Geoffray and Walter Josten, and is excellent, featuring many fine stories, including how much craft services loves doughnuts.

I Love the 80s! You gotta love productions like Witchboard, if you like the 1980s. It is the ultimate 80s horror flick: bad hair (including punk multi-colors and mullets), microfiche, bad dialogue, smoking in a hospital (?!?), waterbeds, cheap thrills and open-shirted male shirts with hair flowing from masculine chests to the screen. It's actually a guilty pleasure of mine and hard to downgrade since I grew up on it.

My sister was the one that loved this movie when I was young and like a lot of late-1980s flicks (i.e. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Dirty Dancing) she got me hooked on this one. Now, watching it again, honestly the first time since the late 1980s, it's such an extreme flashback. I mean dialogue like "TTFN – ta ta for now" or "I got a bad feeling about this" should sum it up. Oh, and the foggy graveyard helps too.

We have a bizarre love triangle between former best male friends and a female third who is soon-to-be engaged to one of the males at a party and an Ouija Board. They contact (for fun) a dead 10-year-old David…or did they bring about an evil spirit? Either way, ditzy red-headed Linda (Tawny Kitaen) continues to "play" with the board alone when she's not supposed to! Inadvertently, she concurs up this other "evil" spirit and people start dying left/right. Will the two males fighting for her attention solve the problem before she's fully possessed? It's hilarious. Really. If you watched this for the first time, outside of the 1980s, you might laugh your ass off. But, I'm glad this movie was made; this was an extreme homage to that period. It's kinda scary – not really, but if you believe in this hocus-pocus Ouija stuff. It's gory. And it has the most laugh-out-loud outrageous finale, as if they ran out of ideas and had to close it out. This is for die-hard fans, or just someone out for a good laugh.

Side Note: I remember reading a wonderful "Ask Marilyn" (by Marilyn vos Savant) article that stated on how to prove the Ouija is a hoax, and I believe her. You get two people to control the Ouija Board, but blindfolded and have a third party watch them. Since they can't subconsciously control the pointer while in the dark, the results should be hilarious. Honestly, I have yet to try that, but I have met very few that believe in such nonsense. I'd love to prove the insanity this board has produced. At least it produced a fantastically fun 1980s horror movie.