Witchcraft 8: Salem's Ghost

Though this is the eighth entry in the Witchcraft series, and that title appears in the movie itself, on the video box it only appears as "Salem's Ghost: Witchcraft." It doesn't have any continuity with the other titles in the series. It would be easy to overlook this entry in the (perhaps deservedly) overlooked series as a result, and apart from the couple short reviews at the IMDb, no one online seems to have reviewed this movie. I feel sorry for anyone who bought the $40.00 laserdisc... let this review serve as a warning.

This is the only title in the series not to even mention lawyer/warlock Will Spanner (who went by other names in the first two). He's not in part ten either, but one of the other recurring characters, Detective Lutz, does mention him.

In Salem in 1692, a muscular shirtless tattooed warlock named Simon is stabbed by a large cross-shaped dagger decorated with arcane symbols similar to his tattoos. Men dressed in monks' robes restrain him, burn him alive, then let his crispy corpse fall into a casket also decorated with symbols. He's put into a tomb behind the dagger, which is in turn locked behind a door decorated with a pentagram in a circle.

300 years later, a couple are moving into a new home, a moderately sized mansion (whose interior resembles the one a man moves into in the erotic horror movie Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur). They bought it from the Protestant Church of England! It has a weathervane with strange symbols. The man experiences claustrophobia in a closet, and they have some honey, grapes, spaghetti, and whipped cream and rather than becoming ill, they have a short sex scene. Their skin is dirty from food, and they wind up on the floor that is slick with sticky liquid and no doubt e-coli. It's not a very erotic scene at all, in spite of some nudity (maybe it would be different for someone with a food fetish). The music features a woman singing poor scat! From the end credits, that would seem to have been "Doo Die, Doo Die" by Miriam Cutler.

The man is Sonny Dunaway, who is teaching a class on witchcraft at Salem College, where a pretty redhaired student shows some interest in him. Sonny finds his house has a large cobwebbed basement, and they have a goofy neighbor with a ditzy (and badly dubbed!) blond wife who wants to inspect the plumbing in his basement. If you can't guess that the neighbor, Mitch, uncovers the locked door from the opening scene in the basement, you're pretty slow!

While Sonny is teaching his students upstairs (he's inexplicably brought them to his home), Mitch enters the crypt and pries off the bejeweled dagger, and red light emerges. He takes the dagger to his home (which even his ditzy wife knows is a bad idea), and they have a sex scene. These movies are almost certainly aimed at men, since the women are relatively attractive, and the men are at best of average looks.

Sonny and his wife have another sex scene, this time thankfully in bed and without food. This is much more of a typical sex scene, smoky and tinted blue, much more skin, and saxophone music. Sonny has a nightmare in which everything is white, and he falls into a bathtub filled with red water. He then sees the now fanged Simon floating in his bedroom, and watches helplessly as Simon makes out with his wife, and then throws him out the window. In the morning everything seems OK.

While the student starts to put the movies on Sonny, his wife imagines there's blood in the kitchen, and then she feels herself up in front of a mirror, and then in the bathtub (cue smoky haze and sax). After she gets out, there's a bunch of poltergeist-type activity, and coincidentally Clarence McArthur, a priest from the Protestant Church of England arrives in a taxi with a bad accent. Mitch shows off the dagger to a guy named Fred, and is now acting as sinister as a goofy person can.

McArthur is a witch hunter, warns them of the witch's ghost, and wants Sonny to become a witch hunter too, and they stake crosses all over the yard. Sonny has another dream in which he watches his wife make out with Simon, and after he wakes up they find unpleasant things in the attic, and meanwhile Mitch is growing weirder.

Sonny and Cathy have a sex scene, but is it really him? No, via a bad morphing effect a still of his face is transformed into a badly distorted and red-tinted photo of Simon, then back again. McArthur cooks up some green goo (why?), and a bad video transition takes us to some sort of ritual in which they sit in a triangle around a golden pyramid while he chants "OM." You know, like all Christian exorcists do!

There's an impalement, and a face-ripping, some stabbings, and someone is crated up in a coffin (bet you can guess who).

Can the evil Warlock's ghost be defeated? Will the priest get to have a sex scene too? What's going on with sinister goof Mitch? Do you care? Guess you'll have to watch it, you poor fool! I don't recommend it.

A thirteenth Witchcraft movie is currently in production. One wonders if there'll be a box set of all of them, and if they'll keep making as well. I think the only horror series that has outpaced this one is the Asian horror anthology series Troublesome Night, though Friday the 13th is starting to catch up.

It doesn't bother me that they tried a new storyline with this film, but the least they could have done was give it better actors. I mean sure, the actors in the previous films aren't great, but at least some were decent. Plus, some of them weren't boring(Like 1, 3, 5, 6, and 9), but like 2 and 7, 8 is.

A young couple moves into a mansion that's haunted by a 17th century warlock.

O.k. plot, but boring, and horrible acting. *1/2 out of *****.

Totally unnecessary follow-up (part 7 was supposed to be the final one) is about a young couple who are haunted, then seduced by a 17th. century warlock that used to live in there mansion. The first seven were really bad, but this entry hits an all time low for the series. Not even the sex scenes or nudity in this one fail to inject any life into this entry.

Unrated; Strong Sexual Content, Violence, Profanity, and Nudity.

Witchcraft VIII: Salem's Ghost (1996)

* (out of 4)

This eighth film in the series goes against the grain by trying something different and not being connected to the previous seven entries. This time out a couple buy a home and soon discover a mysterious, covered up room in the basement. It turns out this room was used 300 years earlier when a warlock was put to death and now his spirit is causing trouble. WITCHCRAFT VIII is another weak entry in a pretty bad series but I guess it's at least better than the previous film so that's a good thing. Actually, there are a couple moments here that are so incredibly bad that you can't help but recommend the film to people. The first up is an incredibly bad take off on the 9 1/2 WEEKS scene where the couple has sex in front of the fridge and using all sorts of food. The sequence here is just so laughable and it's certainly never erotic. Another hilarious scene is a rip on THE EXORCIST when the priest arrives at the house. The scene is iconic in THE EXORCIST but here it's shot in the daylight with an ultra cheap fog machine. The rest of the film is pretty laughable at times including the dorky neighbors who are always getting trouble started up. The horror elements are very small and laughable but even the sex scenes are rather boring here. WITCHCRAFT VIII is clearly just for those crazy enough to work their way through the series.

This movie is the worst movie ever made in human history. This is FACT. l mean if you dare to watch this, you will see what l mean.