Panga: Lâmina Mortal

A likable cast and and decent location photography make this low budget horror film watchable. Jenilee Harrison (Suzanne Somers' replacement, Cindy, on "Three's Company") plays a 1950s great white huntress in Africa who interrupts a sacred tribal ceremony, so the tribe unleashes a demon-like creature to torment her. To add a bit of gravitas to the low budget cheese-fest is the great Christoper Lee, still in his career slump before Peter Jackson sparked a late career revival for Lee with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I also noticed in the credits Gavin Hood as a supporting actor, who's now better know as the director of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," "Enders Game" and other big Hollywood projects. This film's director never directed another film, but he didn't do a bad job. He was actually the editor on some pretty cool movies including "Quadrophenia" and "Return of the Jedi." Overall, this is nothing to go our of your way to watch, but it did have a scrappy, entertaining Charles Band/Full Moon Features kind of vibe that was enough to hold my interest.

Unrelated to "The Curse" (1987) and "Curse II: The Bite" (1989), this in-name-only sequel stars Jenilee Harrison of 'Three's Company' fame as Elizabeth Armstrong, wife of a farmer in 1950 East Africa. She and her sister meddle in a tribal ceremony (they don't want to see a goat get sacrificed), much to their regret. The local witch doctor (Dumi Shongwe) summons a powerful demon of the sea to slaughter these foolish whites for their interference.

Co-written and directed by Sean Barton, a veteran editor whose credits in that capacity include "Return of the Jedi", "Curse III: Blood Sacrifice" is actually a pretty enjoyable B horror flick. It gets most of its impact from its on-location shooting in South Africa, and has a very good atmosphere. It can also get rather gory at times. Barton and company are wise not to give the monster too much screen time; it's largely unseen until the end, and when we finally get a good look at it, it's got a reasonably impressive design (by Chris Walas, the effects man who gave us the Gremlins and the 1986 version of The Fly). The music score composed by Julian Laxton & Patric van Blerk is another big plus. "Curse III: Blood Sacrifice" goes through its paces with skill, building up a decent body count and giving us an incendiary finale.

One doesn't exactly feel too much sympathy for the victims, but at least some of the cast deliver okay performances. Harrison has some appeal as the heroine. Henry Cele has a powerful screen presence as the character Mletch. Co-star Gavin Hood, who plays Robert, may be better known now as a director of such movies as "Tsotsi", "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", and "Ender's Game". The true star power in "Curse III" is provided by ever-reliable Sir Christopher Lee, who doesn't get that much screen time despite his top billing. But he makes every moment count.

Overall, not bad at all. The novelty of the African setting helps to make up for the routine storyline.

Six out of 10.

Who knows why I went to the trouble of hunting down this 1990 B flick, but expecting nothing, I settled in for a less than ordinary "thriller" about African voodoo, gratuitous nudity, and electrical storms. Watching this movie is all about letting yourself go for 90 some-odd minutes and appreciating that someone took the time to construct an offbeat little thriller that takes itself way too seriously, and almost pulls it off. Completely devoid of the tongue-in-cheek humor that the Scream movies and Psycho Beach Party laid on us, Curse 3 painstakingly takes us through a couple of days of hell for the inhabitants of a 1950's African village. It's truly a horror relic of the pre-Dewey days. (I'm talking David Arquette, not the president!). Jenilee Harrison acquits herself nicely (I'm surprised she hasn't had more of a chance to stake her claim in Hollywood) and Christopher Lee chews the scenery like he's auditioning for Hamlet. All in all, odd enough to be a fairly interesting little diversion. 2-and-a-half (out of 5) on the Corkymeter.

The Curse movies are exactly alike the Beyond the Door series in that none of the films bear any relationship whatsoever from each other. In this third installment of the series a white woman stops the sacrifice of a goat by the local tribe not understanding the significance of the act is to appease the death of a young boy who was killed in the beginning of the film. This really gets the Witchdoctor's goat (see what I did there) and in turn he places a curse on her. Apparently this involves being dispatched by the local sea spirit who kills friends and family alike. One can almost imagine the sea monster going onto ancestry.com and looking up extended family members in an ensuing sequel. Lone survivor Elizabeth enlists the aid of an older British woman and a young annoying child along with a haggard looking Christopher Lee as Doctor Pearson. The monster looks like the one of the fishmen from Castlevania. Who knew that sugarcane fields were so flammable.

Blah, that's all I can think about this movie. There really isn't anything memorable about this film to differentiate it from the tons of other monster mash flicks like it. This is by no means a Christopher Lee movie as he's only in it for about twenty minutes and he appears rather lifeless in his few scenes. Sometimes you just need the paycheck. Jenilee Harrison doesn't do that bad of a job as the main actress though I have to admit this is the first film I've ever seen her in since Three's Company. What I don't understand is this creature that was summoned uses a Panga - an African machete - to kill his victims. What's the point? Why didn't the crazy as hell Witchdoctor just kill them instead especially since he did just that to the boy in the beginning. By the way, it's not too smart to give away your position in a sugarcane field by incessantly cackling like an Arsenio Hall audience member. Some of the murders are rather graphic and there are a couple of nude scenes but other than that this is mostly a forgettable affair. Hope that check didn't bounce Christopher.

A group of westerners disrupt a religious ceremony involving a goat that is about to be sacrifice. In doing so it makes the voodoo priest very angry, so he summons a demon to take revenge on those people.

This was one very peculiar b-grade film with voodoo/slasher/monster elements, but with those features it's still basically a poor run-of-a mill horror film, that takes itself far to seriously. I haven't watched the first two films, so I don't know if this film relates back to the others.

There's not much to recommend- but the saving grace of the film is Christopher Lee, in which he brings some added class. Also the beautifully lush and exquisite African setting / atmosphere makes it a bit bearable.

While whenever Lee graced the screen it added some interest- but I can't say the same about the rest of the cast. It was to bad that the main female lead was annoying and stupid, that you wished that the demon would just finish the job. And the bloody demon seems to takes it's sweet time to finish off its victims by dragging out the scenes (especially towards the end). While Christopher Lee and Jenilee Harrison characters had 'SOME' depth, the rest of the supporting cast were too one-dimensional and lack any detail of any sort, by being pretty much stereotypical and waiting for their turn on the chopping block.

The special effects were inferior. The demon looked like a stupid rubber lizard from a Godzilla film, while carrying a machete in it's hand just looked bizarre. The movie had some blood and a tad of gore, but still it's minor stuff.

The story was very odd one, but it didn't stop it from being quite tiresome in parts and cliché ridden. Really, the characters just got on my nerves… especially the heroine and the dumb little girl (you would know what I mean when you see it). Like I typed early there is a mixture of horror elements: the first half of the film feels like a slasher, as we are to think that somebody from the group is possibly the killer, with red herrings thrown in and we don't see nothing but machete doing the damage. While the second half (the part that lost my interest and boredom followed) plays the heroine being stalked by an unknown creature and she is frantically looking for help. In which case we actually see the menace and I found it incredibly bad and laughable. While, the voodoo element gels the other two together.

1.5/5