Panga: Lâmina Mortal

An American bride's sister is visiting her and her sugar plantation owning husband in South Africa. While out one afternoon, the sister disrupts a native tribe's voodoo ceremony in an attempt to keep them from sacrificing a goat. As a result, a witch doctor puts a curse on them. It isn't long before a demon from the sea is stalking the family and anyone else they know.

Originally titled Panga, this is also known as Curse III: Blood Sacrifice, but none of the four films in that series have anything to do with each other. While this is far from a great movie, it is a fun watch. The African locations make for nice eye candy and we get Christopher Lee in a secondary role as a doctor who may be involved in the killings. Jenilee Harrison makes for an attractive leading lady, but her character can be rather annoying. No one else in the cast makes much of an impression, but they're mostly there to be machete fodder anyway. That's right, this demon uses a machete. It's funny to note that the director's last name is Barton, also the last name of the director behind Zaat, which I watched not long before viewing this one. The fish-like demon on display here reminded me of the creature from that film, only with much better effects work courtesy of Chris Walas.

The score for this film is rather odd, but you can't deny that it's catchy. It was stuck in my head for a good day afterward. Speaking of odd, there's a neat sequence where a character is burned alive after he's caught spying on the main characters from a sugar cane field. You would have to see the scene to realize how bizarre it really is.

Much better then you would expect and bearing no relation to the first two films. This film is about a woman interrupting the slaughter of a goat during a sacrifical ceremony. The African tribalsman decides to get even by sending a monster after the woman and anybody that is connected with her. Straight forward horror film with a good amount of atmosphere and scares is well made on a shoestring budget.

Rated R; Nudity, Violence, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.

I should point out that "Curse III" is not, despite the name, a sequel. I know this is confusing.

The story is set in Africa in 1950 and is, despite this, a slasher film. A British colonist has married into a family of idiots. When his wife and her sister are on a drive, they come upon a tribe about to sacrifice a goat to their gods. However, the women insist on taking the 'poor goat' and therefore incur the wrath of the tribe. Not surprisingly, soon folks start getting hacked to pieces...and for our supposed amusement.

I know that slasher films are popular with many folks, though I find them very dull because they are all essentially the same. Despite the change of locale and African gods aspects, this is just a slasher pic...complete with gratuitous nudity, stupid people you wouldn't mind seeing die and lots of blood. It's pretty mindless, though for the genre it's reasonably well made. Plus, it features Christopher Lee in a supporting role...which is something. Overall, I didn't enjoy the movie but perhaps slasher pic fans will.

Panga is, I guess a hooked African Knife and that's what the film was sold as, until it failed and instead became part of the shaggy series of dog movies under that title.

But now it should just be seen and called Panga, it reflects the 80s everything is about knives cutting people era of horror. Now to be clear this film has little gore, it does feature bits of sexual exploitation in two scenes, Harrison self-consciously holding up her breasts to make them look larger. She isn't actor enough to carry the movie which has plenty of other problems.

Though we have Christopher Lee top billed, he barely has anything to do or is even in most of the film. Eventuallly a monster does appear, though even the monster must still lumber around, briefly with the Panga.

So do we don't get lots of killings, which might help a film where nothing really happes for half it's running time. The few times the Panga kills someone we have a shot of the blade rising and falling through frame--as if it's a TV movie, and even these shots don't birng any fear or, if you're after it, any blood or terror.

It's directed by an editor of the Least of the first three Star Wars films and one that drew criticism in part for doing a lot of intercutting between scenes making all the scenes seem less important individually than creataing any tension that that happens in this film too, which may make it sound more like it has some style than it does.

The film just can't pull off any kind of action at all, even if it's two people walking up stairs the camera seems awkwardly placed and the action artificial. The director, has no feel for the genre, there are only one or two kinda of moody shots and one long tedious walking around a dark empty house scene. He never directed another movie.

The obnoxious cheap sounding electric music score took two people to push some kind of cheesy thin synth momentum into the non eventful proceedings. It wasn't good then and it's worse now as far as hurting not helping the movie.

Harrison is a big problem, she's all surface, bugging out her eyes and letting her mouth hang open, getting messy and then suddenly having perfect hair and make up again. There is one of the unintentionally funniest reaction shots in genre history. She finds a body and screams while messing up her hair with both hands like she's in a hair commercial showing off how much body her hair has, then she slow walks out of the room and has perfect hair again. It's a high or low light that has to be seen to be believed.

Lee finally has a good moment telling his characters backstory which sounds much better than anything we've had to sit through in this movie. If he and the possibly interesting African supernatural elements had been allowed to take up more time the film could have been better. Or if it was going to be a slasher film then where is all the slashing and elaborate set-piece suspense scenes? Not in this movie that's where!!!

Then the film climaxes with not one but two totally unlikely and increbibly huge instant fires. The climax takes place in the rain yet one lantern instantly ignites a large very gree cane field!

So interesting perhaps as an example of a movie failing to pull off older horror elements while including trendy ones of the day. Ligthing is often done very flatly and though dolby stereo it doesn't do anything creative or effective with its sound either, and the cheesy synth music sounds like it's playing on a poolside AM radio of the day.

All said a loser, but not the worse of THE CURSE movies if that says anything. As others point out and like most of THE CURSE movies it's wasn't made to be one in the first place.

Curse III: Blood Sacrifice is quite an entertaining film. As of yet, I have only seen this one and Curse I in the series. I hated "The Curse", because I felt it was one of those "quick films" to try and make Wil Wheaton a star. I had read that none of the sequels had anything to do with the original, so I figured that I would enjoy this. I did. I figured the budget was low, and I always enjoy when filmmakers work well on a shoestring budget. A women interrupts the sacrifice of a goat. The leader of the tribe summons a curse from the sea to pay her, her friends, and her family back. The movie was well done, and the East African scenery was a nice addition to an already well done film. Christopher Lee was in fine form, and the film made some sense unlike the original. The "sea creature" was a little cheesy, but the mystery and suspense made up for the cheesy, low budget special effects. It's one of those films that leaves you guessing about what might happen next. "Curse III" is definitely one of the best purchases I made. See this film, I guarantee you that if you don't like it, you won't hate it!