Panga: Lâmina Mortal

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.

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.

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.

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

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.