Witchouse 3: Demon Fire

Take a handful of past-their-prime scream queens, some dreadful joke-shop make up, and a bargain-bin costume from the local fancy-dress shop, throw it all together with a messy script packed with magical mumbo-jumbo, and—hey presto!—you've got Witch House 3: Demon Fire!

Tanya Dempsey plays Annie, a young woman who leaves her abusive boyfriend to go and stay with her two best friends, documentary makers Stevie (Debbie Rochon) and Rose (Tina Krause). After an evening of supping wine in the hot-tub, the three women decide to dabble in a bit of black magic as part of Stevie's latest project, an in-depth expose on contemporary witchcraft. No prizes for guessing that this isn't a great idea!

At first this film looks like it might be a reasonably fun piece of trash; it gets its first hot-tub scene in fairly smartish (never a bad thing), follows that up with an enjoyably hokey magic ritual, and then delivers a welcome shower scene from buxom Krause. The fun stops and the tedium starts, however, once director J.R. Bookwalter tries to introduce his poorly developed plot, which ultimately proves to be nothing more than a weak tale of revenge into which a few supernatural elements have been clumsily shoehorned in order to justify the use of the Witch House monicker.

No pun intended - actually this may be the third one, but it has even less in common with the original than the first sequel (or second movie). That being said, they all have more or less only the title connecting them to each other.

I like the actors in this, they really do their best with as little story as they are getting. Quite cliche, quite predictable .. and completely insane. But it is what it, take it or leave it.

Aside the boobfest, this is a Witchcraft-movie.

Has nothing to do with the previous Witchouse films aside the namedrop for the demon/witch, from which it's still the best, because it has a script that went through the basic checkings, and simply fits the tone and quality of the Witchcraft-movies, however low standard that means. There is a reason why that franchise reached 12 installments. I don't know what that reason is, but this definitely catched the same wibes.

After watching this film I'm kind of going to throw this bit of advice out to horror film makers: Death by carbon monoxide poisoning isn't really that great a way to dispatch one of your characters, especially if your films contains only two or three deaths.

That aside, Demon Fire isn't too bad of a film. It involves three woman who are researching Witchcraft, unwittingly conjuring up some demon called Lilith. That's basically the plot, but instead of it turning into your generic demon on the loose type film, Demon Fire keeps it kind of interesting by throwing in a few twists near the end, and it's not your usual film of this type.

Still, I could have done with a bit more bite to this one. After the carbon monoxide killing, you only got an off-screen kill. That's a bit light for a horror film, eh? Of course, you've got a shower scene and plenty of skimpy outfits to keep you awake, so there you go.

Three attractive drunken girlfriends perform a magical ritual and inadvertently summon Lilith, a female witch played by scream queen Brinke Stevens. A Charles Band Full Moon production on the Film 2000 video label is not usually a good omen, so I certainly didn't have high hopes for Demon Fire. The film obviously is low budget, the plot flimsy and the acting is on the wooden side. However it wasn't actually too bad. Good use is made of it's Californian coastal location, the film has a modest running time so it doesn't drag and although there is very little in the way of gore we do have a gratuitous topless shower scene. Ignore these ridiculous 8+/10 scores, 4/10 from me.