Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart

It's been three years since warlock Will Spanner (Charles Solomon Jr.) has used his powers, but when faced with a demonic, murderous music manager who removes his victims' hearts, the supernatural lawyer must once again draw on his magical abilities.

With Will investigating a murder case that takes him to sleazy strip clubs and smoky blues bars, Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart is more like a film noir than a horror — and a bad one at that, with a dull mystery and a lifeless performance from star Solomon. Written and directed by James Merendino, the film cements the Witchcraft series as one of the worst horror franchises ever, this latest entry being the weakest one yet.

As with the previous three films, the film suffers from dreadful acting, flat direction, and cheap production values, with particularly bad sound, much of the dialogue almost impossible to make out. I imagine that none of this seemed all that important to Merendino, just so long as skin-flick legend Julie Strain (playing a stripper called Belldonna) got her clothes off—which she does.

This was the last of the Witchcraft films to feature Charles Solomon Jr. as William: perhaps even he had his limits and could take no more of this garbage.

An attorney, who just happens to be a warlock gets involved with Julie Stern, but notices some devilish happenings going on around him and her involving rock stars. Some hot sexual situations, but it seems that with each new entry in this series these films actually seem to get worse. Clunky dialogue and laughable situations are its main flaws. Rated R; Sexual Situations, Nudity, Profanity, and Violence.

The fourth film in the neverending Witchcraft series finds Will Spanner (Charles Solomon) hired by Lily Wild (Lisa Jay Harrington) to help her brother Pete (Orien Richman) when he's the number one suspect in the disappearance of his girlfriend Norah (Sunset Thomas).

Will and Lisa find a matchbox for a club, the Covenant, at the scene of the crime. Will goes to the club to check things out and finds an attractive stripper named Belladonna (Julie Strain). Mr. Spanner becomes fascinated with Belladonna and what secrets the club may be hiding. His search leads him to a musician Santara, who may or may not be the key to things.

Boring!

I watched the first three movies in this series just over a year ago, took a year off as I didn't really enjoy any of them, but thought alright let's get back into the WITCHCRAFT series. Then comes this dud.

Supposedly 3 years after part 3 a girl named Nora Breckenridge (Diane Thomas or Sunset Thomas as she is better known in the adult films she made) goes missing. The cops think her boyfriend is the culprit. He is played by Orien Richman as Pete Wild...no really that's the character's name. His sister Lily (Lisa Jay Harrington) hires Will Spanner (Charles Solomon) to be his lawyer. He then connects it to a stripper named Belladonna (Julie Strain) who he begins to tail to find out what happened.

I feel bad for Solomon as this was his third and final WITCHCRAFT flick and really what a terrible way to go. His character has really been reduced almost nothing as times when he should be doing something to help himself or other people he does nothing and ends up peeping in Lily's window watching her undress as well before it fades to the next scene. Horribly lit as you feel like they didn't have enough money to even turn the lights on. Horrible sound as half the time you can hardly pick out what the actors are saying. Horribly directed as you generally go from one extremely long, boring shot to the next and any scene may in fact only have two shots in it. This movie seems so much cheaper than the earlier entries, which is really saying something. Not sure how I am going to get through the rest of the endless series.

Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart (1992)

* (out of 4)

The fourth film in the series finds lawyer Will Spanner (Charles Solomon) involved with a new girl (Julie Strain) while trying to investigate a case involving a man accused of killing his girlfriend. It turns out that the devil's son is also working the music scene by having young musicians sell him their souls in exchange for fame. I'm honestly not sure how those two stories were supposed to connect but WITCHCRAFT IV tries to do it but of course fails miserably. The first three films in the series were bad but each of them featured something strangely bad that made them entertaining. This fourth installment is clearly the worst of the bunch and you can't even say it reaches a so bad it's good level. The biggest problem is that there's just not much of a story here and what little there is gets stretched to a 93-minute running time, which is about 73-minutes too long. The film does offer up some rather funny moments including the scene where our lawyer-warlock goes up against the D.A. trying to say his client is innocent. The dialogue for these two going back and forth managed to get me to laugh. It's also funny hearing the lawyer tell the talented stripper that she should join a band and sing for a living. And let us not forget the scene where our lawyer buddy gets backstage at a strip club by claiming to have gotten lost looking for the bathroom (I hate when that happens). The performances, as you'd expect, are all pretty poor and even Solomon comes off rather bored here. Strain certainly can't act but I'm fairly certain she was hired for her breasts, which she shows a few times throughout the film. WITCHCRAFT IV just drags along so badly that it's really hard to find any sort of entertainment in it.