Witchcraft III: The Kiss of Death

The classic struggle between good and evil for the love of a woman. Sometimes sexy, mostly dull though. Film has a good enough premise, but the treatment is botched. Bad acting & effects, shoestring budget and inept direction are its main faults. Unrated; Sexual Situations, Violence, Adult Themes, Nudity, and Profanity.

WITCHCRAFT III: THE KISS OF DEATH opens in a bar / club, or it could be a coal mine, since it's really too dark to see much. Thankfully, in addition to the murkiness, everyone is dressed in black! In no time, a woman is killed via the titular lip-lock by a mysterious man, who we soon learn is named Louis.

Louis goes on to meet Will Spanner (Charles Solomon Jr.) from part 2, who is now a defense attorney. Will's fashion designer wife, Charlotte (Lisa Toothman) doesn't understand his bizarre behavior, lately. Apparently, she missed part two of this series! Of course, it doesn't help that Will's last name was "Adams" then! Either that, or Charlotte's too busy outfitting models for her latest curtain / comforter concoctions.

The murders continue until the final confrontation sends Will and Louis hurtling through Charlotte's fall collection!

Part 3 has far less story and more nudity than its predecessors. This is when the seemingly endless sequels began turning away from any semblance of horror, and increasingly into the silly, soft core cheeeze arena...

So far my binging the Witchcraft series isn't going well, the first two were embarassments and for this reason I went into part three expecting the worst.

After watching it I can say it's the best one so far! But it's still pretty dire.

We meet William from the first two movies, he's now grown up and fighting off memories of his origins. But when a rival Warlock appears on the scene who has set his eyes on Williams girlfriend he is forced to embrace his past.

Badly made from start to finish Witchcraft III is undoubtedly a mess but was welcome relief after the first two films.

Here is hoping it's all uphill from here.

The Good:

The kiss of death!

The Bad:

Poorly made

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Warlocks don't understand personal space

You might think that a film this weak would be the kiss of death for any horror franchise, but not the Witchcraft series: despite Part III being yet another utterly unmemorable example of cheap and nasty straight to video crud, the films just kept on coming (there's sixteen of them to date!).

I might be a bit sketchy about the details of this one since I struggled to stay awake, but I seem to recall that son of a witch William (Charles Solomon Jr.) is now a defense attorney, trying to prevent the innocent from being sent to death row. When evil warlock Louis (Domonic Luciana) gets between William and his big-breasted girlfriend Charlotte (Lisa Toothman), the lawyer must use his supernatural powers to fight back.

As with the previous two Witchcraft films, the production values are very low, the acting is pitiful, and the plot is completely unremarkable. Director Rachel Feldman tries to keep punters happy with a spot of soft-core sex and some gratuitous nudity, but even that proves boring. Unless you happen to be a movie masochist like myself, you would probably be better off giving this one a miss.

My review was written in April 1991 after watching the movie on Academy video cassette.

Third entry in the popular home video "Witchcraft" series scores high in sexiness but low in the supernatural realm. It should appeal to fans of erotic thrillers.

Charles Solomon, whose acting is unconvincing throughout, toplines as the son of a warlock who denies his ancestry (and inherited powers) until he has to do battle with a vampire bad guy (Domonic Luciano).

Luciano, who preys on Solomon and his girlfriend (Lisa Toothman), periodically kills women with a kiss of death that literally ucks the life out of them.

Luciano's own girlfriend is platinum blonde Luana Hall, who gets an energy transfusion every time her beau puts the fatal smooch on someone, Plot comes unglued when Luciano offs the femme prosecutor who's been giving Solomon a hard time.

Pic climaxes when Luciano dumps Hall and makes Toothman his new thrall. Using inherited witchcraft, and a little help from witch doctor William L. Baker, Solomon puts Luciano out of commission.

Real find here is heroine Toothman. After small film roles and Playboy Channel appearances, she proves to be vulnerable as well as voluptuous in a leading role. Luciano also makes a smooth villain.

Action scenes, particularly the anticlimactic final reel fights, are awkwardly staged with chintzy special effects.