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Witchcraft

  • 1988
  • R
  • 1h 35m
IMDb RATING
3.4/10
927
YOUR RATING
Witchcraft (1988)
Horror

Grace visits husband John's family manor. Peculiar events ensue, butler Ellsworth suspicious. Friend's demise unveils John and mother-in-law are 1687 witches through secret book. Grace and b... Read allGrace visits husband John's family manor. Peculiar events ensue, butler Ellsworth suspicious. Friend's demise unveils John and mother-in-law are 1687 witches through secret book. Grace and baby's fate unclear amid supernatural occurrences.Grace visits husband John's family manor. Peculiar events ensue, butler Ellsworth suspicious. Friend's demise unveils John and mother-in-law are 1687 witches through secret book. Grace and baby's fate unclear amid supernatural occurrences.

  • Director
    • Rob Spera
  • Writer
    • Jody Savin
  • Stars
    • Anat Topol
    • Gary Sloan
    • Mary Shelley
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    3.4/10
    927
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Rob Spera
    • Writer
      • Jody Savin
    • Stars
      • Anat Topol
      • Gary Sloan
      • Mary Shelley
    • 22User reviews
    • 12Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos19

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    Top cast52

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    Anat Topol
    • Grace Churchill
    • (as Anat Topal-Barzilai)
    Gary Sloan
    Gary Sloan
    • John Stocton
    • (as Newton, Edward Ross)
    Mary Shelley
    • Elizabeth Stocton
    Deborah Scott
    • Linda
    Alexander Kirkwood
    • Priest
    Lee Kissman
    • Ellsworth
    Ross Newton
    Ross Newton
    • William
    Charles Grant
    • Dr. Adler
    Lilian Lane
    • Nurse #1
    Karen Michaels
    • Nurse #2
    Cynthia Bell
    • Hospital Nurse
    Victoria Ressurection
    • Hospital Nurse
    Ofelia Montano
    • Hospital Nurse
    Steve Decker
    • Dead Father
    Trevor Narom
    • Burned Husband
    Sarah Neece
    • Burned Wife
    Florence Stone Fevergeon
    • Visitor
    • (as Florence Stone)
    Lou Starr
    • Visitor
    • Director
      • Rob Spera
    • Writer
      • Jody Savin
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews22

    3.4927
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    Featured reviews

    3Stevieboy666

    Witch-crap

    I have this movie on both VHS and DVD. They come with excellent artwork featuring a young attractive woman lay on an altar, a skull beneath her, and the film's title "Witchcraft" within a pentagram above her. A common case of great artwork but poor movie. Grace gives birth to a baby boy (that looks at least six months old in size), her and creepy but rich husband John move into his mother's large house. It is soon apparent that John has a very strange relationship with his mother, a 300 year old painting in which they appear together before being burnt for witchcraft is a major clue. For poor Grace in addition to marrying into an odd family the house also has a creepy mute butler (like large old houses so often do!). This is a cheap looking movie, I found the acting to be quite wooden, it's slow and predictable. There is some gore including a decapitation but the effects certainly are not very special. There is no nudity but incredibly this went on to spawn at least 15 sequels, these did feature a lot of naked female flesh. Witchcraft borrows from "Rosemary's Baby" to an extent. In the UK this is rated 18 but it now feels relatively tame and I am sure that a re-submission to the BBFC would result in a 15 certificate. Not many positives to speak of though Deborah Scott/Spera as Grace's friend Linda does look pretty hot in her tight mini skirts!
    3BA_Harrison

    The first of many.

    As Grace Churchill (Anat Topal-Barzilai) gives birth to her son William, images of a pair of witches being burnt at the stake flash through her mind. On leaving hospital, Grace's husband John (Gary Sloan) informs her that she will be staying at his mother's home for a while until she is ready to cope by herself. Before long, Grace starts to experience strange occurrences that eventually lead her to believe that John and his mother, Elizabeth (Mary Shelley), are up to something strange.

    Rather unbelievably, this tepid supernatural thriller, which clearly takes its cues from Rosemary's Baby, has spawned fifteen sequels to date, apparently finding an appreciative audience by including plenty of nudity and soft-core sex. This first film, however, offers nothing in that department: it's dull, uneventful drivel for most of the running time, only coming to life in the final ten minutes where extremely patient viewers are rewarded with a spot of much needed gore, including a decapitation and an impalement.

    As a horror movie completist, I now feel compelled to watch the rest in the series, no matter how bad they get: wish me luck… I get the feeling I will need it.
    lor_

    Cliched horror offering

    My review was written in January 1989 after watching the film on Academy video cassette.

    "Witchcraft" is an underwhelming supernatural horror piece, released direct-to-video (with video post-production and credits).

    Unrelated to another new (Italian-backed) scream pic named "Witchcraft" and toplining Linda Blair, this film adds a dash of "Rosemary's Baby" to the hoary formula of a new mother's fears and the oppressive move to a gothic mansion.

    Pretty Anat Topol-Barzilai is the new mother of a bouncing baby boy who haplessly finds herself moved in with a decidedly evil-seeming mother-in-law (Mary Shelley is the actress' gothic stage name) in an ancient house. She starts seeing visions, particularly in mirrors, and wisely fears for her newborn's safety. Following a burn-at-the-stake prolog, it's finally revealed that Shelley and Anat's huband Gary Sloan are reincarnated witches and they're definitely after the kid.

    Pert Deborah Scott adds some life as the heroine's best pal, but pic is mainly a string of genre cliches executed by helmer Robert Spera with very little imagination. Pace slows to a crawl in the second half.

    Topol-Barzilai is pleasant to look at, with her ample figure kept under wraps here even in scenes (such as human sacrifice climax) when a bit bolder approach is in order. Shelley, despite her apt name, fails at achieving a transition from menacing to out-and-out evil.
    Michael_Elliott

    The Start of a 13 Film Series

    Witchcraft (1988)

    * 1/2 (out of 4)

    A mother (Anat Topol) brings her newborn son to her mother-in-law's house and sure enough the husband (Gary Sloan) and his mommy (Mary Shelley) are actually Satan worshipers wanting to make the newborn the next Antichrist. Believe it or not but WITCHCRAFT was actually a huge hit when it was released to video back in 1988 but I do wonder how many people rented this thing and could have guessed that twelve sequels would follow. Obviously, the film is just another rip-off of ROSEMARY'S BABY but we get a funny little goof in the opening credits when a title reads "Origional Screenplay by" but perhaps this error was done on purpose since the film certainly wasn't original. The film itself makes a few major mistakes in regards to a made-for-video exploitation film. The biggest is that it's pretty dull from start to finish with not much happening anywhere in the first hour. The film isn't shy about ripping off other devil-child movies so horror fans might get a few kicks out of spotting the various rips. The film really doesn't contain too much violence or blood and the real sin is that it doesn't even offer up any nudity making it quite tame all around and there's really nothing here we haven't seen much better many times before. Even those awful rip-offs from the 70s at least offered up violence, gore or nudity. The performances aren't too bad for this type of film and I'll at least give director Rob Spera credit by turning in a professional looking picture, which is something a lot of the made-for-VHS films from this era couldn't say. The film does offer up some campy moments including a priest whose face starts to mutate after entering the mother-in-law's house. Another campy moment happens with "visions" coming from a mirror, which is bound to get several laughs. Still, WITCHCRAFT doesn't have anything really going for it that separates it from the pact so there's no real need to see it.
    4FieCrier

    so-so witchcraft movie, astonishingly followed by twelve sequels (so far)

    The opening of the movie intercuts a man and a woman being burned at the stake for witchcraft during colonial American times with a woman giving birth. That burning scene is repeated in a number of the sequels (more about them later).

    Grace Churchill is the mother, a woman who emigrated from Poland with her parents, who died in a murder/suicide. She's a former junkie (if I heard correctly), but cleaned up and was surprised to find John Churchill one of the state's wealthiest men was interested in marrying her.

    After the birth, they live with his mother in her huge house. Parts of the house are dusty, with things covered with sheets, and she's not supposed to go into that part. The family butler shows up to block it off when she tries to show it to her friend Linda. He becomes a little friendlier when given a fresh flower from the garden, and then isn't always there to guard the off-limits room.

    That room has a mirror in it, in which she can briefly see colonial people, and also has visions of the future, though she's not sure she really saw them. She also has a dream, or maybe it isn't, in which she wanders outside at night and finds two people engaged in a ritual, and her mother-in-law Elizabeth is one of them. Blood drips out of Elizabeth's mouth.

    The family also has a bunch of strange friends, older people who don't talk much. Grace's priest comes to the house to baptize William and he has a vision of flames, and becomes ill.

    To some extent, as some have said, this borrows from Rosemary's Baby, which is certainly the better movie. There's even a steal of a famous shot of that movie, where the camera points through a doorway, partly showing a woman on a phone. However, the camera here actually does peer around, whereas in Polanski's film, the shot makes the viewer want to try to peer around.

    Rosemary's Baby was followed by a little-seen and reportedly poor TV movie, Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby. Witchcraft is followed by a surprising twelve sequels so far (most of them relatively poor), though the last of them has not been released yet. Possibly the only horror series to have out-sequeled this one is the Asian anthology series Troublesome Night.

    Witchcraft II picks up about eighteen years after this one, and does feature a number of flashbacks to this. Most of the sequels can stand on their own, but due to the number of flashbacks in II, it might be best to start here.

    Witchcraft II also features some nudity, while there was none in this one, unless there is more than one version of the film. Some of the later Witchcraft sequels stray into erotic horror, and some feature scenes that could be considered softcore I suppose.

    The main recurring character in all but two of the sequels (8 and 10) is Will Spanner, who is baby William Churchill in this one, and William Adams in the second - there's never any doubt in the movie that the baby will make it through, just what he'll be like when he gets older. Though none of them are brilliant, I don't think they're quite as bad as many others do. When in the mood for a cheap horror movie with lots of nudity, they're OK.

    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      The website, Mr. Skin, posted the top 10 horror series with the most female nude scenes on Oct. 2020. Witchcraft had the most with 77. The list includes Witchcraft (77), Friday the 13th (49), Hellraiser (24), Wrong Turn (17), Piranha (16), Hostel (14), Silent Night, Deadly Night (14), Halloween (14), and Amityville (9).
    • Goofs
      In the opening credits the word "original" is spelt "origional".
    • Quotes

      [last lines]

      Grace Churchill: William!

    • Connections
      Edited into Witchcraft III: The Kiss of Death (1991)

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    FAQ15

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • March 2, 1989 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Witch and Warlock
    • Filming locations
      • Thomas W. Phillips Residence - 2215 S. Harvard Blvd, Los Angeles, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Vista Street Entertainment
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 35m(95 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Stereo
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.33 : 1

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