Witchouse 3: Demon Fire (2002)

Posted on Feb 27, 2002 under Horror |

Directed by J.R. Bookwalter
Written by J.R. Bookwalter and Matthew Jason Walsh
Starring
- Debbie Rochon
- Tanya Dempsey
- Tina Krause
- Paul Darrigo
- Brinke Stevens
Produced by Tammi Sutton and J.R. Bookwalter
Executive produced by Charles Band

The good folks at Tempe Entertainment sent me this screener of one of their latest collaborations with Full Moon. I still haven’t gotten around to seeing the first two in the series, but considering how long my “Gotta See It Before I Die” list is (it’s biologically impossible for me to live that long), and given that others have already mentioned that this wasn’t so much a sequel as a similarly-themed followup, I decided to go ahead with it and maybe catch up on the others later. That’s just the kind of rebel I am.

Having seen it, though, I have to wonder if the movie I watched was the same one that’s been getting generally positive reviews throughout the low-budget critic community. Witchouse 3 shares many of the idiosyncrasies of other recent Full Moon releases which have engendered a guarded optimism about the quality of future offerings, but as far as I’m concerned it falls far short of that hoped-for curve.

Sure, it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness, but who said those options are mutually exclusive?

We open with mild-mannered blonde Annie (Tanya Dempsey) dropping in on the beachhouse (or is that “beachouse”?) of a couple of her old girlfriends, flashbacks to her abusive boyfriend (Paul Darrigo) explaining the livid bruise on her cheek. Her girlfriends, Stevie (Debbie Rochon) and Rose (Tina Krause), are embarking on a fortuitously-themed enterprise: Stevie’s a filmmaker who’s just gotten a grant to do a documentary on real-life witches, or Wiccans, as Stevie patiently explains. What makes them tick? Why devote your life to magic, when no one believes in magic any more?

As an object lesson, she ropes the other two into a little ritual of their own in front of the videocamera, lighting candles and reading from a little ironbound book. The chant culminates in an invocation of “Lilith” — and a sudden power outage, accompanied by “strobe lights from hell.” The trio wisely vacates the house at breakneck speeds.

However, it doesn’t take long for them to convince themselves that what they “saw” was mostly the effects of alcohol, especially once Stevie reveals that the “spellbook” is a blank-paged novelty journal she’d picked up at the five-and-dime. So everything can go back to normal, right?

Technically, yeah, but only after they’ve smouldered a really long time.

Hardly. Even though the girls remain mostly oblivious, we get to see vague glimpses of someone else in the house — someone with wild eyes, dressed in an Amish/Goth blend, lurking in corners and disappearing suddenly like ghosts in horror movies usually do. (It’s Brinke Stevens, in case you were wondering, doing that whacked-out witch thing she’s so well known for.)

But the strange occurrences. Rose sees the shadow of someone in the shower she just left (gratuitous boob shot!). The videotape of their “bogus” summoning has ghostly afterimages on it that look an awful lot like faces. And a mysteriously scrawled message appears in what looks like blood just inside the back door: WITCHES BURN.

The apparition starts appearing to the girls individually — jumping Rose in her bed and later joining her on “Bring Your Witch To Work Day,” appearing to Stevie in a spectral light in a smoke-filled parking garage — until the girls are jumpy and snapping at each other. (Mrwowr!) Is it their imaginations? Did they summon something inadvertantly?

I know who gets MY vote for “Most Appealing Sleepware”…

Or is it Burke, Annie’s boyfriend? He catches Stevie jogging on the beach, and his version of events is very different than Annie’s — that she’s mentally ill, and has psychotic episodes. Stevie reacts in belligerent disbelief, naturally — but the seed of doubt has been planted…

There are several scenes throughout the movie that stand out with creativity. The spectre of Lilith is well-hidden from us, through a combination of quick cuts and physical barriers (seeing her through frosted glass, or in a fog, or out of focus at the back of a shot). The best of the lot is her appearance to Rose at work: Rose’s computer screen cuts out, and Lilith appears, hissing in her ear — visible to us only in the dim reflection on the screen. And there’s a well-staged continous shot in which Stevie wipes the “WITCHES BURN” scrawl off the wall, goes around the corner to rinse out her rag and dump her bucket, comes back around, and the scrawl has reappeared.

Unfortunately, these technical bravos come only because they stand out so much. Full Moon has made some great strides in filmlooked digital video of late; HorrorVision and The Vault are almost indistinguishable from film, and Stitches is only one grade below that. Witchouse 3 is several levels lower on the totem pole; extremely video-y shots are mixed in with those that are just filmlooked enoughto be noticeable as such. On top of that, the entire movie seems underlit and murky. I thought that especially odd, given that the director of photography was Danny Draven, who directed HorrorVision. On the other hand, even daylit exterior shots seem underilluminated, making me wonder if it were an intentional post-production decision in an attempt to add more atmosphere through shadow. It doesn’t work.

**Annie never did get over being forced to watch Killjoy and Killjoy 2 back to back.**

Just like the technical aspects, the creative side has its own high points. Co-writer Matt Walsh is very capable of witty dialogue, and there are scenes which show through as somepletely natural and very much pure Walsh. But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap — and on a rumored budget of roughly $26,000, cheap is greatly to be desired. So we get the standard low-budget trick of filling footage with bickering. It’s better-than-average bickering, to be sure, but all the same it often runs on so long that I couldn’t remember who was arguing for and who was arguing against.

Other annoyances (sorry, but I’ve just got to air them):

- Yet another low-budget film about low-budget filmmakers? On occasion, this works (The Dead Hate the Living); usually it comes across as being completely self-indulgent. Sooner or later someone’s going to make a low-budget movie about low-budget filmmakers, and the movie being made within the movie will revolve around making a low-budget movie… and that’s when Nathan will go apeshit.

- This movie’s got all the building blocks for a heavy subtext on feminism and patriarchy, but it fails to stack them up. Look at it: You’ve got a girl on the run from an abusive boyfriend (or is she?), holing up with two girlfriends, who’re making a documentary about Wicca. (There are Wiccans of both genders, but it’s often seen as an empowering religion for women who’ve had bad experiences with patriarchy and males in general.) And to top it off, the demon/spirit/what have you that they summon is named Lilith. You may know that, according to some Jewish legends, Lilith was supposedly Adam’s first wife, who was tossed out of the Garden for being uppity (some legends specify that her “sin” was to insist on being on top during sex), and God instead gave Adam the more docile Eve. Lilith’s thus become something of a symbol of female liberation from patriarchy in recent years. Now, I assume that the character of Lilith LeFay here is not meant to be that same Lilith who became the ex-Mrs. Adam, but you can’t a name so mythologically loaded without dealing with the implications. All of these possible sources of subtext are here, lying around like gold nuggets for the taking, but nothing of note is ever done with them, and that’s incredibly disappointing. To paraphrase the script itself, if you “invoke” as symbolic a character as Lilith, you’d better be prepared to deal with the baggage. (Now, as I mentioned, I haven’t seen the first two Witchouse movies, which also revolve around witch-spirits named Lilith; it’s conceivable that these issues were dealt with there. But that doesn’t excuse completely ignoring them here. That would be not unlike Joel Schumacher deciding that “it’s time for Batman to get over it” in Batman & Robin.)

- Most of the movie is a mystery, both for the characters and the viewers: what is Lilith’s real purpose? Unfortunately, unlike a real mystery, there’s a dearth of clues spread throughout the running time; what we end up knowing we get in the last ten minutes, as two of the characters (no spoilers here) have an argument which drops a load of exposition from both sides that could choke a horse. By the end, Lilith really appears more as spooky window-dressing whose main purpose is to eerily vamp around.

“The Witch and the Wallpaper.”

- And then there’s that whole “Demon Fire” subtitle thing, tied in with the scattered “WITCHES BURN” references. There’s just enough to suggest that this was meant to be a unifying theme and symbol, but it just doesn’t gel. Fire’s not used as a consistent symbol or archetype, and despite the repeated declarations, well, no one ever burns.

I know what you’re saying, especially if you’re one of the Tempe or Full Moon crew: “Jeez Louise, who pissed in his Cheerios?” And maybe I am coming down hard. But dammit, I’ve seen good stuff from these guys before. They’re not some filmmaker wanna-bes in the wilds of Tennessee who maxed the credit cards and mortgaged the double-wide to finance their well-meaning vision. These are seasoned professionals, who at times exemplify how to create worthwhile entertainment on cab-fare budgets. I know they can do better.