Witchery (La casa 4, 1989)

Witchcraft (AKA La casa 4 AKA Witchery) is an Italian gothic horror movie shot in the United States in English. 

It was Fabrizio Laurenti’s first feature film as director. The producer was Joe D’Amato.

The setting is an old abandoned hotel on an island in Massachusetts, about 50 miles from Boston. Leslie (Leslie Cumming) is there to research a book on witchcraft. She is there with her photographer boyfriend Gary (David Hasselhoff). Linda is a virgin. That’s not Gary’s fault. Lord knows he’s tried his best but Linda won’t play ball.

They forget to ask permission to visit the island.

A rich middle-aged couple, Rose and Freddie Brooks, have just bought the island. They’ve hired architect Linda Sullivan (Catherine Hickland) to restore the place. They arrive on the island along with their pregnant daughter Jane (Linda Blair), Jane’s young nephew Tommy and a real estate agent. The fact that Jane is pregnant will also become important later.

What they don’t know is that living in the hotel is an ageing witch, an ageing witch known only as the Lady In Black (Hildegard Knef). She’s a super-evil witch and she has big plans.

The witch is opening portals. Jane falls through one, witnesses horrifying scenes of torture, but is then returned to reality. The witch has other plans for her. Rose Brooks falls through another portal. She is not so lucky.

Meanwhile Linda and the young estate agent have grown bored and have retired upstairs for some bedroom shenanigans.

The witch seems to be picking these people off one by one, in ways that seem appropriate to her given their sins.

Of course you won’t be surprised to learn that these unlucky people are stranded on the island. Yes, the telephones lines are down and their boat has vanished.

This is a gruesome movie with some definite gross-out moments and some nasty torture scenes. It doesn’t really need to rely on these since it has an unoriginal but perfectly serviceable premise, a superb location, some very fine creepy atmosphere and some good suspense.

The cast is quite OK. I’ve always liked Linda Blair. David Hasselhoff as always has plenty of charm. They’re by far the most effective members of the cast.

One amusing touch is that we’re told that the locals are a superstitious lot. They’re simple fisher-folk. Typical gothic horror movie ignorant peasants in fact. But this is Massachusetts in the late 80s.

The hotel is truly wonderful. This is not a typical gothic horror crumbling medieval castle but the hotel is very spooky and very gothic in a distinctively American Gothic way. And while Laurenti may not be a great director he knows how to use this location to best effect.

This is, to be brutally honest, a pretty bad movie. But it does have some interestingly oddball touches and a fine sense of evil and menace. The pacing is brisk enough.

The whole opening of the portal thing is a bit hard to follow but it’s one of the oddball touches that I like about this movie. The supernatural is not supposed to be rational!

The bathtub and fireplace scenes are memorable.

This movie is obviously in the witchcraft and devil-worship in the modern world mould. It has some slight affinities to the 70s/70s folk horror moves such as The Wicker Man and the excellent 1966 Eye of the Devil but it can also been seen as a kind of Exorcist rip-off, with hints of an Omen rip-off. It’s weird in ways that are unnecessary and make no sense and that makes it fun in spite of its faults. Recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray looks very nice. I believe that there’s a US Blu-Ray release from Shout! Factory.

Red Heat (1985)

Red Heat is a 1985 women-in-prison movie starring Linda Blair. I have to be upfront about this - I’m a major Linda Blair fan. If it’s a sleazy, violent, scuzzy 80s exploitation flick and she’s in it I will watch it.

Red Heat is also a very dark spy thriller. The CIA is undertaking a major espionage operation in Germany involving a female East German scientist who has turned traitor and is selling secrets to the West. The CIA, being the CIA, make an unholy mess of the operation which ends in complete failure and with both the lady scientist and an innocent bystander sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in a horrific East German prison.

The innocent bystander is American college student Christine Carlson (Linda Blair). She has zero interest in politics and was not involved in the operation at all. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Christine’s boyfriend is an American soldier, Mike (William Ostrander). In his innocence he assumes. That the US Government will try to rescue his girlfriend. He soon finds out the truth. The CIA doesn’t give a damn about Christine. They’re too busy covering their own asses and trying to cover up their failure.

As a spy movie this belongs the dark gritty cynical school of spy movies. The East Germans are the bad guys, but the CIA are the bad guys as well. There are no good guys in the worlds of espionage and international politics.

This is a women-in-prison movie so of course there are lesbians. At this point I should perhaps say that if you’re the type of person who expects 80s movies to conform to 2020s political ideologies or if you’re a sensitive soul you are going to hate this movie and you’re going to be upset by it. In which case you should watch some other movie.

Firstly there’s the sadistic lesbian chief warder. There’s also Sofia (Sylvia Kristel). Sofia is serving a life sentence and she’s the queen bee. She shares the lesbian chief warder’s bed and she and her lesbian gang exercise a reign of terror over the other prisoners.

That lady spy mentioned earlier is in the same prison. The East Germans want Christine to befriend her to get her secrets out of her.

Sofia sees Christine as a threat. Christine is a sweet innocent girl but she does have an underlying strength of character that Sofia senses, and that makes Sofia determined to destroy her. Somehow Christine will have to survive, and with only the vaguest hope of eventually, maybe, getting out alive.

Christine’s boyfriend wants to find her but he has no idea where she is and the CIA absolutely refuse to help. It all seems hopeless but he really loves Christine and he’s not going to give up.

This movie starts as a spy thriller. Then for most of its running time it’s a very dark women-in-prison movie. And then at the end it becomes an action thriller. The action scenes come as a relief after the relentless grimness.

There is not a hint of camp to this movie. The spy thriller element is cynical, the prison scenes are harrowing and the climactic action scenes are bloody. This is a tough movie.

This is the sort of thing Linda Blair did so well - playing a nice girl who is pushed too far and learns to become a tough chick avenging angel. Blair had a knack for doing this in a totally convincing way.

One thing I love about Blair is that she didn’t look like a movie star. She was attractive, but in a girl-next-door kind of way rather than a glamorous movie star kind of way. And she could be sexy in a tough-but-sensitive way, and sexy in the way that a regular woman is sexy rather than in a glamourised supermodel or movie star way. She has to convince us that Christine really is a very ordinary girl who learns to do what she has to do in order to survive. Blair does this successfully.

I have heard it suggested that Sylvia Kristel was miscast as Sofia. I totally disagree. She was a fine actress and playing a sadistic psycho bitch was something she was quite capable of doing and she does an excellent job here.

In order to work this movie needed two actresses with charisma, but with the right sort of slightly unconventional charisma. Blair and Kristel work perfectly together. You know that when these two chicks have their final showdown it will be memorable.

It’s a somber film but it’s well-paced and the tension is built up effectively and relentlessly. It’s gripping and it’s entertaining. A must-see for Linda Blair fans, and I’d say it’s a must-see for Sylvia Kristel fans as well as a demonstration of her considerable versatility as an actress. Red Heat is highly recommended.

Red Heat is included in a Women in Prison Triple Feature DVD set. The DVD transfer for Red Heat is rather dark but I suspect that that is actually how the movie was shot. I like the dark scuzzy look the film has.

Red Heat was a follow-up to the excellent 1983 Linda Blair women-in-prison movie Chained Heat. They’re both delightfully sleazy but with a subtly different vibe. Maybe Chained Heat is slightly the better film but both are worth seeing.