Wicthcraft IV
Been having a bit of a Witchcraft Marathon lately. I saw this movie on my Amazon Prime and wanted to take a look at it, but before I did, I noticed this was Witchcraft IV and decided I would start with the first and lead into this one.
Distributed by Troma, but I’m guessing not made by them because Troma’s best known franchise is the Toxic Avenger (Whose also their mascot), yet this witchcraft series looks like it goes all the way up to eight, so I would assume it’s just as successful.
Just to give you a run down of the series, not that it really matters one move or the other but their is an actual story going through all of this.
In the first Witchcraft (Which I was expecting to have nudity but surprisingly does not) it’s a common story of a woman having a baby with the wrong guy, but this wrong guy turns out to be a resurrected witch who knocks her up in order to birth the Warlock that is suppose to take over the world. The concept reminds me of a few other movies coming out at the time. This somewhat mythical monsters type horror, like with Leprechaun and Warlock (which this movie has a semi-silmar theme (but not as similar as Rosemary’s baby, which if you have seen that you’ve seen a way better version of this film ). it was not a bad movie for what it was and on the level it was.
The second movie on this list is Which craft II. spoiling it a little bit, (but not really) The warlock born in the first movie is now a teenager (not played by a teenager let me tell you Yet both these movies can’t be more than a year apart). His adopted parents try to hide who he is from himself and the world, but of course it comes out anyway. Once again the overall movie is not that bad for what it’s worth. It’s a pretty decent story and they do what they can with the film budget and it does go a grade higher because they do have some nudity in it. It’s cheap because in reality the first Whichcraft was fine without it and so is this (Or rather technically not better with it from an overall opinion) but I’m not gonna lie, I like the idea that the producer of the film or Lloyd Kaufman, the head of Troma, himself saw the movie and told the filmmakers it was great but in the words of the King b-movie maker, Roger Corman, “you know what this movie needs? more nudity!”
So now we go to the third movie, of which I’m going to spoiler it again, but one thing I noticed about movies like these is that most people really don’t care enough if I spoil the story. The Warlock makes it back for another film. I should make it clear that even though he was born to be evil, in the second and third movie he acts as the protagonist against evil. In this case he makes something of himself, becoming a legal aide who needs to help a poor black kid accused of murdering a white woman from getting the chair, due to the actions of a demon who is praying on women. like the other movies, Witchcraft 3 tells a pretty decent story and I’m impressed with how the story is laid out despite how cheap the production is, but like the second one, The filmmakers once again were like,just in case, lets put some nudity in it, and in my opinion the best nudity in both of the movies. I tell ya, the story going through all three is pretty much standard and generic as hell, but the nudity is getting better (rather than the production). Maybe they are spending all their production money on getting better nudity?
Speaking of which, here we go with the fourth installment. Now, the fact that Julie Strain is on the cover of this mutha tells me that I might be right. The nudity in number three was the best and they had to do something to up the stakes. I’m not sure if I should be thankful that uping the stakes means paying to get Strain to take her clothes off, when they could have made a movie with higher quality production, put some special effects in it so that this Witchcraft series is more about magic than it’s name suggest. Anyway, the warlock returns (once again spoiling the other movies because you know that the warlock returns again, although with that info, I should state that Witchcraft seems slightly designed to be a horror movie, but really is not so I’m never spoiling anything saying Warlock survives each movie). Warlock is still a lawyer fighting the good fight, but this time he seems to be more ok with who he is and decides to focus on strange cases that only magic can explain (this is what I’m getting from the opening narration). The movie acts more like a mystery thriller with witchcraft being draped in the mystery. I should point out that like the third movie Witchcraft four seems to be focus on afro-Caribbean version of magic like voodoo and shit, despite the fact that the Warlock was born to a satanic type of magic. I have a feeling they do this as a way to explain why the magic is so under exaggerated and excuse the lack of production not really getting better.
Julie Strain does a great job. Simply by being on the cover, I wanted to see the movie. It’s been a long long time since I’ve seen the young Strain in anything. She looks amazing for her age so imagine what she looked like back in the 90s. Definitely worth giving her all the production money (I’m not joking about this either. While watching the movie you can tell that something went wrong with the sound. it was strange, there were times in which one character was relatively louder than the other and even times when the background noise was louder than the actors).
But even with Strain in the movie, I’m noticing that the story is not as good as the first three. I got to the point where the life of the Warlock is starting to get interesting as I’m now realizing that when I jumped into this I was expecting a horror film with The Warlock as a final girl (or boy) in the same guise as Nancy from the Nightmare on Elm Street Series , but in fact what I’m getting is a film series that starts as a Thriller with a classic horror theme that is developing as a film series into a mystery thriller that uses Witchcraft as a backdrop.
It’s funny, I got into the Witchcraft series because of the cover of part four only for me to discover that I could have stopped at three, because with four. This is when the I really notice the quality lowering.
