Witchcraft 13: Blood of the Chosen
I’m actually expecting good things from number 13, simply because it’s number 13. It’s that number you associate with black magic and evil things right?
Number 13 is the blood of the chosen, which looks like it’s made by the same dudes who made number 12 (who are not Troma who originally spawned the franchise) . Technically that’s not a good start considering the last movie had no nudity. Boobs were a tool that the Witchcraft series used for all of it’s sequels up to 12, and it was a good tool when your a film franchise that seems to refused to spend more money as they escalate.
It’s been six years since the last movie. I’m glad that they did decide to revive the franchise with Will Spanner. Will Spanner has been the main focal point of the Witchcraft series since day one(with Witchcraft 8 and 10 being exceptions). Will is a baby born to be an Antichrist to a witches convent, and within the series he will grow up to become a lawyer that natural gravitates towards cases that can only be solved by the supernatural, putting him up against voodoo, satanic occult, vampires, etc…
In recent movies Will Spanner has been progressively using his heritage to battle evil. In this movie this new attitude has seem to wine him down. I love it because of how trivial they are with it, making clear references to the origin story and other movies, which is not done. Even going as far as to mention his long time girlfriend in the series, Kelly, who has been used more as another girl to get naked in the movie, and sense they are not doing nudity anymore….
Like number 12, Will Spanner is the only long term character to psychically come back on the screen (but it looks like a few minor characters from Witchcraft II seem to make a comeback). They mention Lucille Lutz, one of my favorite characters from the film series, a tough lady detective who Will would come across and be helpful with her murder cases that are dipped in magic. Once again, Lutz not being in this movie shows the franchise moving slightly away from the soft-core pron genre (makes sense, 2008 was not the best time to compete with internet porn), Though Lutz only got naked once in her six to seven appearances in the film franchise (One not being Witchcraft X, where she replaced Will as the main protagonist), she was mostly played by a busty female and was as much eye candy as anything else.
Instead of Lutz and her womanizing partner Gardner, Will needs to help out two new cops who have herd rumors of Will helping Lutz and Gardner on a few supernatural driven cases. Making the connection stronger is the fact that Lutz dated one of the cops.
Greatly making up for the new direction out of the soft-core porn era is how much more developed Will is becoming as a character. It always seemed in other stories that they were not sure how connected they wanted Spanner to be to his mystical past as a warlock. Now he’s using his powers even more. Almost like a superhero, which would fit in quite well for a new era of films that’s about to develop.
I’m liking number thirteenth as a fan of the entire series. Not enough naked boobs, but more Will Spanner and more witchcraft.
