Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood review by Matt Fuerst

@JackassMatt

The horror genre is pretty full with franchises. Some of the franchises are quite popular and are universally pretty universally known, such as the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween series. Some are far less known, but still produce a large body of work. I'll leave it to you to figure out where Witchcraft XI would find in this schema. I definitely remember seeing the hoopla around the first release in the Witchcraft series when it was coming out on video, but I don't think any of the movies have made their way into a theatre.

Regardless, there is a market for these movies, and you can tell pretty much right from the cover what type of flick it is going to be. Each in the series features a barely dressed woman or two on the cover doing something vampire/witch/scary-like. Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood tries to pack in a smidge more story than some of the previous incarnations, with writer and director Ron Ford using Shakespeare as his inspiration. Three young, beautiful co-eds (how about that for the basis of your story) are practicing for their college presentation of Macbeth. Their instructor feels they don't have their hearts in the roles yet, so with his encouragement the three girls go off into the woods to cast a spell asking the Abadon sisters to rise from their graves. But something underhanded is afoot, as the instructor and Keri, one of the co-eds (and the one most excited about naked, which is much appreciated) are members of Satans army on earth and are secretly trying to raise Satan's right hand man. The Abadon sisters manage to come back and one-by-one take over the bodies of the young ladies. Luckily the Abadon sisters don't have a problem exposing their hooties so we are treated with those baddies on a regular basis.

Of course, being naughty sisters that like to exposes the breasticles, they also enjoy knocking off an occasional passer-by, which brings Detectives Lutz and Garner on the case along with former Warlock Will Spanner, who just happens to be doing the horizontal mambo with the older sister of one of the three possessed sisters (the only real connection the Witchcraft movies have with each other are the detectives and Will Spanner). Spanner does some detective work and manages to figure out that that Abadon sisters have possessed the three actresses, and their plan is to rise Satan from the ground. Together with Lutz and Garner they confront the Abadon sisters and the evil Drama Teacher (I never trusted my high school drama teacher for this very reason, I knew he was a Knight In Satan's Service). Will the world be ushered into darkness? Will the Abadon sisters keep exposing their buoyant boobies? If you're a fan of T&A, you will likely find yourself hoping for the bad guys to win, because the naughty girls, well, they act naughty.

What we've got here is a movie that has some potential, that is pretty much completely discarded. We start out with a relatively interesting and novel concept of a group of ladies preparing for their roles in Macbeth as the three witches, and then they themselves end up becoming three witches. See, that's pretty novel, isn't it? That could have been expanded and filled in with story, but in this 90 minute or so movie, there really isn't room for that. Instead, there is probably 30 - 40 minutes of breast exposure scenes, and the need to bring Lutz, Garner and Spanner all into the story, gobbling up even more time. The story is pretty weak, but again, compared to it's predecessors is damn strong.

Let's face it, the movie is probably aimed at the lonely-guy-that-loves-horror-and-boobs market, so does it succeed in that way? Well, the women are reasonably attractive (for movie standards) and the scenes are composed fairly well. Honestly, far better than Witchcraft X, which was so boring to watch, it even made the T&A scenes snoozers.

The production values vary. There is a pretty good gore effect, when one of the Sisters stabs someone in the eyes. When we view the sisters in their true form, the costuming is pretty good. But, this is a low budget film, and the weren't too imaginative with their sets. One gets the feeling that they had unlimited use of a 10 X 10 room, which they dressed up a little differently to make it seem like a different place. The ending, involving Satan's return, doesn't look too good, and I guarantee you will be rolling your eyes during it. I refer to the ending creature in my head as "the Dookie Monster" and I bet the name you give it won't be as nice.

I bought this DVD has a part of a four pack of Horror Flicks from Brentwood Home Video called "Hotter than Hell". I knew what I was getting from the multiple warning of nudity spread throughout the cover and the pictures of two scantily clad vampire-like ladies. The Four Pack retails for $9.99, which is a pretty good deal, but Brentwood's bread and butter are actually Ten Packs of movies, which they retail for $19.99. Wowza, for a bargain hunter like me that's like striking gold in the Yucca Mountain. None of the DVD's are particularly full of goodies, they are all full frame, and the print quality varies between average and substandard. But hey, if you believe in dollar cost averaging, go nuts.


2 out of 10 Jackasses
blog comments powered by Disqus