SUPERSTITION

Directed by James W. Roberson. 1982. Canada.

James W. Roberson’s haunted house/slasher mash-up, SUPERSTITION, begins with a severed head exploding in a microwave and a man being bifurcated by a window pane. A helluva start, for sure, and one that sets expectations high. Of course, I’m not new 'round these parts. I knew there was no way in hell it was going to be able to keep up that sort of gory, over-the-top momentum. Such delights are usually reserved for the third act when the filmmaker is pulling out all the stops to send their movie out with a bang. I expected a lull after such a magnificently gooey opening. Unfortunately, it’s rough going for a lot longer than I hoped.

Reverend David Thompson is taking over the local Church. He’s a younger, hipper kind of Reverend. No collars or robes here. He even leers at the teenage daughters of a colleague, George, an alcoholic who has come to stay at a newly renovated house on the Church grounds with his wife and kids. Before it was given a fresh coat of paint and some new storm windows, that house was the site of the aforementioned microwave and window pane murders. As a result, Police Inspector Sturgess comes around every once in a while to poke and prod and be a bother.

But those unsolved murders aren’t the only reason the cops keep eyes on this place. People have a nasty habit of drowning in the pond on the Church grounds, including the Inspector’s own partner. Sturgess suspects Arlen, a layabout who who lives near the Church, is responsible for the unsolved crimes. Arlen’s mother, an old nutjob named Elvira, believes otherwise. She thinks the real culprit is the spirit of a woman who was drowned in the lake way back in 1692 as punishment for the crime of witchcraft. Maybe Reverend Dave shouldn’t have plucked an ancient cross out of the pond. It might have been the only thing keeping the evil spirit at bay.

There’s no point in being mysterious about the identity of the killer. This film was released under the alternate title THE WITCH, after all. The crusty spirit of the Witch roams the house, periodically yanking people out of frame with her sharp-clawed hands. The first to go is Reverend Maier. The Witch gets him by causing the blade of a circular saw to go lunging through the air. This happens right in front of other people, including Reverend Dave. The saw blade somehow continues to spin until it cuts straight through the poor old guy. You would think this would be enough to convince a man who believes in things like flesh-and-blood deities rising from the dead and ascending bodily to another plane of existence that something supernatural is going on, but nope. Total freak accident. Everyone knows saw blades like that will keep spinning into perpetuity until they’ve sawed through the first solid object in their path. Ain’t no such thing as ghosts and witches. Don’t be ridiculous.

The Witch hangs a contractor next (and honestly, who hasn’t thought about doing that?), and then sets her sights on that aforementioned family staying at the house: alcoholic George, his wife Melinda, their two hot daughters, Ann and Cheryl, and their young son, Justin. Ann goes for a swim in the pond only to emerge with a severed hand wrapped around her ankle. Justin runs into the ghost of a young girl named Mary before getting himself ganked by the Witch. Sturgess finds Arlen living in a secret room in the basement. Reverend Dave digs into the history of the Church grounds and learns about the Inquisition that led to the haunting. I’m just waiting for more heads in microwaves.

Truth be told, as the minutes wore on, I grew more and more impatient. That exploding head gag felt like it happened in some distant dream, one I had years and years ago. I began to realize that I knew flat-out nothing about the characters in this film except that Cheryl didn’t like her father very much. That’s about all I knew about the family who were now my lead characters. Reverend Dave spends much of the back half of the film lost in Exposition Land, fumbling through book after book. This does lead to a couple of flashbacks to the Inquisition, with women and men in period clothing speaking modern English. It’s amusing in how corny it is, but I was missing when the film had some kind of forward momentum. I was ready for things to start happening. Can we get a move on, please?

The final third of the film finds a pulse and runs with it. The Witch corners Melinda in the kitchen and begins tossing her around the room like a rag doll. Someone has a large chunk of wood hammered through their forehead. Reverend Dave impales a child with a cross while another child is bled dry and hung from their feet. A lake is set on fire. It’s a balls-out finale for a movie that desperately needed one, but what was it all in service of? A half-assed cross between POLTERGEIST and FRIDAY THE 13TH? A creepy house plagued by a dead Witch’s ghost could have led to some decent dread if the director hadn’t traded slow-burn suspense for fast, blunt kills at every turn. SUPERSTITION is as blunt as a hammer head, unconcerned with subtlety or skill. Characters wander off alone, only to be dragged offscreen by a monster hand. Thrilling.

The few juicy kills (the aforementioned stake through the head and a hilarious crushing death by wood press) in the back half of the film are great fun, but the anticlimactic finale and lack of real characters to fear for make SUPERSTITION into a passive viewing experience. It feels like watching an American cut of a nasty Italian horror film, like a lot of the character moments were shaved off, and the violence ended up trimmed down for general audiences. What you’re left with is something that works as a time waster but is underwhelming and hollow. It’s difficult to be afraid when you don’t care about the characters. And I didn’t, not even a little. If I did, I wouldn’t have wanted so desperately for their heads to be found in microwave ovens.