Witchboard III (1995)

The blurb: "Brian, an out-of-work stockbroker, is introduced by his landlord Mr. Redman to a new source of insider information: the Ouija! The Ouija makes him rich, but when Mr. Redman kills himself and Brian suffers a freak accident, Brian's wife starts noticing changes in her husband..."

I'd been meaning to watch "Witchboard III: The Possession" for some time (well about 12 years in fact) but just never got round to it. The first two in the series were only average but it got hyped a lot back when Fangoria was a credible magazine and so it stayed on my wish list. Anyway, as it was on Zone Horror last week, and I recorded it, I can finally do a review.

Well, it's a Canadian film which was made for $2,000,000. If that was in Canadian dollars then I think the exchange rate works out that it cost about £50. It does look good for the low budget though and is certainly a couple of notches above the usual B movie that I watch.

Unfortunately it wasn't at all scary. The plot reminded me of a stretched out version of the scene where David Warner got trapped in a mirror in "The Gate Crasher" segment of Amicus' "From Beyond The Grave" (1973). As such, it all felt a bit slow even though there were lots of sexy moments to spice things up. Yeah, unlike the Amicus film, the demon-possessed guy here has one thing on his mind - to breed!

Actually, this film excels itself in the sex scenes. David Nerman goes from being a curly-headed wuss to a slicked-back-haired sexual monster (and worse!) and of course, the objects of his attentions, Elizabeth "Locky" Lambert and Donna Sarrasin, are very watchable indeed. You get to see lots of them.

Donna Sarrasin is the better looking of the two girls but I couldn't find a picture to post up of her. Elizabeth Lambert is the one with most on screen time though so you'll find pictures of her everywhere if you Google. Personally, she just doesn't really do it for me. She looks like a poor man's version of Maryam D'Arbo and even has a similar acting style involving her eyebrows.

There was nothing especially gory in this film so I think the overall feeling can really only be described as "bland". Apart from a very quick and nasty death scene involving a glass shower door and, later, a finger getting severed with a cleaver off camera, that's about it.

The effects are ok for the time but it's hardly in the same league as "Wishmaster" which came out two years later and is pretty much the same film but with better dialogue. Now I'm not going to accuse Wes Craven of plagiarism or anything but both films share a Sumerian demon. The appalling "Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled" is, in fact, so similar that it's painfully obvious that John Bejamin Martin, the writer, must have seen "Witchboard III" at some point.

David Nerman, in sexy mode, reminded me a lot of Greg Evigan (from "My Two Dads") but that is hardly any recommendation for you either. He's certainly no Andrew Divoff.

I'd give it 3 out of 10 and it's something else to watch if you like the "Wishmaster" series. If you are expecting it to be as good as the other two in the "Witchboard" series though, think again.