Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh (dir. Michael Paul Girard, 1997)
I hope you people appreciate what I do for you. I hunt tirelessly for obscure videos, and bring them into my home. Then I slave away, sometimes under rushed and non-ideal conditions, to see these movies. I pay close attention, take mental notes, and try to suss out chronology and continuity all in the name of journalistic integrity. Which means I did this for you. I watched Witchcraft IX for you. I HOPE YOU PEOPLE ARE HAPPY.
I think I can say with relative confidence that Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And that’s not a phrase I throw around lightly. It’s not just incompetent, confusing, and poorly filmed, but also ugly and unsavory. It’s the kind of film that makes you ashamed for possessing a libido of any stripe. For every woman that removes her top, the more you’ll want to bathe. You’ll end the film feeling sick, sad, depressed, and alone. You’ll need to watch It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Wizard of Oz twice to wash off the stink.
First off, the film was shot on video and not on film, giving it a visual texture that falls somewhere between amateur porn and a snuff film. It certainly didn’t help that my old VHS tape had degraded the actors’ skin tones into a kind of unhealthy umber. The image would also “shimmer” occasionally. Looking at big fake breast implants through shimmery video fuzz gave me flashbacks to watching scrambled porn in the early 1990s.
The film opens with a full 20 or 30 minutes with a hooker named Sheila, played by softcore smut giant Landon Hall. Sheila is picked up by a john who will not have any bearing on the plot. Shelia looks tired and worn out. She seems to hate this pushy john. He’s a rich greasy weirdo who wants to have sex in the elevator on the way to her usual motel room. This is not a nice hotel. This is a pit. The halls are bare. The carpets look filthy. When the actors strip and lay down on the carpet, you can practically hear the roach corpses crunching under their buttocks. You’re afraid they may be laying down on some exposed nails. The sex is ugly and hurried and doesn’t look like it’s fun. It’s just as filthy and as awkward visiting a hooker in a cheap motel would probably actually be.
Later, Sheila is raped by her pimp. Be still, my beating erection.
There is a story. This film picks up right where Witchcraft 7 left off, ignoring part 8 entirely. Will and the vampire lord are dead on the floor, both staked. Will is still played by David Byrnes, only he has somehow grown a goatee and a ponytail since he was killed. Will’s ghost somehow becomes unattached from his body, and he floats around town, invisible to everyone. He takes some time to grope a hooker’s crotch. He eventually runs into Sheila (who is having an equally unsavory tryst on the roof), and learns that she can hear him, even if she can’t see him.
Will asks Sheila to look up Keli and see how she’s doing. Keli is now played by the Pia Zadora dead ringer Kourtne Ballentine. Keli is fine, though, as she has been sleeping with… Will! Will’s body, it turns out, was possessed by a demon of some sort, and the demon is sleeping with Keli, and colluding with a serial killer who has been cutting out women’s hearts.
Lutz and Gardner are back, and are now played by Stephanie Beaton and Mikul Robbins. Beaton has (as is to be expected) enormous breast implants, and while she doesn’t disrobe in the film, the camera isn’t shy about zooming way way in on her cleavage at every opportunity. Lutz and Gardner are investigating the heart-cut murders, and learn from a lithe Egyptologist (in one of the longest and most awkward exposition scenes imaginable; seriously it’s five full minutes) that the murderer is the descendant of an ancient cult of Egyptian embalmists who need a pile of human hearts to resurrect their dark lord Kofu. The demon possessing Will is, of course, an aide to the murderer.
Will will eventually have to take possession of Sheila’s body to do battle with the bad guy. Sheila grabs her crotch and mouths his lines.
There will be several films cheaper than this one, and there will be a few that are more nonsensical, but Witchcraft IX will be the low point for everyone. Even when the shot-on-VHS wonder of Witchcraft X rolls around next week, we’ll still be thinking of the trauma left by Bitter Flesh.
You know what? I blamed you, the reader, above. I implicated you in this. For that, I apologize. I have no one to blame but myself.
But I am strong. Witchcraft hasn’t killed me yet. Be sure to come back next week, when I will cover the final four chapters in the Witchcraft series, and try to make sense of it all.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
