Superstition

Plot synopsis:
A pair of young people are making out in a car in a dark area next to a large empty house. The girl says she's nervous making out there because the house has an evil reputation, but the boy convinces her there's nothing to worry about. Something resembling a corpse thuds against their car and they speed off, but the scare was a joke perpetrated by two young men who are lurking in the area. One is inside the house and the other is by the road, and they call out to one another, laughing about their joke. Then something inside the house manifests itself to the boy inside; doors start closing, and a dark presence stalks him until he's hurled against the ceiling, killing him. His friend comes inside to find him and is also stalked by the presence. He tries to escape through a window, but the window slams shut on him and holds him still while something appears behind him and slashes his lower body until his body is completely cut in half. His upper body falls outside the window while his legs fall inside the house.Inspector Sturgis pays a visit to Reverend David Thompson, a new clergyman assigned to the parish who is taking over for an elderly minister named Reverend Maier. Sturgis complains about the house, which is on property owned by the church. The two boys murdered there have brought the safety concerns of the house to the forefront, as well as the small body of water on the property, known as Black Pond. Sturgis says local teens sometimes go there to skinny dip at midnight, and there have been several drownings. Thompson tells him that the property will no longer be a concern, since there is a new priest coming to the parish who will be living there with his family, Reverend George Leahy. He and Maier go to the house and meet Arlen, the animalistic caretaker of the property grounds, who lives in a small bungalow with his aging mother. The police suspect Arlen of the two murders but are unable to establish a case against him just yet. Sturgis tells his partner, Hollister, to follow Arlen, who goes off running in the direction of the pond. Hollister investigates the dock where Arlen was standing, and is suddenly pulled under the water by a blackened, clawed hand that emerges from the pond. When Hollister doesn't return, Sturgis holds Arlen and has the pond dragged. Nobody is able to turn up his body, and Thompson announces he's going to have the pond completely drained. Arlen reacts violently, breaking free from the police and running off into the woods. Maier and Thompson talk to his mother, Elvira, who tells them her son serves a secret "mistress", something the two men write off as fantasy. Back at the house, Thompson meets a friendly young girl named Mary who seems to appear out of nowhere and vanishes just the same way. Before the ministers can bless the house, a freak accident occurs when the blade of a table saw being used suddenly flies off the machine and embeds itself into Rev. Maier, maintaining its rotation until it has sawed completely through his body.The Leahys move into the house anyway: Reverend George along with this wife, Melinda, and their three children: teenage girls Ann and Sheryl, and preteen Justin. They are apparently undeterred by the fact that so many people have died in the last week in their new home...not to mention the fact that the last tenants of the house, back in the 1950s, were found murdered in one way or another. On the day of their move-in, one of the renovators is killed by the black-clawed figure when he goes off into the basement alone to turn off the power in the house's old elevator. His disappearance goes unnoticed by the rest of the crew, and they leave without him. Justin Leahy, the youngest of Reverend Leahy's three children, hears the commotion in the basement and investigates, when suddenly the little girl Mary appears and introduces herself. She runs off before Justin can find out who she is. Justin excitedly tells the others that they have their own "pool"...the pond. They all go down to the pond to relax, where Ann jumps in to swim, but she suddenly starts screaming. When they drag her out of the pond, she has a severed human hand clamped around her ankle, presumably that of Detective Hollister. As Ann lays in her bed, languishing from shock, Melinda tells George they simply can't move out of the house.Sturgis still thinks Arlen is responsible for the murders, but Elvira insists that Arlen is just protecting his "mistress", cleaning up her 'leavings' and guarding them against her. She is dismissed as insane. Meanwhile, after Justin finds George drinking alcohol in the basement of the house, he returns there on his own and is killed by the witch when he discovers the body she left in the elevator shaft. A search is mounted for him, but Sturgis tells the rest of the Leahy family to stay out of it and leave it to him and his men, along with Thompson. Ann has a nightmare of the family being slaughtered. When she later tries to comfort the worrying Melinda, Sheryl gets sassy and mocks their father, whom she considers to be weak and ineffectual due to his alcoholism. Ann slaps her and says "Shut your bitchy mouth!"Thompson leaves to researches the folklore that Elvira has told them about Arlen's 'mistress', but before he leaves, Elvira tells him that the antique crucifix he has recovered from the pond was keeping the witch dormant until nightfall. Now that the cross has been removed, she can move about in the early hours of the morning. Thompson remains unconvinced, and is fixated on finding Arlen. Later, Thompson discovers a book in the church archives documenting events of the Inquisition. It seems a woman was executed for being a witch in that location in 1692, and a flashback sequence depicts it. Elondra Sharack is accused of witchcraft by a nine year old girl named Mary (the same one that's been appearing to people in present times). It seems Mary is correct, as Elondra is shackled on a plank and constantly affirms Satan as her master and insists she will take revenge on the pious-looking Reverend Pike, who condemns her to death by drowning. When the villagers execute Elondra, her voice deepens into a demonic howl and her face morphs in a bizarre fashion. The moment they drown her, the church erupts in flames and her laughter is heard everywhere. The flashback establishes that Elondra continued to haunt the area after her death, resulting in numerous deaths and disappearances. Left alone is Reverend Pike, whom she murders by crushing him in a wine press.Sturgis and his men discover a secret room off the house's basement, where Arlen has been hiding. They also find the body of the elevator repairman. The police take Arlen away in a squad car, while Sturgis stays behind to investigate the secret room, where he is killed by the witch. Melinda gets restless with waiting for some news about Justin, and she ventures downstairs. The witch emerges from the basement, trapping Melinda in the kitchen and hurling her around the room until she is bloodied and beaten. The girls are terrified by her screams and George attempts to intervene. Thompson returns, armed with the knowledge of the witch and still carrying the crucifix, which seems to undo her evil magic momentarily by allowing him to enter the supernaturally locked doors of the house. They are able to enter the kitchen, but Melinda is nowhere to be found. Thompson tells George to go back upstairs, where he barricades himself in his bedroom and discovers Melinda's dead body in their bed. The witch appears in his window and causes his death when a mirror explodes and slashes his face and throat. Thompson tries to save him but is too late.He attempts to get the girls out of the house but Sheryl runs off on her own into the attic, where the witch attacks her and gruesomely murders her by nailing her head to the floor with a large spike. Thompson sends Ann running from the house and gives her the keys to his van, telling her to save herself. When he goes into the attic to rescue Sheryl, he finds her body and is attacked by the witch. The crucifix keeps her from touching him, and before she can kill him, she vanishes. Thompson goes outside and realizes the van is still there, and he discovers Ann's dead body in the van. Despondent, he takes cans of gasoline down to the pond and purifies it with fire. Mary appears to him and reveals herself to be simply another form of the witch; Thompson drives the crucifix through her heart and she falls backwards into the pond, shrieking "I cannot die! You cannot kill me!" The disturbance seems over, but before Thompson can leave, Elondra's hand erupts from the pond and pulls him to his death under the water.

Tags: paranormal, cult, murder, violence

Review:
Plus, it is a delight to see a film that really does have a supernatural grounding, instead of the so-tired slasher bit.You should definitely watch this movie when you are alone at night--watching it with friends or in the daytime gives you too much chance to let the low budget distract you from the flow....
This movie is a traditional horror flick, complete with killings by a supernatural "witch" that rises from death to administer death on many people who venture near her.
There were even a few times that I actually felt a little creepy tension- something that doesn't usually happen with lower budget flicks.If you are looking for big budget romps, then keep on renting movies on the "new rental wall" at Blockbuster.
This gory horror movie obviously influenced by Stuart Rosenberg's "Amityville Horror"(1979),"Friday the 13th"(1980)and Dario Argento's stylish works really scared me when I first saw it."Superstition" is fast-paced, unintentionally hilarious at times,but it can be pretty scary as well.There's enough gruesome gore and violence to satisfy all splatter fans,and the score is also quite effective.My favourite kill scene is where a young man is chopped in half with sliding windows.Among the other gory highlights there's also a head exploding in the microwave,a young woman,who has a spike hammered into her forehead and many more.Anyway,if you're consider yourself a horror buff,give this one a try.8 out of 10.Highly recommended..
Vajna, who gave us haunted house horrors The Evil and The Changeling, Superstition is yet another supernatural offering set in and around a creepy old property.
This time around, the spooky shenanigans are accompanied by a whole handful of creative, bloody deaths, and lots of jump scares (probably in an attempt to draw in the slasher crowd)—a good job since the plot is an often illogical mish-mash of hoary old horror clichés.In 1692, a witch is executed—drowned in a pond, and trapped there with a crucifix.
Reverand David Thompson (James Houghton) discovers the truth behind the killings and tries to put an end to the witch once and for all.The film opens in terrific style with a juicy double death scene: having played a prank on a courting couple (thereby providing the film with the first of many jump scares), a pair of pranksters meet their fate in the creepy property, one being decapitated, his severed head exploding inside a microwave oven, the other getting chopped in two by a sash window.
Several other macabre set-pieces follow in quick succession, including the hanging of an electrician in an elevator shaft and the death of a priest, a circular saw blade spinning into his chest and exiting through his back.Also adding to the fun: Sheryl and Ann (Maylo McCaslin and Heidi Bohay), sexy teenage daughters of Reverand Leahy, going down to the pond for a spot of fun in the sun (wearing bikinis, naturally), only for one of them to be grabbed around the ankle by a severed hand; a flashback to the trial of the witch that allows for some silly Exorcist style guttural utterings, a few cool facial bladder effects, and the sight of a priest being crushed in a wine press; some memorable visuals with impressive lighting effects (somewhat reminiscent of Argento); Reverand Thompson's surprised expression every time he uses the crucifix to open (or blow up) a locked door; George having his face lacerated by flying shards of glass from an exploding mirror; Sheryl getting nailed through the head with a big spike; and blonde daughter Ann (Heidi Bohay) running around in skimpy silk night-gear..
There are certain themes that recur again and again in horror films, and a witch coming back from the dead to gain revenge on those who put him/her to death is one that has been done many, many times before.
As mentioned, this film does feature some good death scenes and they are rather gory; the best one sees a circular saw break free and rip through a man's chest, and a strangulation in an elevator shaft takes second place.
As an enormous fan of eighties horror i recommend this movie to anybody who may have a similar outlook on the genre.Even though this movie was produced as a low budget feature,it has the appearance of a much more higher budgeted film.There can be no faults found in the choice of cast and musical score suits it favourably.When this film was first released it had no amount of advertising to do it any justice.If it had been given similar treatment to that of the evil dead and halloween it would have achieved a lot more recognition.Sadly as this was not the case it seemed to slip past many wouldbe fans,so please take my recommendation and if you liked evil dead,halloween or amityville go pick yourself up a copy and sit back and enjoy.....
A new Reverend (James Houghton) is helping a family move into the house but more and more bodies begin to pile up so he starts doing some research and discovers that the location is where a witch was killed nearly three-hundred years earlier and now she's back for revenge.
While watching the movie you'll think that this is yet another film trying to cash in on the success of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and you'd be correct but the film also tries to mix in with the various slashers out at the time as we get some rather graphic death scenes and some gore.
After moving to a new house, a man finds that the local stories involving a witch drowned in a nearby lake are true and tries to stop the freed being of rampaging through the local townspeople in revenge for its death.This was quite an enjoyable and entertaining effort that really has a lot going for it.
The relentless pace this creates with all of the different encounters to produce such as the opening prank that results in the suspense of searching around the house before getting to the shock kills, as well as the big scenes such as the old-time trial of the witch in the dungeon along with the resolution in the different eras that amounts to even more fun here.
Definitely an underrated horror flick,this gory and spooky little film really impressed me when I first saw it(around 1994)when I picked it up on the VTC label (its first release in Britain, a release which saw it briefly entertain certain police want lists during the ridiculous nasties scare in the early eighties!)It later turned up in a re-release version on the Stablecane label under the title "The Witch".
Roberson's SUPERSTITION is amongst the finest teen oriented horror movies of the early-mid 1980s, boasting a fine ensemble cast, some great shock effects sequences, and an actual story rather than just a series of incidents where people die horribly.
Borrowing equal parts from THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and SUSPIRIA, this is one of several haunted house & witchcraft type movies that went against the grain of typical cartoonish 80s hackers -- the low budget might throw some, but once you get down to brass tacks is a very watchable little movie that just happens to involve things like exploding heads, guys getting chopped in half, and pretty teenage chicks being spiked through the forehead & nailed to the floor.But you know, just once I'd like to see one of these movies where a typical, slightly dysfunctional all-American family moves into some crumbling, Gothic, obviously haunted house and decides to get the hell OUT of there at the first sign of trouble.
The warning signs are more than obvious; 1) A series of grisly killings in the house that were never solved and have the local police worried enough to basically assign Albert Salmi and his deputies to live on the premises armed with shotguns.2) Creepy formally dressed young girls who come bobbing out of nowhere & ask if people want to play, who then die horribly, have visions of people dying horribly, or travel back in time to witness ancient witch drownings in the estate pond.3) Speaking of the pond, as someone quite correctly noted, why on god's earth would ANYONE decide to go for a swim in that muck pool?
in the old dumbwaiter shaft.5) A weird old woman who is obviously in league with Satan lives on the premises, with her son shacking up in a room hidden by a false wall down in the basement.6) Fully armed policemen are pulled to their doom beneath the murky surface of said pond while various members of the clergy find themselves ground up by runaway buzz saw blades.7) You move into a house already furnished with an old microwave oven that has brain tissue and clumps of hair caked to it's inside.8) Creepy young handsome local clergymen who strangely don't have any friends their own age take an interest to your teenage daughters who skip around day & night dressed like a couple of the Fly Girls.9) It turns out that your descendants had executed a witch centuries before using an elaborate cross structure designed to dunk her into the scummy, scary looking pond that only a fool would go swimming in.10) Dad starts hiding bottles of really cheap Scotch up in the attic.I could continue but such might create the impression that I am not fond of SUPERSTITION, when nothing could be further from the fact: This is a fun, hyperbolic and gory little supernatural shocker, though some may find the sleaze quotient a bit low; There's no nudity in the film.
A witch that was drowned to death back in 1692, returns to life in present day to seek her revenge against anybody and anything that crosses paths with her.This film certainly does have a high body count (somewhere between 13 - 15) and some pretty creative and grusome murders, but the lighting is a bit too dark and the limited budget hampers it.
Supestition aka The Witch is simply awesome!Simple, with one location and small cast, the word of the day is Horror, and rightly so.From the get-go, this little classic has some amazing kills, gory and crass, with enough haunting moments to garner a few chills along the way.Its 1982 for crying out loud, so lets not complain about the over dramatic performances.
This low budget horror film is actually not bad for the first 45 minutes or so, as victims are dispatched by an unseen killer in a haunted house.
The little girl, the witch, the NON-heroic father and all the grizzly murders/accidents/flash-backs are all reasons to this movie (if you like horror-films).
Things start to get out of control when a couple pranksters use the property and house to scare some of their friends...only to get hilariously murdered by some unseen force.Fast forward a little, and we find ourselves following a guy that works for the church, who has been sent out to get the house ready for an incoming minister and his family- who will be living in the old house until their new residence is ready.A man sent from the church authority tells the man that there is a dark aura surrounding this place- considering all the previous tenants had met untimely violent ends.Things are peculiar from the first time they enter the house- as they find it covered in some sort of slime.
One by one, the people living in and working on the property start to be killed off by the angry force.The old woman chocks this up to the removal of a silver cross from the pond, which she claims was part of an unfinished ritual that effectively relegated the spirit's activity to the night- with it's removal freeing it from these limitations.The man and the minister team up with another "unsanctioned" priest and the local police to try and figure out what exactly is going on...and what can be done about it.After a little research, the man discovers that the house was used to torture and kill suspected "witches" during the Inquisition.Turns out that one of these "witches" was, in fact, demonically possessed, though.
And when they murdered her, the spirit was released from her body and allowed to roam the property in a spiritual form, so that it could carry out her dying curse.The silver cross was used to seal the soul of the woman within the pond, hence why the spirit was released upon it's removal.Those who've managed to survive up until this point, start to be targeted by the demonic entity, until, of course, the final showdown takes place.Superstition is a pretty straight forward supernatural thriller akin to something like "The Entity".
Several of the death scenes were very good for the times.The evisceration scene,the head in the microwave scene,and the saw through the priest scene were all top notch.The locations were scouted well and had a very creepy look about them.The atmosphere and music were very good for a low budget film.
This movie also features what I think is one of the best killing scenes of any horror movie: the girl who is spiked to the floor, that's my favorite scene, also the kid who gets cut in half by a window is pretty good..
Things don't improve when the Leahy family move in either, Ann finds a severed hand in the property's pool, a mysterious young girl named Mary (Kim Marie) keeps popping up, their son Justin goes missing & that's just the start of they're problems as David discovers that in the Summer of 1692 on the 7th July (hey the 7th of July is my birthday!) a witch named Elondra Sharack (Carole Goldman) was sentenced to death by a priest named Andrew Pike (Robert Symons) & drowned in the house's pool, better known as Blackpond.
While other's like the Amityville Horror & it's various sequels (1979 - 1993) in particular re-lie on dull clichés like doors opening & closing on their own, lights turning themselves on & off & lots of spooky noises Superstition for the most part ignores that boring stuff & goes straight for the jugular as the unfriendly ghost in this house just wants to brutally murder everyone rather than just try & scare them.
The one thing that stands out is how gory Superstition is, there is an exploding head in a microwave, someone is cut in half, someone has an out of control circular saw cut through their chest & exit out of their back, people are crushed, hanged & drowned, there's a severed hand, someone is impaled with shards of glass & one unfortunate victim has a huge metal spike hammered into their forehead, ouch!
***SPOILERS** Nowhere as effective as it was back in 1982 when it was first released, in being banned in countries like the UK, "Supersition' still gives off a number of jolts to its audience in that almost everyone in the film ends up suffering a gruesome death by the time it's over.The standard horror movie plot has to do with this creepy old house that was involved some 300 years ago in the execution-by drowning-of its owner accused witch and Satanist Elondra Sharack.
If Rev. Thompson didn't know it at the time he soon found out that by having the Leahys move into the cursed Sharack House he in fact condemned them to death!One of the goriest and blood splattered horror flicks to come out in the 1980's "Superstition" also had one of the most effective exorcism scene in it, conducted by Rev. Pike on Elonda Sharack, that was far more convincing and believable, with the dubbing perfectly matching Elonda's lips, then even in the the movie " The Exorist" itself!.
Simply put, that's what the film is to me: pure, undiluted and nasty horror."Superstition" is a haunted house/ evil witch /slasher package.
Its like the combination of Dario Argento's talent for concocting an atmosphere of dread and doubt and his fondness for witches (I think that Suspiria (1977) is a major influence on this film) plus Lucio Fulci's knack for using extreme gore as a means of making a movie interesting.(It's a shame that James Roberson never got to make more movies like this one).It's a no holds barred, take no prisoners horror movie.
the witch in the movie is as scary as hell and she will make your blood run cold and she makes you wonder what's worse: her stalking of the characters or the ways she gruesomely kills them.I'm also proud of IMDb's recommendations (as of now La Terza Madre, Sleepy hollow, Evil Dead 2, Braindead Hellraiser and even Gladiator!) They truly describe what one should expect from the film:excellent supernatural horror and a lot of free-flowing gore.Again, one of the unique films that truly define the word "horror"..
All though the sequence is too long, it is effective and good gory way to start this unbalanced horror film.
Things slow down when hottie Reverend David starts to investigate what happened on the property, but once he comes back to rescue the Leahys, the movie finally gets back on track.Superstition is one of my favorites - it's a slasher film disguised as a witch movie and it just throws everything at you in the hopes that something will stick.
This is a film with plenty of weaknesses, but it also delivers the most crucial elements of a good splatter movie with gusto, and in the end there is enough originality here to make Superstition a memorable outing.The plot centers around a condemned house overseen by a batty caretaker and her trogloditic son, where a series of gruesome murders has taken place over the years.
As the priest digs deeper into the history of the house, we learn that the pond on the property was the site of a witch execution centuries earlier, and that the sorceress's final decree was a vengeful curse upon anyone who comes onto the land.Cue the newly-moved-in family, who, along with a detective with way too much time on his hands, become the cycle of victims necessary for the "slasher" portion of the film.