SUPERSTITION (1982): The Haunted House As An Entertaining Junkpile
The 1970's and 1980's produced a lot of horrorclassics. They produced even moreentertaining junk. Superstition definitely fits the junk category and manages to bequite watchable thanks to a lucky collision between technical competence,period charm and a willingness to go for the gruesome gusto.
Superstition startsoff with a solid premise: a priest takes a job in a rural town and moves hisfamily into a house on an old piece of church property. Pretty soon, evil spirits are bumping offanyone unfortunate enough to stick around on the property for more than fiveminutes. Another minister (James Houghton) working with the church soondiscovers the ground that this home lies upon was cursed hundreds of years agoby a vengeful witch as she was executed by the locals. It's up to him and agrizzled local cop (Albert Salmi) and to put an end to things before the entirecast gets wiped out in exploitation movie style.
Superstitionwill never be confused with a classic: the characters act like morons, thedialogue they spew is suitably silly and the rough-hewn script slaps togetherits elements in a less-than-artful manner. That said, if you are in the mood for good trash, Superstition delivers it by the bucketful. It moves fast and the effects are quite wetwhen the time comes to serve up some grue.
On the gruesome tip, Superstition makes its intentions known in the prologue when acouple of teen pranksters are dispatched in a suitably balls-to-the-wall style:one has his head blown up in a microwave and the other is chopped in half by avengeful window(!). There's also anotherjaw-dropper of a moment when a supernatural disruption causes a sawblade to flyoff the saw and into the torso of an unlucky visitor, pinning said unlucky soulto a chair as it burrows through their chest cavity. A noteworthy lack of sentimentality about thecharacters goes hand in hand with this bloodthirsty approach so don't get tooattached to anyone in the supporting cast.
Also, Superstitionthe kind of movie that keeps the viewer hooked because it's just a littlebetter than it should be. The productionvalues are pretty good for a low-budget affair, with slick camerawork prowlingeffectively across the well-chosen house setting. Director James Roberson generates asurprisingly spooky atmosphere and, considering the flimsiness of the script,gets pretty good performances from his main cast - especially Salmi as thecrabby, tantrum-prone cop. The endresult is far from classic status but it's perfect fodder for a trash-horrorfest and would probably make a good co-feature with Amityville II: The Possession.
Blu-Ray Notes: This one recently made its way to blu-ray thanks to Scream Factory. It boasts a fresh new scan of the feature attraction and also throws in new interviews with Houghton and Roberson.