BY HANK REINEKE
As best as I can determine, Curse III: Blood Sacrifice was never screened theatrically, at
least not in the U.S. or England. It
seems to have been unceremoniously trafficked directly to home video in
1990. The owners of the film chose to best
capitalize on their investment by gamely resorting to placing full page
advertisements in home-video industry trade publications, an attempt to get VHS
retailers and rental stores to add the movie to their inventories. They boldly claimed in their promotional that
the film was a genuine “Horror/Thriller in the tradition of The Serpent and the Rainbow,†a
reference to Wes Craven’s and Universal Studio’s more celebrated voodoo film of
1988. And while Curse III bore no thematic – or even tangential - relationship to
the earlier “Curse†films (The Curse
(1987) and Curse II: The Bite (1989),
the ad boasted to retailers they had sold over “60,000†copies of this
semi-franchise’s first two films… so why not give this newest film – one featuring
the great Christopher Lee (described in their broadside as the “Master of
Suspense and Horrorâ€) - a fair shot?
Scorpion Releasing’s new Blu Ray of Curse III: Blood Sacrifice is, technically, not the film’s first
digital release. The film first appeared
on laser disc in 1990, courtesy of RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, and this
was soon followed by a more consumer-friendly VHS release originally retailing
for $59.95. It disappeared from shelves
soon thereafter, though it was infrequently broadcast in the US under the
film’s original title Panga and released
in the Beta format in the UK under the amended title of Witchcraft. The film would thereafter
languish in semi-obscurity until 2015 when MGM re-issued the film on a blandly
packaged DVD as part of the studio’s Limited Edition Series.
In truth, I wouldn’t have been happy paying $59.50 for
the video cassette of this title back in 1991. Having said that it’s not a terrible film by any means, but neither is
it a lost classic. Curse III: Blood Sacrifice was first and only film to be directed
by the British film editor Sean Barton. By the time his voodoo opus arrived on the shelves of Blockbuster and
other home video rental chains, Barton had already enjoyed a decade-long career
in the film industry. He was, perhaps,
best remembered among fans of fantastic films as one of three co-editors that
helped bring Star Wars: Revenge of the
Jedi to the big screen in 1983, but his résumé included work on an
impressive number of theatrical features before that.
Curse
III
would not only serve as the vehicle marking Barton’s directorial debut, but
also his first as co-screenwriter (having worked alongside South African
scenarist John Hunt). Their screenplay
was based on a story supplied by the Johannesburg-based actor and occasional
writer Richard Haddon Haines. If the
script’s storyline and characterizations are a bit thin, the film still manages
to move along at a pace brisk enough to satisfy the more forgiving horror film
devotees.
The video store poster supplied to vendors of the
original VHS release of Curse III: Blood
Sacrifice promised that “Deep in the Heart of Darkness a Nightmare is about
to Begin,†and indeed it does. The film
takes place, we’re told via an opening screen graphic, in “East Africa
1950.†A South African plantation owner
Geoff Armstrong (Andre Jacobs) and his blue-eyed, blond-haired, and pregnant
American wife Elizabeth (Jenilee Harrison) are living blissfully on a sugarcane
plantation. The couple is graciously hosting
Elizabeth’s visiting friend Cindy (Jennifer Steyn) and her agricultural student-paramour
Robert (Gavin Hood). Cindy and Robert
are the best kind of house guests, never annoyingly knocking about. They’re mostly off on a beach enjoying each
other’s company in carnal fashion.
That’s pretty much the initial set up, but things go bad
for everybody involved, almost immediately. While visiting a tribal encampment presided over by a local witchdoctor
in face paint and animal skins, Elizabeth and Cindy unwisely choose to interfere
with the ritual slaying of a goat. It’s a
local centuries-old tradition that a goat be sacrificed following the death of
one of the tribe’s children. Oblivious
to the import of this custom, the soft-hearted American gals rescue the goat from
its predestined fate and whisk it away to safety. This causes the much aggrieved
witchdoctor to angrily toss a native totem of some sort at Elizabeth’s
feet. The message is clear even if his
words are not. The tribal leader has put
some sort of a dark curse on the goatnappers and suggests that an ill-fated
pregnancy is in the cards for Elizabeth.
Production reportedly began on Panga (the film’s original title and the graphic present on this
particular print) in early June of 1989. Since it was already pressed on laser disc by 1990, the film was
evidently shot and pieced together with quick efficiency. Barton’s direction is competent. He obviously likes to keep the camera moving,
favoring slow left-to-right and right-to-left pans that adequately capture the visual
majesty of the mountains, grassy plains, fields of towering sugarcane plants and
wide-open vistas of the African countryside. During the film’s many stalking scenes, Barton switches to John
Carpenter’s famous tracking camerawork, making the camera, in effect, the
principal menace.
The ambiance of the film’s authentic African settings –
particularly a series of desperate, claustrophobic chases through the labyrinth
of sugarcane fields – provides opportunities for suspenseful imagery. These sequences juxtapose with episodes of sedate
parlor scenes where plot contrivances can be better explained and new
characters introduced. It has to be said
that the various “stalking†sequences – both interior and exterior – are not
particularly tense in their staging. Perhaps it’s because the script doesn’t really build any amount of
empathy for any of the lead characters. Geoff Armstrong rightly admonishes his wife that she shouldn’t have
interfered with the witchdoctor’s ceremony. “You can’t trample one thousand years of tradition!,†he tells angrily
tells her. Alas, it’s a lesson learned
too late for most of the cast.
While there’s no shortage of on-screen bloodletting in Curse III, the carnage and mayhem is
mild and tame when compared to most slasher films of the era. Horror films had taken a particularly grisly
turn since Michael Myers first carved his way through most of the cast of the
original Halloween. It was the onslaught of indie slashers
spawned in that film’s wake that the gruesomeness really got out of hand. Though this film lacks copious amounts of overt
gore and exposed entrails, there are several moments of female cast members
going unnecessarily topless to offer a bit of titillation as well as checking
off a tick of the exploitation film box score.
The ensemble does what it can with the material as
written. Though top-billed, Christopher
Lee’s screen time is, at best, occasional. Lee’s sketchy Dr. Pearson is nonetheless an integral character, and the
actor positively shines above all others during his elongated spoken-word
monologue near the film’s climax. Lee
was reportedly physically unwell during his spell on the film’s production, and
his ailment actually lends itself to the gravitas of his haunted
character. His usually measured and
crisp speaking voice is in tatters throughout the film, alternately wheezy and
bronchial, guttural and phlegm-congested.
Speaking of grunting… The film also surprises with a witchdoctor-conjured, machete wielding
sea monster stomping about, though we only get our first and best glimpses of
the beast near the film’s fiery climax. The monster appears to be a hideous hybrid of the Creature from the Black Lagoon on steroids and a small-scale
reptilian monster of the Godzilla School. Not terribly frightening, to be honest, but I’ve seen worse and so have
you.
This Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray edition of Curse III: Blood Sacrifice is presented
in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen 1:85:1 and in DTS-HD Master Audio. It’s a very nice transfer with proper film
grain present, though the film is (very) occasionally marred by the presence of
blue scratches; the emulsion on the color film has evidently suffered deep
scratches. It’s not a deal breaker, I
promise. The only bonus features
included with this new package - save for removal English subtitles - is a
gallery of five theatrical trailers. The
trailers vary wildly in quality with some looking quite presentable, others of
low resolution and obviously ripped from an aging VHS source. Along with a trailer for our feature film Panga, were treated to such vintage
trailers as Deep Space (1988), Shredder (2003), Nothing but the Night (1973) and The Devil within Her (1975).
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