James W. 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? Let along get a really close look at the dark, opaque, scummy surface while bent over in a position that compromises their center of gravity.
4) Random handymen end up getting hung by the neck until dead, DEAD DEAD! 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. At all. Besides that it's almost a perfect little B grade horror movie complete with an absolutely nihilistic little conclusion, clocking it at 86 minutes uncut & helping to update the haunted house genre for the 1980s. Bravo!
7/10
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? Let along get a really close look at the dark, opaque, scummy surface while bent over in a position that compromises their center of gravity.
4) Random handymen end up getting hung by the neck until dead, DEAD DEAD! 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. At all. Besides that it's almost a perfect little B grade horror movie complete with an absolutely nihilistic little conclusion, clocking it at 86 minutes uncut & helping to update the haunted house genre for the 1980s. Bravo!
7/10