The Oracle (1985) User Reviews

See it for the DVD extras

[udar55 · 5/10 · 26 December 2007]

I put this in a few days before Christmas and, to my surprise, it is set during the Xmas and New Year's holidays. So I officially have a new entry into my holiday themed horror flicks! Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) and husband Ray (Roger Neil) move into a new apartment once inhabited by a psychic medium. Naturally, Jennifer locates a trinket that communicates with the dead and they take her up on the offer. She is contacted by one William Graham, an industrialist who committed suicide some weeks earlier. Jennifer has visions of the true culprits, but no one believes her!

Filmed entirely in NYC, this Roberta Findlay cheapie really doesn't have much going for it. Still, I was entertained for all of the wrong reasons. There is lots of goofy gore and bad acting on display. Lead Powers is attractive and a decent actress, but never made another film (how does that happen?). The real reasons to see this flick are the DVD extras on the Media Blasters release. There is a hilarious half hour interview with Findlay about the film where she covers everything about the film from casting the big lesbian to her love of Jack Daniels to the South's love of horror films ("It's the only good thing about it!"). There is also a audio commentary where Findlay pulls no punches. I love listening to her talk.

What is interesting is that this film came out a year before the more celebrated (and admittedly better) WITCHBOARD. They basically are the exact same film and it makes me wonder if Kevin Tenney saw this and thought, "I can do that a lot better."

The (Screaming) Oracle

[nickjones-96546 · 4/10 · 9 October 2022]

The Oracle is about a shrieking, hysterical woman who starts fooling around with a magic automatic writing hand that's possessed by the ghost of a murdered man; unfortunately, she can't convince anyone that what's happening is real, because she comes across like an irrational basket case in everything she says and does.

This is not, by any means, an effective horror film; however, it does manage to be unintentionally funny, as the characters around the protagonist - her husband, her best friend, a psychiatrist, the police, et al - dismiss her concerns every time she opens her mouth. The audience is supposed to be on her side, since we know that she's not crazy (at least in regard to the ghost, her constant screeching doesn't say anything good about her general emotional stability), but it's just so obvious why nobody takes her seriously that their completely warranted skepticism becomes comedic.

Oddly, the plot resolves itself, with the ghost killing his killers, so it's not clear why there even needed to be a titular oracle in the first place.

Outside of the accidentally amusing elements it's a rather dry film overall, with only a couple of moments that are intentionally interesting. More recommended for B-movie fans than strict horror buffs.

No-budget independent supernatural horror film from sleaze merchant Roberta Findlay

[AlsExGal · 4/10 · 11 September 2018]

.When a young couple move into an apartment, they find a box that belonged to the deceased former tenant. Inside is an ornate planchette, a ceramic hand which holds a quill pen and can communicate with the dead. After using it at a dinner party, the wife (Caroline Capers Powers) becomes psychically linked to a series of murders being committed by an obese killer. There's also an effort by the husband (Roger Neil) to get rid of the planchette, which keeps returning, though usually after facilitating the gruesome death of whoever was unlucky enough to come into contact with it.

This is better than most of the dreck Findlay and her husband made back in the 60's and 70's, when they were two of the most successful sexploitation filmmakers on the NY scene. Michael Findlay was killed in a freak helicopter accident in 1977, and Roberta continued to make movies, mostly hardcore porn, before moving into more legitimate filmmaking like this movie. It's still not a good film at all, really, but it has enough goofy plot twists and chintzy special effects to make it worth seeing once for bad movie fans. Yet I can't just lie to you and give it an average rating.

Not bad. For Roberta Findlay.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 7 April 2021]

A young woman, Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers), comes into possession of a spiritualist's planchette, and makes contact with the ghost of a murdered man.

The Oracle is one of director Roberta Findlay's more bearable films, but that's still not saying a great deal given how dire her filmography is as a whole: it's still got a formulaic plot loaded with trite genre clichés that frequently feels like the product of grade school children; it's still directed with zero finesse by a woman who graduated from porn; it still boasts amateurish performances by a cast of unknowns; and it still features laughable special effects. However, it's the sheer ineptitude on display that makes the film easier to digest, the unintentionally hilarious aspects preventing it from being a total snooze-fest like the majority of Findlay's movies.

Caroline Capers Powers is absolutely dreadful, and it's no wonder that this was her only film (she's probably still hiding in embarrassment): Powers spends the entire film screaming hysterically, but never convincingly. Fortunately, she's a good looking gal, so we can be a little forgiving; not so for everyone else, who are as equally untalented but not so easy on the eye. Pam La Testa as hired killer Farkas is the biggest offender (and I mean that literally-she's enormous!): every minute she is on screen is a masterclass in bad casting and wooden acting. Roger Neil, as Jennifer's husband Ray, gives Pam a run for her money though, his lack of acting prowess and porn-star moustache suggesting that he would be better cast in some of Findlay's 'other' movies.

As for the film's most memorable moments, try these for size...

Farkas, pretending to be a bloke, picks up a prostitute, and hacks her up with a knife. This is the one genuinely nasty moment in a film that is primarily schlock. It begins on the streets of seedy '80s New York, establishing a sleazy, gritty tone that, unfortunately, is later discarded in favour of cheesy z-grade horror hokum.

Apartment building superintendent Pappas (Chris Maria De Koron) is attacked by imaginary critters that look like the rubbery finger puppet monsters that I used to play with as a kid. In an attempt to get rid of them, he stabs himself in the arm and the chest (I think I just lost mine).

Unseen forces terrify Jennifer, trashing her apartment, giving Powers yet another opportunity to fail spectacularly at acting terrified.

Believing that a wealthy man has been murdered, Jennifer goes to the dead man's wife with her story instead of telling the police. Someone this stupid almost deserves to die.

As Ray attempts to dispose of the planchette in an incinerator, a pair of rubbery monster hands grab his head and tear it off. Inept gore, but it's too silly not to enjoy.

Farkas pursues Jennifer with axe in hand. Somehow, she manages to keep up with the young woman, despite being three times her weight. Cornering Jennifer, the killer swings her weapon, somehow planting the axe in a cardboard box instead of her intended victim. Her lack of accuracy will be the death of her.

Menaced by the ghost of her victim (a hilariously bad puppet creation), Farkas swings her axe again, this time striking a barrel of toxic waste! The corrosive contents spray into the killer's face, reducing it to a molten mess of gooey flesh and bone. The gore is, once again, bargain basement, but impressively messy.

The ridiculous ending sees the murdered man's wife trapped in her car by her husband's vengeful spirit, and being choked to death by exhaust fumes. Jennifer stops screaming hysterically and takes up being a spiritualist full time.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb. It's garbage, but there's fun to be had.

SHUT UP JENNIFER!

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 18 June 2019]

Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) discovers a necromancy writing box and decides to have fun with the expected consequences. Meanwhile there is a butch looking killer (Pam La Testa) running around in the city. Formula story, bad acting and dialogue.

The film attempts to create creepy with red fonts and a Rider Back Tarot deck. It has a shop, "The Magickal Child." That's magick with a "K" so it means something more. I also find it odd that a prostitute would be trying to pick up guys in front of a "male revue" establishment.

The film was made in an era where "veal" wasn't a four letter word.

No f-bombs or nudity. Sex scene.

A bit better than I expected

[thelion23 · 17 June 2002]

The Oracle, directed by Roberta Findlay wasn´t THAT bad after all. Ok, it was a bit dull at times but I´ve seen worse films, in fact many of them.The film itself was never really scary but it had its share of gore, so if you´re looking for that you´ll probably be satisfied with what you see.

The production company (Laurel Films,Inc) for the film was also interesting, since the same company is the one behind George A. Romero´s zombie movies if I´m not mistaking.

The version I saw myself was the Dutch release by New York Video. Comparing to the pictures on the back cover, this release seems to be cut since many shots were never to be seen in the movie, as the killing of the lady in the elevator-I didn´t see any blood in the film itself but on the back cover there was a still picture of it.

I´ll give this film **½ of *****. An ok way to waste 94 minutes.

All over the map

[mollytinkers · 4/10 · 22 December 2022]

Saw this thanks to TCM Underground. They almost always deliver on the absurd. This film is a throwaway with merits.

I want to rate it 2.75 stars, but the special effects bump it to 4 stars, not because they're exemplary but because they're commendable when you take into account this is an independent film. The female lead cries and screams most of the time while the two male leads look like something out of a 1980 gay porn flick. The best performance is from the psychiatrist.

I agree this is recommended for those who like crap-tastic cinema. I won't watch it again, but I'm glad I did. The truth is its stupid.

The Usual

[boblipton · 5/10 · 17 December 2022]

Caroline Capers Powers finds a leather-covered box and an odd automatic writing set-up -- Parker Brothers wouldn't let them use a Ouija board -- and starts getting creepy messages that lead her to an unsolved murder. No one believes her, of course, especially husband Roger Neil and his porn-star mustache. Her investigations trigger the real killers to target her.

It's a blah movie, distinguished neither by excellence nor ineptness; Miss Powers spends a lot of time screaming. The camerawork is very fluid, and the planchette is sort of interesting, but that's about the limit of this one. For fans of the genre.

Entertaining El-Cheapo Horror

[blurnieghey · 7/10 · 15 December 2020]

I guess this is on DVD now, but I watched it a couple of nights ago in the only true format worth watching a movie like this on: a washed-out VHS with blurry images and lousy sound. How many movies like this did I watch under such conditions as a kid? Countless. Anyways, it isn't all that scary but it is hilarious and the murderous corpse at the end is one of the most craptacular special effects I've ever seen. And the plot? Let's see: an old man is murdered and made to look like suicide while his much younger wife is still alive and inherited his fortune. You don't suppose she had anything to do with the murder, do you? Nah. You either love stuff like this or you hate it. I love it and there are a couple seriously entertaining moments in this movie that any lover of cheap horror will appreciate.

Enjoyably atrocious horror junk

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 25 April 2010]

Sweet, fragile young lady Jennifer (decently played by fetching brunette Caroline Capers Powers) and her insensitive jerk husband Ray (a supremely irritating portrayal by Roger Neil) move into an apartment that was previously inhabited by an old gypsy medium. Jennifer uses the old gypsy medium's leftover Ouija board to contact the unrestful and vindictive spirit of a murdered businessman; said angry and deadly spirit uses Jennifer as a means to an end to exact a harsh revenge on his killers. Boy, does this gloriously ghastly nickel'n'dime bilge possess all the essential so-utterly-wrong-they're-paradoxically-right ingredients to rate highly as a definite four-star stinkeroonie: the hopelessly ham-fisted (mis)direction by notorious Grade Z grindhouse maestro Roberta Findlay, the meandering narrative, a generic hum'n'shiver ooga-booga synthesizer score by Walter E. Sear and Michael Litovsky, shoddy, but excessive gore, mostly dreadful acting from a lame no-name cast (Pam La Testa easily cops the top thespic dishonors with her delightfully overblown performance as hostile, ugly, nasty fat lesbian psychopath Farkas), rubbery make-up f/x, crude cinematography, hilariously bungled murder set pieces (one guy stabs himself to death with a knife while imagining that he's covered with laughably fake-looking giant bugs!), ragged editing, R. Allen Leider's talky and plodding script, a total lack of tension and creepy atmosphere, and the uproariously fumbled climax all add up to create a choice chunk of wonderfully rancid and wretched 80's cheese that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons. The flavorsome yuletide setting and authentically grimy New York City locations that include the once infamous 42nd Street in all its former scuzzy neon slime urban splendor further enhance this clunker's considerable shabby charm. An amusingly awful hoot.

The cold touch from beyond the grave.

[lost-in-limbo · 6/10 · 10 November 2006]

A young newly married woman, Jennifer, stumbles across a writing tool called the Oracle, which is an Ouija device that was used by the previous occupant of their apartment. For some entertainment with her friends she brings out the device for a séance, where she unwillingly gets in contact with a revengeful spirit who was murdered. No one believes her that the spiritual connection with the medium is real and to make matters worse the mystery gets more dangerous when she calls the number the spirit gave her. It leads her to his wife and now the killers of her husband are now tracking down Jennifer.

The curse of the 80s horror cheese (that's extremely cheesy by the way) strikes again in this ridiculously dumb and cheaply done bungle of lightweight schlock. Despite being a rather ghastly piece, it's oddly watchable and to a certain degree enjoyable junk. Honestly the premise is quite unique and there are inventive ideas cooked up, on the other hand the budget and the execution doesn't entirely complement the vision. But then who am I to complain when it didn't cop out on the splatter. It's grisly, outlandish and terribly campy stuff! Watch the blood fly across the screen. An ominously brooding atmosphere with a murky colour scheme and jittery sound effects adds to the fun. A blunt synthesizer packed score springs into action and the shoddy special effects (like the rotting corpse and a green floating skull) are unintentionally funny.

The direction by Roberta Findlay is simply clumsy, but her no-bars approach means there's a certain randomness that makes those clammy and plodding moments move on in a hurry. Well, some moments do feel like they're trapped in slow motion. They are basically those chase scenes. It might be light on suspense, but there are oddball thrills in minor spurts that have meagre potency. The cruddy performances are pretty dry. The constant squealing from the lead Caroline Capers Powers can get somewhat frustrating, but overall she was fair. Pam La Testa makes quite an impression as the bulky butch killer with a deep, no-nonsense attitude.

"The Oracle" is a corn-filled slice of 80s low-budget horror that's craptastic.

Talk to the Supernatural Hand...

[Coventry · 6/10 · 8 November 2006]

"The Oracle" isn't exactly what you'd call a masterpiece of horror, but it definitely surpassed my expectations and I can't deny having enjoyed it immensely. This movie is like a prototype of super-cheesy 80's horror, with silly plot lines and gooey special effects throughout the entire playtime. As long as you're an undemanding fan of the genre, it'll be pretty difficult NOT to enjoy it, actually. Quite a couple of low-budget 80's horror movies revolved on possession and spiritual media, and even though none of them are able to scare the crap out of you, they always deliver at least some bloody murders and/or atmospheric scenery. The ghostly medium in "The Oracle" is an ancient stone hand carrying the restless soul of a murdered businessman and possessing the life of a newlywed girl that moved in to the apartment where the eerie device was kept. The ghost forces Jennifer to seek contact with his widow as well as his murderers, but also eliminates everyone that tries to help the young woman getting rid of …The Hand. It's very good and original idea of the script to not only follow Jennifer but also the killers right from the beginning. Early in the film, we witness how a genuinely uncanny battleaxe (Pam La Testa) sadistically hacks up a prostitute. We have no idea who she (he?) is at that point, and it's only much later before Jennifer identifies her as one of the killers during a vision. I wouldn't go so far to call this idea intelligent, but it's certainly more creative than I'm used seeing of independent 80's splatter. The massacre of the prostitute is pretty graphic and disturbing, yet the other kills are delightfully cheesy. One guy stabs himself to death because he imagines monsters crawling over his skin, another victim is assaulted by a floating skull and another bloke even has his head clean torn off by a pair of green-clawed hands! It's rather peculiar to notice that Roberta Findlay directed this flick and even in the same year she also made "Tenement: Game of Survival". That movie is completely opposite in tone to "The Oracle", as it's raw and sickening exploitation centering on gang wars, rape & revenge, drug issues and urban decay. I guess Roberta just was a versatile filmmaker...

Disposable horror trash, but not the epic-scale failure I was preparing for.

[EyeAskance · 2 July 2010]

A young couple rent a New York City apartment previously occupied by a strange elderly soothsayer. The wife plunders the deceased old lady's belonging and finds an oracle(a hand-shaped device used to communicate with the dead). She unwisely tests the item's power, gradually becoming a living instrument of revenge for a recent murder victim. As her involvement in the situation deepens, so does her frustration when her husband and friends express concern for her mental health...they dismiss her strange experiences as hallucinations, despite a rash of mysterious deaths taking place around them.

For a Roberta Findlay film, this one is actually not as spectacularly awful as it should be, and does manage to maintain interest and deliver some fairly gory moments. Standing on its own merits, however, it's a throwaway picture with typically staid performances(a couple of the secondary characters are commendably played, most notably the sadistic lesbian psychopath), and the special effects are...well...neither special nor effective.

Not recommendable, but beneath the crust of cheapness is a semi-worthy watch...*IF* you're willing to take a brain laxative and dumb yourself down for 90 minutes.

4/10

Like the 70s Never Ended

[thalassafischer · 8/10 · 26 September 2023]

This truly weird and grimy film from the mid-80s looks like someone had been keeping it on a shelf since 1978, 1981 at the absolute latest. I love it!

The Oracle captures something eerily East coast and dark from the late 20th century despite its meandering plot and fair-to-middling special effects. I love that they apologized for the special effects by making them nightmares and delusions...brilliant! No one is going to believe that neon green slime creature is out to get anyone but it's a creepy thought that an angry departed spirit could make you hallucinate until you stab yourself to death.

I loved the touch of the 1950s classic cars and fur coats. I swear the lead actress and the evil, plotting wife were in some New Wave band.

Watchable junk.

[Hey_Sweden · 6/10 · 4 October 2014]

Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) is a young woman who moves with husband Ray (Roger Neil) into an apartment formerly occupied by a medium. She finds the womans' planchet and is able to make contact with a restless spirit. Naturally, this spirit wants to use her for vengeance' sake. Jennifer is able to see images of the people that killed the man, including a corpulent, demented, transvestite, lesbian killer for hire named Farkas (Pam La Testa). Jennifer then sets about trying to solve the man's murder.

This is about on a par with the other crude, cheese ball horror pictures that legendary exploitation director Roberta Findlay ("Tenement") made in the 1980s. It's kind of slow to get started, but around the 34 minute mark things start to pick up, as Pappas (Chris Maria De Koron), the building super, fools around with the planchet, and begins to see weird little creepy-crawlies all over him. Ultimately, the movie is garbage, but Findlay herself would be the first to admit it. Therefore, it does have a certain undeniable bad movie charm, at least if you totally dig this kind of thing to begin with.

Capers Powers is remarkably sincere in the lead, although she'll probably put off some viewers with the amount of screaming that she does. Neil plays the husband as such a jerk that one has to wonder why Jennifer ever married the guy. La Testa is great fun in her antagonistic role, especially in a scene that's probably just designed to show what kind of person Farkas is, as she slaughters a hooker in cold blood. The corpse effects and the gore are all wonderfully tacky. One of the best scenes occurs when Farkas tries to run Jennifer down with a car. Co-producer Walter E. Sear composed the decent music score.

An entertaining viewing for the undemanding.

Six out of 10.

My kind of movie

[BandSAboutMovies · 7/10 · 26 December 2022]

Roberta Findlay knows how to make movies that entertain me and here, she takes a possession movie, sets it during the holidays and fills it with berserk set pieces and man, this movie got me through the day before all the family Christmas craziness begins and you know, Roberta has never let me down with a single thing she's made.

Parker Brothers wouldn't let this movie use Ouija, so there's a stone hand that writes from the spirit world but who cares? This is so many times better than the Ouija films that got made by Hasbro years later and that's because this is so strange. Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers, in the only movie she ever made) and her husband Ray (Roger Neil) have moved into the apartment of a dead psychic who has left behind that fortune telling object which allows Jennifer to be taken over by industrialist William Graham who gets her to figure out who killed him.

You can't destroy that hand. A garbage man tries and strange creatures appear all over his body and he ends up stabbing himself in a scene that kind of destroyed my mind and when Ray tries later, he literally loses his head. All this happens while Findlay shoots in the New York City apartments that could be next door to The Sentinel or Inferno and certainly have the Argento lightning style intact from that movie. Plus there's a gender switching killer played by Pam LaTesta on the loose like a John Waters character in a Nill Lustig movie and there's even a scene set in the legendary occult store The Magickal Childe.

I realize that Roberta hates her own movies but I won't hold that against her. I always find something to enjoy, like how the heroine has the wildest clothes, all berets and puffed-out sleeves and even a pair of red overalls. She dresses like a lunatic and it's frankly charming, plus she screams nearly as much as a woman in a Juan López Moctezuma movie.

There are people who will say that this movie is trash and boring and those are people you want nothing at all to do with. Yes, this is trash, but it's glorious. It's the kind of movie I leave on when people come over and hope they ask me what it's all about so I can talk about it with them. Just writing about it now I want to go back and watch it again. Will you sit down and check it out with me?

low-rent ineptitude from Roberta Findlay!

[thomandybish · 27 April 2001]

Jennifer and her husband move into an apartment formerly occupied by a medium, and Jennifer discovers the writing device the former occupant used to converse with the dead. After dinner with friends, Jennifer uses the device and all kinds of weird things begin to happen, as various characters meet untimely ends and Jennifer has to contend with the widow of a murdered man and the obese lesbian hitwoman she employs to keep Jennifer quiet. Will the madness never end?

This off-kilter little exercise in no-budget filmmaking was directed by Roberta Findlay who, along with her late husband Michael, created a particularly putrid brand of grindhouse fare in the late 60s. Their flicks were virulent cocktails of lesbianism, violence, torture and perversion, and it's nice to see that the passage of time hadn't improved Roberta's filmmaking abilities one bit! Wires attached to books to make them fly off shelves, a man's head being pulled off by big booga-booga Halloween laytex hands, gratuitous disfigurement via noxious industrial waste-- sheez, this film seems like it's from another era. This thing must have only played in the handful of drive-ins and grimey remnant of flop houses that still operated in the mid-eighties, because no savvy viewer then would have accepted this as the gruesome slash-fest it was touted in ads to be. Only slightly amusing in it's incompetence

*1/2 out of 4.

[brandonsites1981 · 30 May 2002]

A woman is forced into investigating the death of a murdered man after messing with the former tentant's writing device that is used to contact the dead. Sometimes exciting and scary horror pic with some well done scenes, is ultimately too slow moving and dull to maintain interest throughout despite good premise. Rated R; Violence, Profanity, and Adult Themes.

Pretty Boring Horror Film

[Michael_Elliott · 4 July 2017]

The Oracle (1985)

* (out of 4)

Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) and her husband move into a new building where one night they mess around with a Ouija board. Pretty soon Jennifer feels that someone is trying to contact her but everyone else believes she is simply going crazy.

Roberta Findlay has said quite a few things about THE ORACLE and none of them were good. The director has pretty much called this film horrid and it's really hard to disagree with her. I thought Findlay did a good job at at least delivering a professional looking movie but at the same time it's obvious that her heart wasn't into the project as there's simply no life or energy to the picture.

The film wants to be something like ROSEMARY'S BABY but obviously it falls well short. There were a number of horror movies dealing with possession inside of an apartment complex and this here really doesn't offer up anything new. There are a couple nice shots via the cinematography but that's about it. The performances are pretty much weak and the screenplay lacks any real imagination. Even the death scenes aren't all that memorable, although I will say that the opening sequence with the hooker appears to have been influenced by MANIAC.

With that said, THE ORACLE is a pretty boring film and its 93-minute really drag at a very slow pace.

Revenge from beyond the grave

[lor_ · 18 March 2023]

My review was written in July 1987 after watching the movie on USA video cassette.

"The Oracle" covers familiar horror ground with a supernatural tale of a dead spirit contacting the living to enact posthumous revenge. Pic was made in New York in 1984, released regionally last year and now in video stores.

Plotline is similar to the subsequent hit "Witchboard": heroine Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) finds an old crate containing a planchette (generic form of a Ouija board, made of a sculpted hand and quill pen). At a Christmas dinner party she and husband Ray (Roger Neil) plus another couple try out the instruments, but no one except Jennifer believes the resulting spirit messages it traces. The ghost is businessman William Graham, murdered bu covered up by his wife Dorothy (Victoria Dryden) as a suicide. Jennifer starts "seeing" the actual muder and when she contacts Dorothy she is trgeted as the nex hushup victim.

Though the monster and gore effects are unsatisfactory in this low-budgeter, it sports one neat twist: Dorohty's chief henchman turns out to be a large, chubby woman. As portrayed by Pam LaTesta, this thug i filmmaker Roberta Findlays' main point of interest, styled mannishly (an updated version of the late Madame Spivy), she is androgynous for the first few reels, picking up a prostitute whom she bloodily slashes when mocked for being unable (natch) to "perform". It turns out to be a fresh approach to the slasher cliche and the horror genre's fondness for transvestite villains. Rest of the cast is unimpressive.