Superstition

IMDb
A witch put to death in 1692 swears vengeance on her persecutors and returns to the present day to punish their descendants.


HorrorNewNet

SYNOPSIS:

A family moves into a long-condemned New England household with a big pond out back that everybody loves to swim in. Soon, however, they find that the pond was the site of the execution- by-drowning of a witch three hundred years before, and she’s back to revenge herself on anybody nearby, whether they’re Catholic or not.

REVIEW:

There’s not much I love more than watching a new-to-me horror film from the 1980s…except maybe writing a real-time review of said film and sharing my sense of discovery with a few aficionados of the genre. I don’t know much about “Superstition” other than it is alternately known as “The Witch” and it is currently up 126% in popularity this week on IMDB, so I’m coming into this one without much to go on. The film had been sitting innocently enough near the bottom of my Netflix queue for at least a year when, due to a delivery snafu, it wound up in my mailbox  yesterday. Though I try to keep Netflix stocked with (relatively) new releases, this week has seen the home screenings of both the original “Police Academy” and “Loose Screws” (technically a new release…thanks, Severin!), so I guess it is only fitting for this impromptu series to culminate with this horror flick from 1982.

Things start off in grand style: two teens making out in a parked car in front of an abandoned house. Doesn’t get much better than that…except when it does two minutes later after two pranksters scare them off and inadvertently become the prime targets of the unseen menace lurking somewhere in the abandoned house. Not a bad set-up…but let’s see how it’s paid off, shall we?

Still waiting…

One of the pranksters disappears and the other practical joker, who could best be described as a young George Costanza, begins walking through the house yelling “Hey, Artie?!” for five minutes. Seriously? I mean, how are you going to find your friend-

He just found him: Artie’s head is cooking in the microwave! And it just exploded! Nice.

After scrambling over Artie’s headless corpse, young Costanza attempts to escape…and is literally cut in two by the unseen evil. Fade out as the top half of his body tries to crawl away from the cursed building…

Backstory, exposition, backstory…

Turns out the house belongs to a local church. Short history of the property. Some background on Arlan, The Caretaker. “The medical examiner thinks it’s some sort of cult thing.” Some more backstory. It looks like they’re sending the young Reverend David Thompson to, um, renovate the place and get it ready for Pastor Leahy and his family to move in. Okay…

Two fake scares in a row.

We’re finally introduced to Arlan, who runs out to the pond behind the house and starts splashing around with his hand in the water. What why? Maybe this is all connected to the pond somehow? Well, I guess the police detective spying on him is going to be in the best position to figure it all out…unless he’s foolish enough to walk out on the pier all by himself and then drop a bunch of coins right next to the water.  Oh, he is. At least I hope he doesn’t get pulled into the pond by a ghoulish figure. Oh, he did.

Dead policeman…which leads young Rev. Thompson to declare that he is going to drain the pond…which sends Arlan into a rage. Anyone see a connection yet? Nope? Okay.

Full Movie on YouTube