Necromancy (1972)

Whatever Happened To Citizen Kane? - Necromancy review by Count Otto Black

It doesn't feel right to give this movie one star, because that's in effect a score of 20%, which is far too high. Half a star seems more accurate, or maybe a quarter. Yes, it's that bad!

For starters, as with many obscure low-budget horror films made a few decades ago, the DVD itself is of very poor quality. The movie plays in a window that only fills about half the screen because if it was full-size it would be so grainy and blurred as to be almost unwatchable. As it is, the low definition, distorted colours, and fuzzy sound would make what appears to be, and probably is, a cut-price transfer from whatever crummy old VHS tape they had lying around a chore to watch even if it was a good film.

Which it very, very much isn't. From the opening scene, in which "actors" whose lack of acting skills suggest they may not be actors at all, just whichever of the director's buddies he could persuade to do it, attempt to offend absolutely everyone by ritually slashing a naked woman's breasts to bring about a voodoo abortion, presided over by a High Priest of Satan wearing what can only be described as the front end of a very cheap fluffy cow costume presumably stolen from a TV show aimed at very young children, you know this film is going to be abysmal. In that respect at least, it doesn't disappoint.

Unfortunately, despite that hilarious plush-toy devil mask, this movie couldn't accurately be described as "so bad it's good" unless you're one of those peculiar people who think that being just plain bad somehow makes a film good. The two central characters are a couple whose constant whiny bickering instantly renders them both unsympathetic and deeply annoying, one of whom is played by Pamela Franklin, who you may have seen doing some pretty decent acting in other films. Her obvious lack of enthusiasm would be thoroughly unprofessional if it wasn't so understandable.

Also giving a less-than-enthusiastic performance is none other than Orson Welles, who every second he's on screen is visibly asking himself: "I directed 'Citizen Kane'! How did it come to this!?" Though bearing in mind that in his first scene he's wearing a fluffy cow's head, it would have been perfectly understandable if he'd faked serious illness or even death to avoid appearing in any more of this film, and consenting to give any kind of performance at all was more than the director deserved.

Speaking of whom, you might like to know that Bert I. Gordon, a contemporary of the equally talented Ed Wood during the Golden Age of B-movies, is somehow still alive, and last directed a crappy no-budget horror film you've never heard of in 2014. Maybe he really did make a pact with the Devil. It's the only plausible explanation for somebody like Orson Welles agreeing to appear in wretched dreck like this. Not to mention that movie he made a few years after this one where Joan Collins consented to be chased through a mangrove swamp by giant ants for an hour and a half.

Whatever. This isn't a long film, but I didn't even make it to the half-way mark. It isn't quite bad enough to be literally unwatchable, but it is bad enough that early on I realised I'd rather be watching almost anything else, or failing that, nothing at all, because a blank screen would entertain me just as much without being positively irritating. So I switched it off and sent it back mostly unwatched. I suggest you cut out the middle man and don't rent it at all.