Titilating sexplotative movie reviews

The year is 1800. The town, Bacchusville, New Jersey. Reclusive local witch Helena Pottsworth (Paige Richards) can no longer contain her surging lesbian desires, and this puritanical, post-colonial town is about to fight a revolution of the sensual kind. Using a bit of black magic and a lot of hypnotic beauty, Helena begins seducing the female citizenry in bodice-ripping acts of pagan eroticism and hot-tongued debauchery that make bodies quiver in ecstasy. Soon, no woman is safe, not even the mayor’s sexually repressed wife, Martha (Laurie Wallace), who quickly succumbs to Helena’s sexy spells and luscious body. Fighting back, the mayor and his right-hand men denounce Helena as an outcast and banish her to the Bacchusville woods. But the entire population follows her there, with men watching women indulge their wildest orgiastic fantasies with a supernatural intensity. Helena has cursed the countryside with her most seductive spell yet, leaving no doubt who the Erotic Witch is.

Even though Witchbabe is advertised as The Erotic Witch Project III, it’s actually a prequel to the original Erotic Witch Project and its sequel, Book of Seduction. Adding to the confusion is how, even though this chapter of the Erotic Witch saga is set two hundred years before the others, some of the same cast members return – as different characters!

As you may have guessed, Witchbabe is the latest in a series of erotic spoofs of the Blair Witch Project movies.
 

Witchbabe is an odd mixture of soft-core erotica and dorky slapstick. It’s so amateurish and juvenile that it makes Troma movies look like high art. It’s shot on video with barely any production values, not to mention the countless anachronisms (I didn’t know that 1800 women had vinyl underwear and boob jobs). The film often feels improvised on the spot, which is a mixed blessing.  Hammy and obnoxious characterisations abound, be it Mayor Rudolf’s hysterical fits, the grimacing hick farmer (played by West himself), the fornicating priest or the offensive, stereotypical flaming homosexual.One might argue that all that really matters in such a movie is the sex scenes, but those are also an uneven lot. The female performers all look good, be it black haired Paige Richards as the Erotic Witch, Laurie Wallace as blonde bimbo Martha, brunette girl-next-door Misty Mundae or sexy redhead Ruby Larocca. The girl-on-girl scenes in which they participate are generally sensual, but they’re undermined by really cheesy music. Thankfully, none of the ugly male actors take part in the sex, but even though they’re just standing over the girls and making goofy faces, it’s a turnoff.

Still, one feels some sympathy for Terry West, John Bacchus and the gang at Seduction Cinema. In a time where porno movies are always trying to be more graphic and depraved, where it’s all about men brutally using women, there’s something refreshing about these silly lesbian spoofs, however incompetent they are.

Starring