Matty inspects another entry in Trans World/Epic’s franchise that wasn’t a franchise. And he doesn’t mind it either!

For those who haven’t been paying attention, let me recap:

A surprisingly lucrative cash cow for Trans World Entertainment and their successor outfit, Epic, the four-strong Curse saga is a franchise comprising standalone films bludgeoned into sequence after the fact, the connective element being that none of them were actually meant to slot together to begin with. A British/South African co-venture, CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE was written, lensed and paraded around the AFM as ‘Panga’ before it was acquired by Epic. The company had previously distributed another project that one of the film’s Johannesburg-based producers, Patricia Shorten, had a financial hand in (The Final Alliance (1990)). It arrived on U.S. video through Epic and their partner Vision International’s output deal with RCA Columbia on 10th May 1991. Funnily, screener copies sported the ‘Panga’ moniker; and by the time Curse III surfaced on U.K. tape in September 1992, RCA Columbia — itself now operating as Columbia-TriStar Home Video — gave the film a third title, ‘Witchcraft’. Pure speculation, but I’ve always wondered if the move confused devotees of the sprawling Witchcraft (1988) series, which was already up to Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart (1992). Answers on a postcard, please.       

Built from an original script by South African stage actor Richard Haddon Haines — who succumbed to a brain tumour while the film was in production — Curse III’s plot sees an affluent pregnant woman (Jenilee Harrison) and her manservant disturbing a tribal ritual in ‘50s East Africa. As a result they end up menaced by a strange, potentially supernatural killer — the wielder of the (once) eponymous, machete-type ‘panga’ knife. 

An editor by trade, Sean Barton was a key member of the late Richard Marquand’s filmmaking circle. He cut The Birth of The Beatles (1979); Eye of the Needle (1981); Until September (1984); erotic thriller antecedent Jagged Edge (1985); the posthumously released Hearts of Fire (1987); and, inevitably, Marquand’s biggie, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). A few second unit credits for Marquand aside, Curse III stands as Barton’s sole directorial assignment; and though it’s not an especially ‘good’ film by any conventional metric, this odd and decidedly old school potboiler falls into the same flawed yet interesting bracket as the splicer’s other horror work, The Appointment (1982) and The Fly II (1989). 

A steadily paced number, Barton aims for atmosphere and suspense. Frustratingly, he never seems to reconcile his classier predilections with the wilder aspects of the material. There’s a neat, thought-provoking idea at Curse III’s core — the notion of a collapsing world torn between esoteric tradition and the modern need to comprehend – but the story is sullied by bland characters and long stretches of tedium. The African locations imbue the film with an authentic sense of place; alas, it’s often undercut by period props and costumes that are obviously artificial. They’re too clean and sanitised, and they don’t feel convincingly lived-in. Still, there are a handful of positives which elevate Curse III. A chase in a sugarcane field exhibits the sort of sweaty, twitchy menace the rest of Barton’s just-about-permissible creaker should have had. Top-billed star Christopher Lee spouts the expository claptrap like he’s reciting Hamlet. And the demon effects in the film’s last reel — designed by Barton’s Fly II helmer, Chris Walas — exude two of my favourite attributes in horror-dom: a pleasingly rubbery, man-in-a-suit tactility, and a look you can quickly sketch in the back of an exercise book. 

My inner tween will forever grin at the beast’s memorable — if disappointingly brief — appearance.

UK/South Africa ● 1991 ● Horror ● 91mins

Christopher Lee, Jenilee Harrison, Henry Cele ● Dir. Sean Barton ● Wri. John Hunt, Sean Barton, story by Richard Haddon Haines