Witchtrap

Witchtrap is a mess that somehow claws its way to respectability. It shouldn’t work, and for the first twenty minutes, it doesn’t.

The opening tries for Sam Raimi’s kinetic camera work and falls flat. Director Kevin Tenney casts himself as the haunted house’s owner and delivers exposition like he’s reading a phone book. The husband-wife parapsychologist team out to “cleanse” the house? Wooden doesn’t begin to describe them. When your lead actress is topless in the bathtub and still can’t generate interest, you’re in trouble.

Then James W. Quinn shows up.

Quinn plays a hard-boiled ex-cop turned private detective, and he’s a revelation—imagine Bruce Campbell playing Philip Marlowe. He spits sarcastic one-liners with genuine relish. He moves like he owns the place. Suddenly, this low-budget haunted house picture has a pulse.

Once everyone’s trapped inside with the murderous warlock, Witchtrap becomes a serviceable low-budget horror. A shower-head through the throat provides the requisite gore. Linnea Quigley provides the gratuitous full-frontal nudity and, more importantly, some actual screen presence. The script provides real uncertainty about who survives. The single location works.

There’s a hiccup near the end—a van explodes like a propane depot after taking a few bullets, someone stumbles out asking “Are you okay?” then gets shot anyway. It’s laugh-out-loud inane, but the film recovers.

My real complaint: Kathleen Bailey as the medium. Monotonous one moment, hysterical the next. I don’t blame her, I blame Tenney for pushing her outside her range. She’s got Meg Foster’s pale blue eyes but none of the quiet intensity.

Here’s the thing: if Tenney had leaned into the camp instead of playing it straight, he’d have something special. Quinn’s performance begs for a movie that knows it’s ridiculous. Instead, we get one that thinks it’s Poltergeist. A little self-aware humor—letting us laugh with Quinn’s oversized bravado instead of taking it all so seriously—would have elevated this considerably.

But damn if it doesn’t entertain anyway. Quinn carries this thing across the finish line through sheer charisma. For direct-to-video 80s horror, this is near the top of the heap.