Superstition (1982)

This is one of those odd movies that I really should have caught in the eighties but never did. Heck I never even heard of this one until recently when it was brought to my attention by some friends. It seems like it was a staple on the shelves of many Mom and Pop video stores, but I suppose none of the ones that I frequented must have had it. I was happy to get my grubby little hands on a copy to check out for review here at the Horror Dude Blog.

Things kick off with a couple of kids making out in a car parked next to a haunted house. See since everyone is afraid of the house the plan is that they can enjoy themselves without interruption, or at least that was their hope. Turns out there are a couple of pranksters that scare the hell out of them for a few laughs. The joke is on them though when the house really is possessed, and they end up dead! This is all a setup for the main story of the new reverend coming to town with his family. The church owns the supposedly haunted place and decides that it would be a perfect home to fix up for them to live in. That is a bad idea.

Here is the skinny on what is happening. It isn’t that the house is haunted so much as the ground is bad. We see thru a flashback that a witch was drowned in a nearby pond and since then the whole area has been cursed. When people start to disappear, and others are found dead the police want to blame the creepy groundskeeper’s son, but we know better. The property isn’t just haunted by your run of the mill spirit, but is home to the demonic ghost of the executed witch. She is still rather annoyed at being drowned in the pond and is ready to take it out on everyone!

This is a fun movie that I am very pleased to have finally seen. It still makes me smile to realize that as much time as I spent in the video section of my local video stores growing up there are still things that I missed. Most of the time they aren’t very good which is likely how they slipped past me, but here that isn’t the case. While it doesn’t break any new ground, Superstition does give us plenty of what we would expect from an eighty’s horror flick.

Its about to get creepy!

The story is quick and easy to follow. They get to the kills right away by tossing a couple in before the main story gets rolling. The characters are defined enough to easily identify the roles they are going to play, the annoying kid, the flawed father, the cute daughters, and the hero are right there. Don’t worry about being bored though because there are a couple things that Superstition does to let you know that no one is safe and that anyone might become a victim. They follow the formula with a twist, those are the best kinds of horror movies.

The highlight of Superstition for me are the kills. We get a head blow up in a microwave, a window chopping another dude in half, a drowning, death by a wine press, a wooden stake to the forehead, and my personal favorite a rogue saw blade to the chest. This is a bloody flick and I enjoyed every minute of it! When I think eighties horror, I immediately think gore and this one delivers the goods. We also get a respectable twelve kills… well I suppose thirteen. My only complaint is that the annoying kid dies offscreen. Not that I advocate killing your child actors off, but if you do at least show it!

Superstition isn’t a perfect movie, but it is a good time. If you dig the “B” movies that tended to hit the video store shelves back in the day you are going to love this one. It is my understanding that by the time you are reading this a new Blu-Ray of this movie will be out so availability shouldn’t be an issue. I’m recommending this one.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer