Intensity: 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Kevin Tenney
Remember Witchboard? The Tawny Kitaen led Ouija Board camp classic? How well does it hold up to today’s standards? It’s earnest. It tries hard. But it’s as stiff as the Ouija Board itself.
In our Spooky Time 18, The Scariest Things and The Jersey Ghouls teamed up to tackle watching an entire franchise as our summer school requirement and report back to the rest of the group. I was assigned by way of the Wheel of Misfortune the Wishmaster franchise. But wait, you may be thinking, isn’t this about Witchboard? Yes. I totally spaced out and hopped online and downloaded Witchboard instead of Wishmaster. So, you’re getting a review for this trash classic instead!
Witchboard is a 1980s film that made a memorable dent in horror fans who grew up in the era. It’s a solid Ouija Board horror trope story with mediocre acting and workmanlike film craft. It’s a capable film that by no means stinks, but it doesn’t stand out remarkably well from its peers. If you ran a triple feature of Terror Train and Night of the Creeps, you’d be in similar company.
College student Linda (Tawny Kitaen) and her carpenter fiancee, Jim (Todd Allen), host a house party. This one is cut straight from feathered hair ’80s central casting. After a long evening debating the existence of God and creation, one of their guests, Brandon (Stephen Nichols) decides to prove a point about the existence of a spiritual world by bringing out a Ouija board. (Fun fact, the description of Ouija is a combination of Oui + Ja as the French and German words for yes. Witchboard taught me something). Brandon asks Linda to join him. Together, they contact the spirit of a little boy named David. As Brandon and Linda commune with David’s spirit, Jim pokes fun at the process. David lashes out violently, ending the party and everyone’s evening.
It turns out there is a love triangle relationship between Jim, Brandon, and Linda. Jim and Brandon were once best friends. But, there’s a wrinkle: Jim and Linda became a couple. A wedge was then driven between the two men and they can’t stand each other anymore. After Brandon and all the other guests leave, the Ouija board gets left behind by mistake. The next day, Linda skips class and decides to try and contact David again through the Ouija board. Definitely a bad idea. David responds initially as helpful, but it’s a ruse. During this seance, Jim’s best friend at the construction worksite gets crushed by a pile of gypsum wallboard suggesting something evil has been done through Linda’s mismanagement of the Ouija board.
The spirit roughs up Linda, triggering strange behavior in her. Jim figures out that her weird actions are due to the Ouija board, and confronts Brandon. Eventually, the trio enlists the help of Zarabeth, an eccentric psychic (Kathleen Wilhoite), to do a seance. David appears to get flushed from the board, and everyone seems to consider the ritual to have cleansed the scene. But Zarabeth begins to have doubts. Clearly, the now-released evil intends to hunt down those who disturbed it.
It’s a solid if somewhat familiar story. The deaths are predictable even if the actual method of murder shows creativity, this is the type of killing-by-the-numbers that for the most part holds to a traditional formula. The early exposition through the party and the actual Ouija moment feels a bit forced and filled with really rough dialogue, but as the movie progresses and the relationships get established, the story becomes more engaging, and it gets better as the plot moves along.
The acting is really stiff at times, particularly in Act I. The leggy hairspray wonder that is Tawny Kitaen, best known for being the dancer in Whitesnake videos, was hired because the rest of the male cast thought she was hot. Her claim to fame was for her music video appearances, which led to her marrying David Coverdale (Whitesnake’s similarly coiffed leading man). She also earned notoriety for beating up her California Angels pitcher-second husband Chuck Finley, Acting is not Tawny’s strong suit. Linda required a change of roles from innocent student to possessed savage, and, well, it really didn’t work. All that criticism aside, she managed to carve herself a nice B-Acting career until she passed away in 2021. Also, despite the pretty shabby acting, Tawny was the most entertaining of the leads. I found myself rooting for her to act her way through to the next scene.
Stephen Nichols eventually carved out a long and prosperous career acting in Soap Operas, having put many years into Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless. The earnestness that would prove so valuable to him for Daytime TV sometimes gets overplayed here to the point of being cloying. Todd Allen was handsome enough for the leading role, but the character was a bit of a bland cipher and not a true lead. When either of these actors was paired up with Tawny, the overriding sense I had was “People don’t really talk to each other like this.” But, when the two men were together, the bromance chemistry of the story actually worked. That pairing helped the second and third acts move more smoothly.
Wilhoite’s eccentric Zarabeth, though, was a standout. For her limited time on the screen, her funky Cyndi Lauper-inspired oddball stole every scene she was in. I would have much preferred watching a whole movie about her. Every other character was so earnest it bordered on blandness.
The use of the Ouija board as the central focus of the film actually worked pretty well. The trope held its own internal logic, and the twist to the David spirit plot was well played. I was thinking there was a different motivation going on, and the best part of the screenplay was that it had enough red herrings out there, that this part of the movie retained surprises that the rest of the formula couldn’t maintain.
Writer/Director Kevin Tenney reportedly conceived of this movie in his final year of USC Film School, having attended a party very similar to the one depicted in the opening scene of Witchboard. He dropped out of school just shy of graduation to make this film, and the film feels like it’s a couple of units short of completion as well. It did well enough to earn a sequel, and its cult status is strong enough to garner a reboot for 2024, to be directed by Chuck Russell, and for which Tenney is given writing credit. Tenney would go on to direct another cult favorite of the era, Night of the Demons.
The legacy of this film is that it remains a slice of familiar ’80s camp horror that many people who grew up in the era have a fondness for. It’s horror junk food. Mildly entertaining and not particularly frightening, but good for a night of popcorn, it’s not going to make you consider your particular place in the universe though. There have been a lot of Ouija-themed movies out there, and this remains something of a landmark offering, but don’t go into this expecting the Exorcist. And as a parting side-not, I think this is the best-looking board used in any Ouija-themed movie.
Witchboard is Rated R for mild gore, language, needlessly naked Tawny, and the evil that is a Ouija Board. This movie is readily available on most streaming platforms, including Tubi.
