Psyched by the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (1973)

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Director: Victor Luminera (a.k.a. Lawrence Milton Boren)

Screenplay: Victor Luminera

Cast: Margo as Cindy; Esoterica as Abigail; Tom Yerian as Mark; Kelly Guthrie as Mr. Jones; Tracy Handfuss as Jan Kleinmetz; Keith Erickson (as Dr. Ambrose Kleinmetz)

[USA]

Synopsis: Dabbling in the sinister world of the occult, naive college student Cindy (Margo) is contacted by a 17th century ancestor from the 4D realm, a witch named Abigail (Esoterica) who promises the virginal girl orgasmic joys without any consequences of physical sex. Secretly however she wants to pervert her out of revenge. Even if it means turning her older brother Mark (Tom Yerian) into a sexual vampire.

Since seeing a clip from Something Weird Video's back catalogue, I have been curious about Psyched by the 4D Witch. That and the fake legend of a print of the film being found where the Manson Family camped, all despite this film existing long after their infamy. Well, that's depending on if it actually was released in 1973, or if it was shot in the late sixties and sputtered out in the early seventies. If any film was late the psychedelic boom Psyched by the 4D Witch was one such example, and this is definitely one of the extreme examples of American cinema's exploitation production. It comes from the melting pot of independent American genre films, sandwiched between the two decades and feels like it. A sexploitation film which has more puritanical stains of the sixties, but released in the early seventies (if the case) and needing more bite. All shot in "Transetheric Vision", which feels like a fifties marketing gimmick.

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It is with a fair warning that this review will become crass just having to explain the film in depth, because sexploitation even when it was chaste was entirely about selling sex, even if how and what the stories were about are tasteless or just weird. What actual story to some is as much their DNA and also to be warned about, as you don't try to enter some of these films unless you have the tolerance for very different strain of filmmaking, be it technically inadequate or just on the fringe of culture. The warning, due to this, this is only for a select audience to try to get through. And this is bearing in mind you barely see a lot in Psyched by the 4D Witch. That's the irony with this film, the most sexless of sexploitation films which yet still has a lot that'd embarrass some people to be caught seeing. Inexplicably appearing on Amazon Prime, obscure even for a 4K Blu-Ray restoration, the version matching its haphazard tone cultivates various colonies of grain and age just on the print used for the digitalization, adding to the experience the television was spiked with bad hallucinogens.

The film's split personality is perplexing. On one hand its sixties tinged psychedelic, which was popular in exploitation cinema, reeking of the cautionary films from the same time. Stay for the titillation, but condemn the "perversions" onscreen. Yet this is also a seventies movie and tries to be more scuzzy in connection to its occult plot line. Cindy's friend Jan (Tracy Handfuss), when brainwashed into the occult rituals, writhes with a rubber snake as if in a burlesque nudie loop. Until its claimed in the voiceover she inserted the snake into herself before the ritual in one of the many  bizarre lines. The snake used inappropriately is just hinted at in dialogue, alongside mention of necrophilia and such. Attempts to clearly go further which the structure of the movie is compromised in being caught between both sides.

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Scenes which seem to cut away from the sex as if they were actual porn sequences, purely softcore of the sixties cut to ribbons until its barely comprehensible at times. These perverse lines merely hinted at in the voiceover when what is onscreen, if viewed mute, wouldn't be perceived in that context. Plenty of nudity, but with sexual words bleeped inexplicably from the soundtrack nonetheless. A sense of the quainter sixties films but reeking of filth just in the plot and the atmosphere of the production. It makes it a confused film in terms of its existence, as its meant to be softcore yet if stuck between the sixties caution and seventies sleaze, all whilst not showing a lot actually onscreen. Especially as actual hardcore pornography briefly became chic in the mainstream, with the likes of Deep Throat (1972), a film like this missed the boat for its audience completely and flounders.

The experience is instead like Kenneth Anger, the legendary occult practitioner and avant-garde filmmaker, if Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) with its coloured gels covering the screen and actresses in quasi-ancient garb was instead made by people on a bad day using horse tranquilisers. A sense this was put together with various pieces of footage, even home movie material, as Psyched by the 4D Witch is all post-dubbed with narration and various scenes. Whilst there is a lot of nudity of both genders, you have a patchwork so extreme it becomes confusing. A scene between Cindy and her aunt - which demonises lesbianism by making it incestuous, but still lusts over an "exhausting three-way lesbian climax" with them and the ancestor Abigail - is so chopped up in structure I had no idea what was going on. A lot of shots are reminiscent of being inside a lava lamp. Superimposition. Quasi-Eastern costuming, which again evokes Kenneth Anger but also Jack Smith. So much pink and purple, due to the print seen as well as the aesthetic, to the point the scenes of the ordinary 3D world are heavily tinted in these colours. Eventually until pink is soaked into your eyes. Events from later in the film are even cut into the structure early on as if premonitions, such as the older brother mid-sex vampire role devouring a victim, all without context until you get to that plot point properly.

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There's little sense of the occultism being anything than just an excuse for the weird titillation. It neither helps how slapdash the film is in being put together. The strangest moment is not the sex. Or when it abruptly switches from Cindy as our narrator to her older brother, unaware despite being reflective of these events having past that he's about to be turned into a cannibalistic sex vampire. Nor the perversity attempted at. No, it's the unexplained and lengthy scenes that feel like home movie footage. In particular the one of a beach, just panning over the local environment and its tourists, which goes one for at least five minutes or so, that is incongruous to the extreme.

Now considering how many times I've said the film is bad, is Psyched by the 4D Witch to just be avoided? For those with an intolerance of the barrel of American exploitation, you stay away as far as possible. For someone like myself, with a tolerance for this type of film, it was something I'm glad to witness. Slithers of very memorable things that made it compelling, and all that was an aghast failure still idiosyncratic. Its luridness coupled yet with a chaste innocence. The gay neighbour who someone is convinced by Cindy to participate in her sexual exploration. That, technically, what she experiences is mystical rather than physical, extended fantasies Abigail is absorbing the energy from for her nefarious ways. That Mark's experience becoming a vampire is slowly built up with using travelogue footage of a seventies games arcade only to never be fully resolved, left to wander in his new life as an inexplicable plot point. Or that the solution to the drama, provided by Dr. Ambrose Kleinmetz (Keith Erickson), which also involves sex but at a significant cost. That even a film this misbegotten has a hummable psych rock title song.

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And if anything, looking at any screenshots of the film makes you aware how utterly perplexing the film must be as moving images. Many will find this painful, but the mix of extreme colour saturation, avant-garde experimentation, and exceptionally low budget sexploitation is a peculiar aesthetic cocktail.  Trying to make sense of Psyched by the 4D Witch is arbitrary. It's simple on paper - an innocence young woman corrupted by an evil ancestor from beyond the grave - but the structure and tone is what causes one to feel in a stupor. Of course since this is sexploitation, one has to ask whether it is actually erotic, which it isn't. It isn't titillating in the slightest. And that in itself, because it's too rambling and unconventional to be, adds to the strangeness as, even without the sexual perversions angle, the film is so fragmented it would undermine any of its original purpose.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychedelic/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

One of the strangest things I've seen in a while. One of the queerest at least. The film will be unbearable for many to suffer through, but for myself witnessing its hot pink tinted mass spew onscreen both made me feel dirty but was also oddly compelling.