Bad Magic (1998)

 

Directors: John and Mark Polonia

Cast: Vincent Simmons as Renny; Bob Dennis; Maria Davis; Bruce Hardy as Tobanga; Dave Harmon

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #166 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

They were all Catholic. We're Methodist!

First of all - I wished this film was actually called Cruel Magic. All because as a heavy metal fan, with the song stuck in my head, I cannot help but think now of a track by an obscure Britain band Satan who gained a greater amount of attention with the 2018 album of the same name. It would also be more metaphorically apt for what this film's plot is about, a return to Planet Polonia, an obscure production which immediately shows how weird it will get in the opening - of voodoo objects, smoke, fake dime store skulls and sex with a monologue heard about voodoo's history, all with the opening credits even including that they apparently hired a voodoo consultant.

Premise wise, in a world of New York City footage and a green hazy sky, this is a premise you would find in a 1940s radio drama turned into a 65 minutes SOV film. A young African-American man named Renny, wishing to get revenge on the gang that brought in his younger brother Amos only to get him killed during an attempted bank robbery, sells his soul to use voodoo magic to pick the small gang off one-by-one. It is inevitable, once his work is done, his soul is to be claimed.

Bad Magic at times feels like a production partially improvised, or at least using other Polonia brothers' work for footage, such as the beginning having an entire tangent of a demon terrorising two guys in a countryside cottage, an entirely different narrative told in very little time which has its own absurdities - be it a demon, an actor in a mask and furry legs still wearing a shirt, vomiting on some poor person to death by hairdryer, or a demon being killed by having its head kept under water. To the brothers' credits, starting as young adults in the eighties before this, they found ways to add production value and even when it is ridiculous, and involves video toaster effects (including a screen being ripped from the middle four ways like paper), it became part of their own logic and is, darn it, actually charming.

For example, they found a way around having their lead going to the Caribbean to find a witch doctor to teach him magic - by having him in close up against a plain wall looking off to the side, cutting this to footage of an airplane in the sky in the distance, and actual footage from the Caribbean likely taken from a vacation and spliced in, even if it does return back to a small room back home where he gets to the person he is looking for. Not a decrepit and half blind old man, but a young man, if you notice, is also wearing jeans under the costume. I will not mock this, nor belittle that the acting in general is not great, as at this point I am well aware one of the prime investments in no-budget cinema is as much attempting elaborate stories at this level of budget and the charm from it.

That and when they get weird. This film already starts off strangely before we get to the voodoo, with the fact after the initial set up the film will abruptly have sudden cuts to the leads eyes in among scenes setting up the antagonists, jarring as a result. With laughing and flashing in the audio-visual construction keeping one off guard in its charmingly quirky way, eventually the video effects kick in fully alongside how much of the film was greatly helped by thrift stores. Plastic skulls, coloured candles and textile skull masks among others do suggest a film built from cheap stores, in itself an aesthetic that would be worthy to exploit in cinema if you do not have the budget for anything more elaborate. This type of cinema has gained a cult for many due to the ingenuity of the creators, a sense of admiration between viewers to the creators that they were once viewers of horror films too but managed to find a way to make a film in their own back yards. The aeshtetic of films like this cannot also help but evoke that a lot of the resergence in interest in these films is as much nostalgia which can be set off, literally in a plasticated form of what Marcel Proust experienced, just by encountering some kitsch object used as a prop you had fond memories of having or seeing when you were younger. Besides, they even managed to acquire a real snake and probably treated it more humanely than some largely scale productions just by filming it by itself, among the many examples of how the Polonia brothers found solutions; you still witness it eating a real mouse, which will put off some, but there is probably more production value without anything more elaborate in seeing an actual snake flexing its head in inhuman ways, all alongside plastic ones being waved around in other scenes.

I have also developed a fascination with the scores for these films, as I had for horror films of a larger budget, and here, if ever there was a score that sounded like a mid nineties video game, Bad Magic had it. Lo-fi dronings; tropical New Age; MIDI rock; you have a gamut of tracks and I was compelled to them all. Even the unnervingly quaint music set to when someone is stabbed abruptly in the neck.

To be honest, Bad Magic's story is so basic, predictable to the point it is not interesting at all, that these little details and the tone is really what you should want to see this film for, as the story is so obvious that you would be bored out of your mind if it was not for how distinctly odd the presentation is on any budget. The Polonia brothers in general, from what I have seen, produced some strange creations, belying how my introduction to them, through Feeders (1996), felt not a real experience of their quality or is a film in itself worthy reinvestigation from a light of greater interest in these type of films. I admire if anything how idiosyncratic they were; even with a Mark Polonia film after his brother's passing, Bride of the Werewolf (2019), even if I was not impressed by it you have the charm of a film set in the middle of Eastern European but entirely shot in the middle of the United States, that not being an issue for him in the slightest. Here you have such examples of this from one of the them playing a john to a sex worker, or in what is clearly another film of theirs being used on a TV, has one of them gleefully looking on, bearing in mind the Polonia brothers were identical twins, as the other is feed into a wood chipper.

They, not surprisingly, were horror fans whose sense of interest comes from real love, where they manage to cram in a Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in as bathroom reading material in one scene, showing their obsession but alongside their numerous little quirks along the way, such as toilet related trauma happening again when someone is bound by sentient toilet paper than stabbed by flying sentient knives. I still think, even in the late nineties, having voodoo as a dark power, like an old pulp story, is still problematic, especially as Wes Craven danced around this subject with greater subtlety (whether it worked or not) with The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). Thankfully, a lot of the film is less reducing this real religious practice into anything really offensive but an almost narcoleptic and weird VHS experience. It also has a sense of humour which helps, as really how could you take seriously a film where a character calls another a "cheeselicker" abruptly.

The film is also probably not meant to be seen when exhausted from a day at work as I was the first time viewing Bad Magic, falling in and out of near sleep with no fault to the film. Then again, it is probably appropriate as, whilst the predictable plot keeps some semblance of what is going on that helps, once you get to the video effects for astral projection by way of a starry black background and video effects, the narcoleptic effects whilst being half asleep was probably how films like this got their greatest power. You find yourself, as I did, in a finale in Hell eventually where the main demon claiming Renny's soul in a cute looking puppet with big teeth, whilst cats are being stroked ominously in close up is between torture and beheadings. For many this is not cinema, which is unfair. It is a world onto its own, and by that finale, it was as befittingly strange as one would hope for like a curious dream.

Abstract Spectrum: Lo-Fi/Psychotronic/Video Toaster/Weird

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