The Erotic Witch Project 1 & 2 (2000)

Director: John Bacchus

Screenplay: [Erotic Witch 1] John Bacchus, Michael Raso and Joe Ned / [Erotic Witch 2] John Bacchus

Cast: [Erotic Witch 1] Darian Caine as Darian; Laurie Wallace as Katie; Victoria Vega as Vikki / [Erotic Witch 2] A.J. Khan as Dr. A.J. Khan; Darian Caine as Darian; Katie Jordan as Barbara; Rio as Dee Dee; Allanah Rhodes as the Coma Patient

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #243-4

 

Yes, I have had a portion of my own faeces...

Countless parodies (and rip-offs) exist of the original Blair Witch Project. A softcore parody not only exists for the film, but there are at least two, with the Jim Wynorski The Bare Wench Project (2000) series, which lasted for a further three films, than this has three sequels. The first two being covered here for this franchise is for a couple reasons. Alongside the practical issues of trying to cover softcore erotica, entirely designed around titillation with only plots to paste the scenes together, they follow a progression from each other alongside being shot within the same year, which is parodying the Blair Witch Project when it was a huge hit only to follow a year later with a very disappointing higher budgeted sequel. They are artefacts of a yesteryear; not only is the softcore erotic aspect not being covered but merely to be talked of, as something that specific in preference for each viewer is pointless to critique, but even if that subject does have to be talked of, the really interesting part of how The Blair Witch Project was such a huge pop culture phenomenon at this time it touches into a variety of other areas, such as a specific era of straight-to-DVD softcore. This pair of films, from a company called Seduction Cinema, shot in New Jersey, comes from a specific wave of softcore made for the then-new straight-to-video market.

This wave is one I vividly remember even when too young to rent these as, in the United Kingdom, this wave of cinema which had its own stars, Erin "Misty Mundae" Brown probably the most famous who worked with actresses who are in this double bill, these films were released and could be found in Global Video, the equivalent to the American Blockbusters we also had, the films found on the highest or lowest shelves, titles with bright red boxes on the covers warning they were for adults only, alongside mainstream releases and the early days of cult cinema where companies like Vipco sold with lurid covers and taglines the likes of The Nostril Picker (1993), another of the strange films found in such stores.

Time is going to raise a curious question of how we look to these films and their stars, especially as whilst the original Erotic Witch film has the perfect parody to work with, a micro-budget smash hit set in real woodlands, going to part two, sent in a grey walled building masquerading as a mental asylum where the only character from the first film is sent too as a sex crazed mess, you are dealing with none of the sheen of classical sexploitation or hardcore erotic cinema, but the shot-on-digital era of the early 2000s. This era could find itself like the shot-on-video genre film movement gaining a cult fan base, but works explicitly about sex have their own hurdles to deal with just for the fact that, whether prudishness or disinterest, most people want to watch genre films which, if they have any sex, they are just part of it. Ahead of time, these are not great parodies of the source material - they are curious works, both to think seriously of rather than dismiss, to think of the people (especially the actresses) as working figures rather than dismiss them, and for how odd these films are, especially when we get to Kimbo the gorilla...

These hurdles present the issue, as much a hesitance, in covering titles like this even if this is part of the Blair Witch history. You are dealing with both work entirely meant to be titillating, to masturbate to if I am blunt, more than story, and the issue of the audience. I could feel uncomfortable covering this if it led to readers viewing me as a tasteless heterosexual male, more so as the point of these two films is explicitly sex scenes between women only, a sexual fantasy used for male viewers and in this case explicitly targeting a male audience as the audience in how it is depicted. Note I did not say "lesbian", which comes with a whole issue in that the term in air quotes, which denotes one's real sexuality and definition for themselves, has been used in pornography and erotica in a way that is problematic. The idea of such scenes in erotic is not problematic in itself, but in terms of how it is depicted, and even that is subjective in a way we oversimplify. Even questioning whether I can cover these is problematic in itself as it makes presumptions - when there is possibly a gay or bisexual woman who has watched and enjoyed these films, who could roll her eyes at me having this moment of awkward existentialism rather than getting on with this review. This is why the concept of the male gaze feels completely inadequate in dealing with the subject for me, an oversimplified concept for tackling the likes of horror cinema and erotica as nowadays, the audience is a vast one in gender, sexuality and gender having become vastly more complex, including transgender politics, to consider. Yes, this is still a review where we will get into some deeply silly stuff, but this is worth raising ahead of time.

Here especially I would argue three to four gazes exist at least, which makes simple erotica, entirely around a witch in Bacchusville in New Jersey who makes people feel horny in her prescience, more complicated to debate with seriousness. One is the gaze of a LGBTQ woman; second is a non-gendered eye, trying to stand back and scrutinise images or art which has sexual interactions between women, cis- or transgender, only, which can be argued to be difficult or even impossible to do; three is the male gaze, not taking into considering the viewer's sexuality which is a factor too; the fourth is the market which sells erotic imagery of women with other women which I would argue is entirely separate to even a male gaze, even a male gaze attracted to such imagery. The fourth gaze is the one which, not for this review to be talked of, but has to be considered in the wider scheme, as this in itself is where biases and perceptions are effected in itself. It is not just what a target audience buys where the considerations of problematic depictions of women, trivialisation, and just openly crass material has to be considered, but also the market which creates the product to sell this, as it has been allowed to be dictate what sells more.

If you stick to the template, and leave the politics to the side, this pair of films is very amateur wacky softcore. The first is a straight ahead parody, where in November 1999, three college co-eds (Darian Caine, Laurie Wallace and Victoria Vega) go to Bacchusville, New Jersey to find the Erotic Witch, the tape found two weeks later. It is as loose a parody as you can get, that in 1812 the erotic witch was a very sexual and pansexual woman tied up in the woods when the locals wished her gone. This never attempts a feminist reading of this at all - it is merely central to one of the many type of erotic and hardcore genres in existence, horror parodies, which vary from the Michael Jackson Thriller music video, Driller (1984), or The Hole (2003), the gay parody of the Ring franchise where watching a cursed video tape turns you gay in seven days afterwards.  

The film knows the joke at points and at others, it feels improvised to a sense half-baked. At first, you have the interviews of the original film, of stereotype creepy guys here. Inexplicably a redneck parody or two live in New Jersey, including one nearly slipping he was having sex with his sister, but seeing amateur actors in fake beards (throughout the duo) are amusing. The film does, as is always the issue with some of these erotic horror films, dangerously veers at first to the horniness of a possessed victim causing them to cross personal boundaries with others. An uncomfortable aspect of a lot of erotica for me as how forceful people are to have relationships with others, as happens to Darian Caine's character when she is possessed first in the woods, something the film has to quickly cross away from. Especially by the second film, when you get to the curse almost being a horny virus, the fantasy is there but ever since David Cronenberg made his debut Shivers (1975), about literally parasites that turn people into horny zombies, I have had thoughts of how that film spoilt the fantasy by emphasising how grotesque it could be in reality to have such a fantasy or even a sex utopia. Maybe that is just being cynical and ruining this fantasy, but Cronenberg was always ahead of his time.

There is some of the humour, the low hanging fruit variety, that this had probably a better received sequel than Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), the openness to parody the sequel the same year it was released ballsy in an admirable way. The sequel does not really follow it at all, but some references do stay. The opening to Joe Berlinger's film, better than the actual movie plot for the original film, is here, where tourists have invaded Bacchusville and spend their time just masturbating together in the open. Or that you have interviews with people like the disgruntled police chief or a tourist (in a ski mask and fake moustache) talking of how he is there to deal with erectile dysfunction with the help of the Erotic Witch. Even the plot point of even video recordings being deceptive is played for one joke, blackmail material on tape turning out just to have two women playing table tennis instead.

The main issue with covering either film is that, only over seventy minutes each, most of their scenes are the sex scenes, choreographed between the actresses, the first playing to the restrictions of the found footage genre of two cameras the co-eds have, the second film having multiple ones (and a CCTV in a room) to work with. No non-diegetic music exists baring a heartbeat sound in places, which is a weird thing to consider. The sequences are prolonged, and they do not vary either, baring the end of the second film where, with five actresses instead of three, there is an orgy sequence to conclude the film, which alongside a scene of a man in a gorilla suit playing cards with an actor playing a male detective, certainly ends these two films, if there were never further sequels, with a spectacle. They are softcore but by the end of the second film, it is surprising these films were not actually hardcore movies by how explicit they are. Obviously, with respect to their female casts, if you are not prepared to go that far in a film, even these films have actresses, whatever you think of the performances, a hell of a lot braver in baring themselves (literally) than most people.

Even this feels weird to type as, due to the issues in how comfortable societies are in talking about real sex in art, and the whole issue of gender bias and pornography's existence, even stating these things may be off-putting to some readers of this without getting into the eyebrow raising, crass type of review language you can get in actually reviews of softcore and hardcore movies. Also trying to critically judge a film entirely about sex, designed for arousal first, is a strange circumstance to have to work with, which adds to this. Really, it is a bizarre sensation to write notes about a softcore sex film entirely about sex, rather than plot, regardless of what I am sexually attracted to; you legitimately feel like an alien studying human culture if any reader looking at this review tried it depending on the work.

Your judgement in the "erotica" is entirely, for each reader, their reaction or interest in that area, which is for any viewer of these films to decide. The one thing to comment about is that, barring one actress in the second film, one named Rio whose appearance is exaggerated*, everyone here actually looks and acts like women you may bump into in New Jersey bar, with their tattoos and piercings, which is a positive. One of the accusations of pornography, alongside its sleazy underbelly, is their unrealistic images of the body and sex, to which these very real women being onscreen is to be praised. This rises as well, if you actually look into these figures in front of and behind the camera, the people who worked with Seduction Cinema are still human beings. For the women especially this should be considered, when sexism could arise to dismiss them for merely being in these and a few straight-to-video horror films, could easily happen.

Darian Caine, who appears in both films, is prolific in these films and straight-to-video genre movies from the era. In part 2, alongside being the most charismatic figure, you have A.J. Kahn; born in India to an Indian mother and Irish father, she plays a doctor with some likably nerdish charisma when introduced in the film, but alongside her own prolific career in these softcore films, her IMDB page credits her to having previously being a professional dominatrix, which whether factually accurate or not really undercuts these films just being dismissible grot by forcing you to think these are regular working women in the entertainment industry. Thinking beyond the surface, to the fact ordinary people who watch these films like us also act in them, especially those for these Seduction Cinema productions these are part of, opens a lot more to consider for them.

Some may be put off by the starkness of the sex scenes, but again this is entire subjective, unless one wants to ask whether it is pleasant to be laid on New Jersey woodland floor or a rock naked.  (It was probably cold outside in the shooting too, as was especially the case with the second film, explicitly set at Christmas and with snow outside.) What I can comment on is that both films have very odd senses of humour. The first film recreates the structure of the first Blair Witch film, but with changes like porn magazines and dildos being left outside the tent, or very bluntly sexually wood decorations instead of menacing stacks of rocks. A blown up doll is found up in a tree as they are apparently funny in context. Stranger for me, set up in the first film and eventually being called Kimbo in the second film, is a gorilla rampaging on the loose, played by someone in a very cheap gorilla costume. In the first film, they are credited as being played by one of the script writers Joe Ned. Kimbo is never involved in any of the sex scenes thankfully, barring the questionable choice of having someone make monkey noises behind the camera during one of the scenes.

My mind, rather than just dismiss it as a dumb running gag, whilst it clearly is, also could not help to evoke Thundercrack! (1975). Curt McDowell's two and a half hour film, seen uncut, is infamous as a cult hit, a hardcore haunted house film which is openly pansexual in content - heterosexual, gay and bisexual sex scenes - whilst being an elaborate horror comedy. Effectively a lewd version of James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), it has cult avant-garde filmmaker (and the film's screenwriter) George Kuchar in a role where, in a dress, he eventually marries the female gorilla that has been on the loose in that film's narrative since its start. Thundercrack in every way is a superior film, both for what strange and imaginative work you can do even with explicitly sexual content, but I think that probably softened me to Kimbo subconsciously. The character, which is just someone in a tatty gorilla suit, is from the same era where some truly strange things happened in these softcore films, like Jim Wynorski's Busty Cops (2004) having the titular lead's boss being a talking llama. Whether it is surviving being shot by a police detective, humping the sex doll at night in the words, or playing cards, sometimes dumb and embarrassingly slapdash comedy does work when it involves this character. My only disappointment was not exploiting a joke for the second film, where technology allows him to speak through a translator. Thus we learn this is a gorilla who likes twerking his own nipples, making him a lovably and progressive figure in his preferred kinks.

The second film is egregious in some very unfunny characters unfortunately for contrast, namely a female reporter (played by Katie Jordan) with her Eastern European cameraman, who talks of an awful experience in a gulag. At first, they seem a funny bickering comedy pair to have, only to become annoying in their hastily improvised bickering. In general, like those characters, there is a bit throughout these films which feel ill thought-out, where you can roll your eyes and ask, rather than the sexual content, why some ideas where wise to have. The crying confessional scene in the first film, parodying Blair Witch, eventually becomes a close up of a bared breast in the dark, which lasts a really strange and lasts a long length of time. Sound track cues are also perplexing. Heartbeat sounds are the closest to music in these films as mentioned, and the sound of the sea and seagulls in a masturbation scene in the New Jersey woodlands is just questionable. More questionable however, is in the orgy sequence having pig noises on the soundtrack. In mind to the point that it is the most explicit and intense scene, whether you had women, heterosexual couples or gay men acting the scene out, pig noises are acquired taste even if part of a mass witches' curse corruption, only for a really specific kink for a really specific target viewer when, for most viewers, probably just having five really attractive figures in said scene would sell without suddenly feeling the soundtrack from a Throbbing Gristle track has invaded it.

There are two more of these films afterwards - one a period prequel with Erin Brown herself, the other called Lust in Space: The Erotic Witch Project IV (2005) indicating even softcore gets to the point like other horror franchises you have to set them in science fiction. These films clearly churned out alongside all the others from the company who produced these, but in their own way, like the independent regional genre films of the seventies and eighties, and the underground video boom into the nineties,  Seduction Cinema by itself was at this prolific time for in that same ballpark. As regional as you can get, from New Jersey, for every parody they made like The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String (2003), they made many horror parodies, which indicates their film tastes. Without the older mystique of older softcore films, made on digital or in their starkness films which could be dismissed, these films do have a disadvantage in how to view them even as cultural artefacts, but they are curiosities in even how their construction is even exposed, such as one actress, playing one in a coma woken up, is abruptly introduced in a scene to make up numbers.

The more interesting thing for me from these types of films is these people making them. Figures like Darian Caine are visibly enjoying playing the possessed version of herself in a cheap straightjacket, chewing the scenery. That the script occasionally has some curiously memorable moments which make films like these time capsules, such as the suggesting Warren Beatty has likely slept with everyone in New York City, as esoteric and to the era it was made in as any joke can be. Even the director is fascinating to read into, just for the fact back in the day John Bacchus made a film called The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989). Eyebrow raising yes, but reading his filmography, Bacchus' career even under pseudonyms can be tracked through an entire time in genre film cinema, from independent and underground work shot on video in the eighties into the nineties, to someone who managed to ride the wave of softcore films like the Erotic Witch Project into the 2000s. He was also working in horror as well including a series of films where each word ends with the letter "Z", like Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006). I do not view either the Erotic Witch Project films, the first two, as being great parodies in the slightest, but they are interesting to see an industry that was there, with these reoccurring actresses and directors, which faded away. Softcore is still being made, still appearing in the few surviving high street stores in the United Kingdom still in spite of hardcore porn being easy to steal online. This particularly wave and these actresses form a part of forgotten history that, traversing the Blair Witch parodies, is fascinating to have stepped into on this path.  

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1) And even then, that is not to dismiss one figure onscreen next to everyone else, nor suggest a reverse body slander either before anyone raises this. If anything her costuming, even for this film, really exaggerated more, if by the standards of nurse costumes more likely to be found in an Ann Summers, a store here in the British Isles, hers is definitely the least likely to pass uniform regulations less for the skimpiness but how flimsy the material looks practically.