I remember watching this movie on videotape back when I lived with my mom – I remember me and the boys were watching it for the horror aspect of it but also for the big Tawny Kitaen shower scene – because we were in our teens and no one had seen anything like that in real life yet, sure on videos and old magazines but hey come on you know and then it was time for paydirt and wouldn’t you know it my mom walked right in the living room at that exact time and was all “what is this garbage” and ruined the moment for everyone booooooo. I also remember later that night simply rewinding the tape and making sure everything was properly analyzed before I had to take it back to the store down the street but hey whoo. Lastly my brains remember liking the movie in general and it not just being some schlocky shit about a oujiee board and a nude redhead but that I liked it. So one day I was rummaging through Amazon and found this and thought why not?

My initial thinking on watching this again was that this was about Kitaen and her legs and her hair and her running around in nothing but a man’s shirt and something about a Oujia board and something if i remember it right about a baby and something else or other but now I realize it’s more about the poor son of a bitch she’s engaged to who just can’t cry and doesn’t know how to love with a redheaded model thrown in there for good measure to show off her legs and her hair and her running around in nothing but a man’s shirt and i thought this was kind of a good movie – especially if you removed a bunch of the lame 80s shit that was in there during that culture time in America like really totally hang loose bros and dudes and i mean that’s just some totally rad psychic humor.

So our man there in the yellow and plaid is prone to wisecracking to offset his daddy and commitment issues as well as drinking hard liquor from the bottle just like his poor old drunk dad son of a bitch used to and he’s bagging the hot redhead even though he can’t cry or tell her he loves her. One night they’re hosting a party in their elegant apartment that seems awful ritzy for a drywall construction guy but there they are and along comes this smarmy dude who happens to be redhead’s ex-boyfriend and he besmirches our plaid guy’s name right there in front of everyone and then pops out his ouija board as a party trick and they contact the spirit of some dead kid. “They’re lousy spellers” he remarks to everyone as the planchette starts spinning around in a remarkable example of foreshadowing. “Also, never contact the spirits of the dead through the Ouija alone” the foreshadowing continues.

But wouldn’t you know it? Smartmouth Plaid makes a joke about someone’s dong or something and the spirit – David – gets pissed off and shit goes flying everywhere and then David slashes the ex-boyfriend’s expensive tires on his uppity upper class convertible and shit the bed it’s on now. Soon Plaid’s hatchet throwing construction dude bro is dead (in kind of a fun stunt) and the magician policeman is on the case and yep – she starts doing the board all by herself breaking all of the laws of god and man and soon there’s a spiritual intervention and a defenestration and uppity man and construction guy band together like they did when they were kids to try and stop whatever is tormenting the woman they both love. That’s right. He admits it. Just not to her. To her ex-lover and his ex-best friend. One night in a hotel room out by the cemetery.

Who was it that wrote the song “Out By The Cemetery Is Where I Opened Up My Heart”? Maybe not wrote it but who performed it as a group? Hmmm. Let me check The Eric Undead Ingenium Perfectus search machine. Oh yeah. It was a band called The Buddy Berry Corpse Revival who were popular on the old south (United States) graveyard tour circuits through Louisiana and South Carolina and Georgia back in the late 60s and early 70s. Oooh looks like they even played some graveyards here where I live. Maybe that’s how I heard of them. How did that song go?

It was after midnight and the owls were hootin’

The bats were flying and the possums scootin’

I drank a flask of your blood from a golden cup

And I felt right there (1,2) my heart open up

(Pause) (heartbeat)

I knew right then you were my only love, the moon was a slivered crest

My entire life had built to this point – when you ripped my heart from my chest

And I sang YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH

As my life slipped away and I rose from this earth!

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH

Come on baby bring forth my rebirth!

Huh. Look at this we even found the record sleeve:

But back to our movie.

Will our main man find and realize the love he’s been missing his entire life?? Will Kitaen’s shower scene upset interrupting mothers across the U.S.?? Will someone annoyingly smack their gum and talk about how rad things are?? Will a female put on a man’s outfit and chase someone around like she is possessed by the spirit of a deranged male killer??? Will that song I wrote get nominated for a Grammy??

Most of this and more in Witchboard (the 1986 version)!

FILED UNDER: NOT TOO BAD REALLY