Written & Directed By: Bruce Hickey
Starring: LeeAnne Baker, Michael Conte, Jacquie Fitz, George Anthony-Rayza, Andrew Bausili, Vicki Bell
Taglines: “It’s the Ghouls night out.”
“Beneath The Metropolis Is…”
STORY
A witch executed in New Amsterdam is reincarnated in modern day New York. Retrieving an amulet to contact Satan, she sets about capturing the souls of junkies, prostitutes and other low lives in order to resurrect her master. However, a priest, a cop and a young woman – reincarnation of her old enemies – stand in her way.
OPINION
I remember watching a trailer for this movie on an old VHS back in the 80s. Like a lot of trailers at the time, it was cheesy and low grade but I clearly remember seeing one sequence that stood out in my memory – the witch grows 6 breasts to feed her zombie-like servants. It was a striking image but sadly the movie proved disappointing when I eventually saw it on VHS a few years later. Recently, I’ve been rewatching a bunch of movies that I haven’t seen since the 80s, and I thought this was worth a second shot. Sadly, it’s just as bad as I remembered.
First of all, it’s a pretty amateur production. Few of the cast can really act, and the few that can (mainly the pretty good Jacquie Fitz) only have so much chance to carry the film. In fact, of the very few cast members with any other iMDB credits, only LeeAnne Baker (the witch) has anything substantial, and only then a few trashy movies made around the same time (most of which will probably be reviewed here at some point. The script is plodding – even at only 78 minutes, it really drags – and it barely has any story to speak of. We spend most of our time following the witch around as she acquaints herself with the seedier side of pre-Guiliani New York and has random encounters with the locals.
She mainly talks to people and convinces them to kill themselves or have sex with her so that she can steal their souls. Meanwhile, we follow an Italian-American cop and his attempts to woo an English reporter (Fitz) who has gotten on the trail of the case, and a priest whose charges at a drug rehabilitation centre are among the first to go. None of the subplots really go anywhere, but they do help break up the monotony. Apart from the aforementioned suckling scene, there’s not a lot of gore or much else of interest to separate it from much of the direct to video fodder of the age, especially considering that it came from the famously cheap Charles Band’s pre-Full Moon project, Empire Pictures.
Rating: 
AVAILABILITY
As far as I’m aware, this movie has never been released on DVD. However, if you want to watch it and can’t track down a VHS, it’s linked to download through the Tachyon City blog. This will probably be removed when/if the movie is ever officially released, and I’ll replace this message with a link to purchase the movie…