Spellbinder Retro Review

Spellbinder Retro Review

Year: 1988

Stars: Tim Daly, Kelly Preston and Rick Rossovich
Directed: Janet Greek
Running Time:  99 Mins Approx.

 

Have I got 80’s b-movie classic gold for you here today Spellbinder a brilliant late 80’s film with a nasty shock ending that when I first watched this a good few years back when I was thirteen or fourteen I was like wow.

So today we travel back in time to a land when movies were a shot in the dark and a dime a dozen, a time when anything made can become a cult icon today. Unfortunately this movie did not do amazingly well at the time of its release.
Being as the films old I also cannot find the budget for the movie, what I was able to find was conflicting reports on how much the movie made from Wikipedia only $660,000 and IMDB also a paltry just over $1million.
Even for an 80’s film this wasn’t a lot as its budget would have been anywhere from 500k to 2million that’s all the technical mumbo jumbo on with the film.

Janet Greek directs this she’s got quite a few TV series credentials under her belt, from episodes of Max Headroom to Babylon 5 episodes and a made for TV movie, River of Souls.

When Los Angeles attorney Jeff Mills, Tim Daly who does superman’s voice in a lot of animated DTV offerings not only that but a lot of series bit parts and TV movies as well he has quite an impressive list to him. His friend Derek Clayton, Rick Rossovich who stared in a hell of a lot of stuff throughout the 80’s. Film wise most notably as Matt Buchanan. Jeff and Derek seem to have a strained friendship throughout this film right from the outset. They rescue a young beautiful woman, Miranda Reed, Kelly Preston (rocking a brunette look) whose film and TV career has been non-stop since, not surprising she has a strong performance in here probably the best and she’s a real good looking woman too.
So as said they have rescued her from an apparently abusive boyfriend Derek is cut in the process. Talking Jeff realises Miranda has no home so he offers her to stay at his house.
Jeff unknowing becomes involved with Miranda and the web of intrigue that follows her which further drives a wedge into his friendship with Derek. But as the two become lovers, Jeff learns that Miranda is on the run from the witches’ coven (to which she belongs). Got to love witchcraft films there’s not enough of them around, one of my favourites from around this time as well is warlock though that’s for another time.

The coven apparently wants Miranda back as a sacrifice at the winter solstice. She must come to them of her own free will, and the coven try to force her into doing so, using sorcery to taunt and terrify the two of them. Miranda tells Jeff of her situation, but not the entire truth, and Jeff willingly helps Miranda out of her troubles, but creates his own.

Which by the end of the movie these troubles have all been a big set up as means to an end as the final gruesome, very nasty trick is pulled. As I said I really felt cheated and quite gutted by the end of this film and even though I was only 13-14 at the time it genuinely surprised me.
How does this film fair the test of time?
Well re-watching this made me realise the film is really predictable at some points, thankfully at no point until near the end would you ever get an inkling that what happens would happen even now.

Acting wise the film has some weak and some strong points it’s clear who outshines others in this film. Kelly is obviously one of the strongest followed closely by Tim, Rick is a close contender for the second spot, possibly spoilt by not being a fantastically written character. Everyone else in the movie is just b-movie fodder though. A few shine through the rest are middling to mediocre.

Effects wise you can’t expect a lot from a low budget 80’s film, 88 to be exact it would only be a few years later some ground breaking CGI would emerge. Take the t1000 in T2 only two years and a half later.

So this film relies a lot on off camera and sleight of hand with some other early film effects techniques thrown in the mix for example the initial knife fight you don’t see a cut its only implied by sound and acting, there’s not even any blood on the knife.
A lot of the effects are just implied in this movie in this way, which isn’t a bad thing as some of the crappy effects we see in other big motion films of the era detract somewhat from their likability these days.
In the 80’s or when I first watched this film I would have given it a solid four star rating. In my sage like 30’s and how the film has aged I’ll give it a understandable knocked down 3 star rating I still enjoyed it just a few things grated me this time. Hope you enjoyed our Retro review!