Necromancy. A look at the darkest corners of humanity. Necromancy. A terrifying journey through the history of witchcraft and sorcery. Necromancy. Orson Welles! Necromancy. You won't believe what sights are shown in this horrifying feature. Necromancy. Unlike anything you could ever imagine. And so on.
Necromancy is a film that I built up in my own mind for decades, having seen the trailer for it on so many VHS rentals back in the 1980s. I "knew" two things about it. It was a horror movie. It featured Orson Welles. Only now, an entire four decades later, can I categorically state that it's also really bad.
Pamela Franklin plays Lori Brandon, a sensitive and troubled woman who has to move across the country with her husband, Frank (Michael Ontkean), when he's given a great new job offer. Lori has good reason to be sensitive and troubled, having very recently lost a child who was stillborn, and everything that happens throughout the rest of the movie seems designed to play on her maternal instincts, especially when it comes to the eccentric Cato (Welles) detailing his pursuit of necromancy in the hope of one day resurrecting his dead son, Timothy.
Directed by Bert I. Gordon (who made his name with much more outlandish, and entertaining, movies that earned him the nickname Mr. BIG), and co-written with Gail March (her first feature, and one of only two she is credited for), Necromancy is a bit silly and, worst of all, a bit dull. It's one of those movies trying to impress by showing the dark arts juxtaposed with modern life in America, although these things often still take place in the more isolated communities, but makes the mistake of going for hallucinatory moments and paranoia ahead of paranoia and suffocation. The third act is particularly weak, and that's surely when things should have been building up to something as dark and memorable as we were promised by that foreboding and chilling trailer (well, it seemed foreboding and chilling to the child version of me, but now it actually looks pretty much in line with the film, and I know why we didn't rush to rent it).
Franklin tries her best in a role that requires her to be on edge and wide-eyed throughout, but she's not helped by the fact that the movie cannot be carried by anyone else. Ontkean doesn't have a lot to do once he's set off the main chain of events, Teddy Quinn has to walk around and look a bit dazed as the spirit of Timothy, and Welles acts as if he will give his all for one take of every line he has to utter before then sitting down to snort with derision at the schlock he's agreed to star in for the sake of a (hopefully) decent pay packet.
Necromancy is not good. It's probably already forgotten, if it was known at all, by the majority of film fans. It held a special place in my heart for years though, and I can't say that I fully regret finally tracking it down to give it a watch. It feels as if I managed to revisit a childhood home and find some long-lost favourite toy that I can now see was just a dirt-covered and mangled Boglin I found in a field. Nobody, including myself, can pretend it is great, but nostalgia means that I cannot completely dismiss the effect it had on me.
4/10
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