Pat’s Horror Picks # 24 “SPELLBINDER”

This movie is so scary, it stuns me that it isn’t even on dvd! Janet Greek’s creepy, underrated SPELLBINDER should have a bigger rep and yet, no one seems to have heard of it.

Jeff Mills (Tim Daly), a Los Angeles lawyer, is on his way home from s night with friends, when he sees a beautiful young woman (Kelly Preston) arguing with her domineering, ponytailed boyfriend. Things get heated and the guy strikes her, so Jeff intervenes, rescues her and takes her home. The boyfriend warns Jeff about getting involved.

Taking her home, Jeff starts to fall in love with the girl, Miranda, and a relationship blooms. She’s a great cook,the life of any party, and a great asset to Jeff’s life and career. But there’s also something about her that Miranda isn’t telling, like when Jeff’s assistant sees her take a turkey and hot pan out of the oven without mitts. He’s also starting to have nightmares.

Jeff learns that Miranda belonged to a coven of witches and they want her back.When he refuses, the lead witch, Mrs. White, Miranda’s mother (Audra Lindley) shows up at his law firm and makes a scene. She then quietly tells Jeff they dug up his parents’ corpses and are using their bones in Satanic rituals. Lindley, best known as Mrs. Roeper on THREE’S COMPANY, is wonderfully unnerving as the witch.

Jeff decides to outsmart the cult, even enlisting one of his clients, a survivalist who owes him a favor. The more reads like a great Stephen King story you overlooked in NIGHT SHIFT. The script by Tracy Torme is superb–Torme also did the underrated alien abduction movie, A FIRE IN THE SKY, but this movie twists you to a truly scary climax.

Janet Greek does a great job directing, you feel a slow building creepy menace that pays off. Towards the middle of the film, she even makes it feel a little claustrophobic, as Jeff feels the cult’s grip on him tightening. Tim Daly, Kelly Preston as the mysterious Miranda, Rick Rossovich, Anthony Crivello as Aldys, the ponytailed man and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as a shady cop have never been better.

So why doesn’t this movie have a bigger following or even a big dvd release? Janet Greek was married to super producer Joe Wizan and the rumnor is he didn’t want her working and deliberately curtailed it’s release. Nonetheless, this is a cool, scary film and should be seen!

-Pat Jankiewicz

For those of you keeping score at home, our list has covered:
1.) “Just Before Dawn”
2.) “Mutant Vampire Zombies in The ‘Hood!”
3.) “Abominable”
4.) “Spiders”
5.) “Frozen”
6.) “Mr. Brooks”
7.) “The Blob”
8.) “The Vindicator”
9.) “Rawhead Rex”
10.) “Rampage”.
11.)”Deadly Eyes”
12.) “The Car”
13.) “Frailty”
14.) “The Crawling Eye”.
15.) “War Of The Gargantuas”.
16.)”Splinter”
17.)”Rise: Blood Hunter”
18.)”SSss”
19.) “The Naked Jungle”
20.) “The Omega Man”
21.) “Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural’
22.) “The Kindred”
23.) “Vampyres”
24.) “Spellbinder”