A man and a woman are having a dispute in a parking lot. The man hits the woman. Two guys see all of this happen and come to the aid of the woman. Words are exchanged, but eventually the abusive man leaves the scene. One of the two guys offers to give the girl a ride home. However, it turns out that the woman was shacking with the evil dude. Being the good Samaritan with absolutely no alterior motives (yeah right), our protagonist offers to take the woman to his place to stay for awhile.

After a couple weeks, a relationship starts to develop between the two. The girl is a little strange though. She has a mysterious past, she can accurately read palms, and she has supernatural healing powers. It gets even crazier than this however. It turns out that she is a member of a witch coven, and this coven will do whatever it takes to get her back. This, my friends, is Spellbinder!

Spellbinder is from the 80’s and has some fairly famous actors (Kelly Preston, Tim Daly) and a good budget. Despite this though, it is still relatively obscure. That’s a shame because it’s a good movie. The acting is good. The storyline is intriguing. The pace is good. The ending is good. Traditional men are treated to a boobshot, while traditional women are yet again left out in the cold. There isn’t much gore, but there are some pretty good effects.

There are two quirky scenes that I have to tell you about. One is in a mall. A coven escapee is trying to get in contact with the main guy. He sees him at the top of an escalator. He hastily rushes past some people to climb up the escalator. He passes a woman pushing a baby carriage. The woman takes exception to his discourtesy. She grabs him from behind and forcefully pulls him down on his ass for his troubles without saying a word. WTF?

The other quirky scene involves the woman telling the man that she likes a particular song after hearing it for at most two seconds. Then they play more of the song and it’s that terrible pseudo rock exclusively from 80’s movies with no vocals, just a guitar soloing over another guitar and keyboard. Terrible stuff. Anyway, that’s kinda weird.

To summarize, this is a good movie. I like witch coven movies. The idea of a whole underground world of sorcery and evil happening in the modern day is very intriguing to me. Throw in some Satanic rituals and I’m hooked. The storyline has been done a time or two, but this fact doesn’t take away from the overall quality of the film.

There is some 80’s cheese involved (hair, music, fashion), but if you’re like me, that just makes it better. It’s a solid flick and you should check it out. I give this 7 out of 10 vulgar displays of supernatural witchcraft power when removing a turkey from the oven.

This review was fueled by Sam Adams Cream Stout and the soothing sounds of Gerry Rafferty.