Friday, April 21, 2017

Psyched by the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (1973)



Cinematic explorers who get their kicks finding the worst movies ever made will dig the supernatural-themed sex flick Psyched by the 4D Witch. The movie comprises an 80-minute hallucination, because filmmaker Victor Luminera—who never made another movie—employs so many acid-trip superimpositions, in-camera visual FX, and swirling colors that the picture resembles the background images from a Pink Floyd concert, only with nudie shots thrown in every so often. Had Luminera provided a soundtrack as bizarre as the visuals, Psyched by the 4D Witch might have become a minor landmark in experimental filmmaking. Alas, the voiceover-driven audio tells a linear story that grounds the images in dimwitted salaciousness. Protagonist Cindy, a girl-next-door blonde wearing Mary Pickford curls, complains about sexual hangups until she discovers a magical connection to Abigail, a witch from the fourth dimension who manifests as a pair of free-floating eyes. Abigail explains that she’ll take Cindy into extrasensory realms of carnal satisfaction, with each trip to the fourth dimension triggered by the command, “Let’s fantasy-fuck now!” At first, Cindy is reluctant, hence a line of dialogue that’s disturbing on many levels: “And I’ll still remain a virgin for my daddy?” The fourth-dimension humping scenes feature grody shots of Cindy stripping, guys (and girls) grinding away, and lots of visual noise layered atop the basic imagery, the better to accompany freaky sound collages. Luminera also subjects viewers to several iterations of the film’s atrocious fuzz-rock theme song. Offering an interminable hybrid of smut and trippiness, Psyched by the 4D Witch is nothing but tarted-up sleaze or an amateur film exercise gone horribly wrong, if not both.

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