Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart



Teenage Pete and his girlfriend Nora drive out to the woods one Valentine’s Day night for a romantic moonlight stroll and maybe a little more *wink wink nudge nudge*. But things don’t go as planned when Pete winds up unconscious, Nora mysteriously goes missing, and then Pete finds himself covered in blood and charged with her murder. Everyone is ready to write the kid off as a crazy killer, but thankfully Pete’s sister Lily knows that he’s innocent. Only problem is, no one seems willing to listen to her. So she employs the help of private legal defense William Spanner to take on her brother’s case. Will initially wants nothing to do with it, but when they find a matchbook at the scene of the crime from a local club called Coven, his interest is piqued and he’s quickly plunged into the mystery surrounding a stripper named Belladonna and her creepy manager, Santara.


Oh, he’s one of those types of managers. I see.

Welp, I got my hopes up after watching Witchcraft III, but the series basically did a ‘one step forward, five steps back’ scenario when it comes to Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart. Because, dear GODS, does this movie stink. Like, “pee-YEW!” levels of badness. And I don’t just mean that it’s horribly cheesy, or that it’s got some weird parts in it. Because it certainly has those things too, I fully expected that. No, when I say ‘bad”, in this context I mean that this one is pretty bad on just about EVERY level. In fact, I’m confident that it’s the worst of the bunch so far. And considering how pitiful the other films were, that’s really saying something.



For starters, the summary for the movie that you’re likely going to read from multiple locations, including the streaming services and IMDB, says, and I quote: “Rock musicians are selling their souls to the devil for fame and fortune. An attorney with magical powers attempts to stop it.” Did you read and get all that? Good. Now forget it, because I’m here to tell you that it’s WRONG.

Issue #1: none of these people are rock musicians. Not even close. In fact it’s not even centered around rock, it’s centered around a JAZZ club. And the musical number you DO hear in there, isn’t even all that good (the musicians are fine, just not the song…or the singer…). So if you’re expecting some story centered around sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. The closest you get to “rock” is the song the tattooed bartender sings when no one else is around. And he…was pretty good, actually. I could have listened to more of him. But it still wasn’t rock n’ roll-y, so my point still stands.



Issue #2: while people are (reportedly) selling their souls, it’s not for fame or fortune, and it’s not even to the devil. Santara is just another warlock like Will (the only other one, he claims), a point which is stated multiple times in the film. But his clients? Neither rich, nor famous. One bystander does try to contend that Belladonna is a “star”, and it is true that I have never once known of a stripper who needed both a personal bodyguard AND a chauffeur. But being the headliner at a seedy strip club does not a “star” make, no matter what the movie tries to tell you.


Yup, definitely ‘star’ material.

And finally, Issue #3: at no point does Will try to use his magic to stop any of the nonsense going on. In fact, just like in the earlier films, he’s steadfastly against using magic to combat anything, because he’s still being a weeny, and is scared that doing so will make him turn evil and junk. So instead of using magic he just kills the bad guy the old fashioned way: by pulling his heart right out through his rib-cage. I’m still not 100% sure how pulling bodily organs out of your enemies is supposed to somehow be LESS evil then simply using a spell to kill them, but whatever helps you sleep at night, William.


Nope. Nothing evil about this. No sir-ee-bob…

Second, the story, if you can even call it that, is not only ridiculous and plodding, but also often nonsensical. For some reason they decided to go for more of a “Noir-ish mystery” for this installment, so like Will, you the viewer get to slowly figure out what’s going on along with him. And boy, does all of this happen slooooowly. As in, they only had enough story to cover half an hour, and then they filled the rest of the time with nudity, sex, musical numbers, tropes, and Will’s blank face staring at shit, and hoped that you wouldn’t notice their sleight of hand. But most of that, I can forgive. What I can not forgive, however, is that even after you figure out what’s going on at the end, none of it really makes a damn lick of sense. As if the film’s two writers were working on separate sides of the continent, never spoke, and only had vague summaries of the other scenes the other was working on. Or it could be that they were writing it and trying to tie all their plot points together, WHILE they were filming it. Either way, the story is a mess and is filled with multiple questions and plot holes.


Very subtle, movie.

For instance, you’ve got this dude buying souls and the film CLAIMS it’s for fame and fortune. In fact, the whole subplot is based on The Blues Legend (which the film brings up!), which was popularized by influential jazz musician Robert Johnson, who told a story about going to a certain crossroads in Mississippi at midnight, encountering a mysterious stranger who took his guitar, tuned it and, for the price of his soul, gave his guitar back, giving him mastery of said instrument.

Now, that is a REAL, honest-to-god legend amongst the jazz community and an actual story Johnson told (though it very well may have originated from an earlier artist), and there are even a couple of places in Mississippi that claim to be THE fabled crossroads mentioned in the legend. AND the film even brings up this tale and tries to tie it to the story by implying that Santara is the mysterious stranger, AKA “the devil” (or demon, whatever) at the crossroads. Which is all well and good, because that’s a neat concept and I actually really like that…at least until you think about it for more than half a second. Why? Because you’re only introduced to three of Santara’s “clients”: the tattooed bartender, Belladonna, and one other chick. So, a nameless liquor swinger, a stripper, and…you know, I don’t even know what that last one even does. But it sure ain’t anything fancy or flashy. So I’ve got to ask: Where’s the fame and fortune promised? Cause all I really see are a couple of club musicians, and I’m not even sure if the bartender dude even has a gig at the club. Which begs the question, what the fuck did these people actually sell their souls for? Some recording time and…what exactly? Cause I’m not seeing much. So either Santara is the most pitiful warlock/demon EVER, because he can’t even fulfill a basic contract. Or he’s the smartest one ever, because he keeps finding dimwits to sell their souls to him for basically nothing. Either way, I’m very confused about the motivations going on here.


I mean, this IS a step up from stripper, but still…

But that’s par for the course with this film, because nobody really makes any sense, and all the character’s actions and dialogue in this movie are simply god awful. Will keeps trying to act like a good guy by wanting to getting justice for his client and by pretending to be all professional. But what really ends up happening is that he (1) stalks a stripper, (2) hides in a closet and watches her get raped while doing nothing to stop it, (3) has sex with said stripper in an elevator a day later, (4) hits on his female client, (5) pervs on his client by peeping on her through her windows when he gets rejected and… Wait, THIS is supposed to be our hero, right? Did he have some midlife crisis when Charlotte dumped him or something (so much for that ‘never letting her go’ comment from the last film, eh Will)? I don’t know, but he can’t seem to decide whether he wants to save people, perv on them, or simply go on a date.


Would you KINDLY make up your mind?!

And the other characters really aren’t any better. Poor Belladonna comes across as a bipolar mess. “Help me, Will! No! You’re useless! Go away! No, wait! Come back! Let’s boink in the freight elevator! I could really use your help! No! Stay away! I never want to see you again!” Jeebus Cripes, it’s like they’re trying to make me watch someone play Pong on the highest difficulty level. Thank god the movie ended, or all this back and forth might have given me whiplash.


At least she had good taste in undies…

And that’s not even considering any of the extra miscellaneous garbage in this movie. Why is there a telephone booth on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere?


The fuck….?

Why is Will’s office filled with statues of waterfowl?




What’d he get, a two-for-one special or some shit?

Why can’t he seem to decide whether or not he wants to look like his usual stupid self or a poor James Dean impersonator?



Why was this other warlock guy so obsessed with him in the first place? Is it because of the throwaway line about how he might have been related to Will in some way in a previous life? WTF does that have to do with the here and now? But perhaps more importantly, why the heck was anyone being sacrificed to begin with when people were SUPPOSEDLY getting all their fame and fortune (*snort*) from selling their souls? Was it just so they could subtitle it “The Virgin Heart”? Cause that title never actually shows up in the film, so I’m pretty sure they just threw it in there during post or something. But I guess they had to come up with something mildly sexy sounding, because adding something more accurate like “The Moronic Stripper” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.



The film’s biggest crime against the audience, however, lies not in the story, but in the technical department. And no, I’m not talking about the video quality, which is still painfully poor, but still on the level of a (very) cheaply made TV movie. And I’m not even talking about the acting, because at this point you should just assume it’s bad and is going to be bad from here on out. And it is, and in the case of this film it’s worse, and as proof, please watch this brief video clip so that you can understand what the film’s working with here.

But while that’s bad enough, the biggest culprit in The Virgin Heart is the sound. DEAR GODS THE SOUND! It’s SO BAD. I don’t know whether to blame Jon Ailetcher or Chuck Buch, but at least one of them should have been taken out behind the woodshed for this film. And I get that this movie was either one of the first, or THE first film they may have worked on (how tf either of them went on to work on multiple long-running television shows and films like Venom and Bird Box after this travesty I’ll NEVER know), but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to their work on THIS film I. CAN’T. HEAR. ANYTHING. Or at least I can’t hear what I’m supposed to hear. Because 90% of the time the dialogue winds up drowned out by SOMETHING. Whether it’s the traffic outside the office they’re filming at, static, or even the damn background music, there’s always something drowning out the actor’s lines. So guess what? That dumb-ass dialogue I mentioned earlier? Don’t worry too much about it, because most of the time you can’t hear it anyway. I swear, it’s like they put microphones everywhere except where they needed to be.

In one scene, Will and his client are walking through a field of grass (towards that random payphone in the middle of NOWHERE) and you can barely hear a thing they’re saying. But by GOD, you can clearly make out EVERY footstep they’re making against the crunchy, dried grass, and every bird and insect within a two mile radius. The fucking bluejays may as well have been perched right next to the camera for how loud they were.

And almost EVERY SCENE is like that. At one point there was actually a blissful moment of silence in Belladonna’s room and I thought, “Finally, I’ll be able to hear what the fuck they’re saying.” But my moment of grace was short lived, because 10 seconds later she asked, “You want me to put on some music?” And it’s like, “NO! Anything but that! Please, spare me!” But alas, I was forsaken. And before you ask, no, turning on the subtitles didn’t help, because the poor subtitler often couldn’t hear what they were saying any better than I could. So any time they didn’t have a clear set, or there’s something like background music playing, every 5th or 6th word was replaced by “[Inaudible]”. Thanks guys, BIG help. And again, this is something that plagues almost the entire movie. It’s so [Inaudible] infuriating and I’m so [Inaudible] pissed that it’s not even [Inaudible] funny.


On the plus side, at least the horrible music drowned out the antagonist’s insane monologue!

Ugh!… I don’t know if I can go on. The Virgin Heart was just so fucking bad. The pacing is plodding, the story feels half-assed, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, and the sound is absolutely abysmal. I almost feel bad for Charles Solomon for ending his series streak on this turd. Not that he was all that great in these, but it’s still a lousy spot to bow out on. The only nice thing I can think to say about it is that at least they were smart enough to know that they had no money for things like special effects, so they only crap CGI we have to put up with are a couple seconds worth of glowing eyes. So there’s at least one small mercy. But that’s not anything to build a film recommendation over. So if you’re following along with my assessment of this series so far, we have: Meh, Weird-Ending Meh, Slightly better Meh, and now Turd Bucket. And only 12 more delightful entries in the series left to go (kill me now….)

Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart is available on a variety of streaming services.

Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart is also available on DVD.

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