Witchcraft VII: Judgement Hour



AKA: Witchcraft 7: A Taste for Blood

Will Spanner is once again pulled into another supernatural case while visiting a friend at the hospital, when he inadvertently witnesses a priest’s cross burst into flame when the man tries to perform last rites on a patient. The young lady supposedly died of a heart attack, but the strange wounds on her neck suggest otherwise. Clearly, something is amiss there.


Yeah, that’s normal.

So Will summons Lutz and Garner to the morgue to take a look, only for the ‘dead’ patient to suddenly leap up and attack the three of them. Unsurprisingly, it turns out this poor lady was killed by an ancient vampire named Martin Hassa. What’s a 400+ year old European vampire doing in the United States? Well, it turns out he’s trying to take control of the nation’s supply of blood banks. And of course he’s none too pleased when the police and Spanner start snooping around on account of all the dead bodies. So now the blood sucker is going to have to come up with some creative ways to stop them before they threaten to foil his dastardly plans.


Oh, gods, he thinks he’s Highlander or some shit. That’s just embarrassing.

Witchcraft VII: Judgement Hour is an American erotic/horror film from 1995 that, like most of the films in the series that came before, was made by Vista Street Entertainment and distributed by our friends at Troma. If you’ve been following along with the rest of the series so far, then there are three main points about this entry that are of note.

The first is that this film was actually meant to be the final entry of the franchise, as the original VHS release has “The final chapter…” emblazoned over the top of the box. So I guess even back in 1995 the filmmakers thought that the series had already overstayed its welcome. But as there are now currently 17 of these monstrosities now out in circulation, I think it’s safe to say that that particular assertion was a big, boldfaced LIE. So I can’t even find some solace in knowing that I’m at the halfway point yet.

The second, is that once again the entire cast has been replaced by new actors. David Byrnes takes over as Will, making him look kinda schlub-bish. But according to Wikipedia he will be coming back for the 9th entry, so I guess I get to eventually look forward to that. April Breneman is the new Keli, and sadly her character gets a real downgrade back to ‘damsel in distress’ (woe and betide to us all). And while the characters of Garner and Lutz have returned to be as horny and sarcastic as ever, they too have been recast. Garner is now much younger and sporting a glorious head of feathered hair. And Lutz has transformed into a shorter, leggy…blonde?


Lutz…you’ve changed!

And no, the sudden sex change is never acknowledged or explained (at least not in this installment). But they gave Alisa Christensen some of the best lines and actually made her a fairly capable cop (the vampire chick takes out Will with one light shove (gods that guy is a wuss), but she has to punch Lutz four times in the face before she goes down), so I’m just going to take the film’s lead and not going to worry about it too much.

And finally, this Witchcraft entry is the first of only two films in the series which does not focus solely on witches and/or demons. Instead, it’s just a straight-up vampire movie. Meaning there is no witchcraft at all, making the title very misleading.



You know what else is misleading? That they’re still trying to pawn these films off as ‘horror’ movies. This one, granted, at least had a bit more than the last. But that’s really only because they actually showed some freaking vampires going all nom-nom-nommy on people’s necks. But frankly, the whole vampire angle is so far from the film’s main focus that it barely even counts as the B Plot. Hell, I’m not even sure if it could be considered the E Plot in this movie. Because it easily takes a backseat to other things like Will’s deteriorating relationship with Keli, whatever nonsense Lutz and Garner are going through at the police station, and Hassa’s boring business transactions.


Oh goody, we get to watch a BOARD meeting. Joy.

But what plot you ask wins out above all else? Well, if you’ve been paying any amount of attention to the rest of the series so far then you should already know the answer to that question. But on the off chance that you haven’t, I’ll be nice and tell you anyway. The answer, dear friends is: Sex and Nudity. But while this could also be said of the last few movies in the series, this entry is by far the worst offender. Because this film cannot seem to go more than a couple of moments without giving you some form of nubile flesh to ogle, often for several minutes. Witchcraft 6 had about six such scenes spaced out over its entire 95 minute runtime. But this one? I count 14. Yes, fourteen instances where something is either being licked, groped, squeezed, jiggled, or just blatantly sitting there for you to stare at (including a corpse!). And I’m saying that knowing that I may have missed a couple. Hell, the VERY FIRST scene starts off with the vampire seducing his first victim. The credits had just barely finished mere seconds ago! They weren’t even 3 whole minutes into the movie yet! When I tell you that this movie does not mess around with its main focus, I MEAN that they are NOT messing around.


OMG, you JUST freaking started! You guys seriously need to slow your roll!

I’m sure some red-blooded males might find that prospect titillating. But I’m here to tell you not to get your hopes up too much. Because while there might BE a lot of sex on display most of it is shot so poorly that I doubt it will do all that much for you. The scene above, for example decided to try to utilize milk as foreplay, which may be even less sexy than the tomato juice they used for the last film.

But hey! With the increased number of scenes, the odds of finding at least one thing that tickles your fancy may be slightly in your favor. But honestly? Mostly it’s really just a lot of weird angles and close ups. Unless the filmmakers are just blatantly being pervs and putting some random woman’s breasts on display. Or her whole body. Or her butt. The director of this film was clearly a butt man. So expect to see an increased number of juicy rumpuses on display for your viewing pleasure. There’s even a whole extended scene where the vampire gal who escaped from the hospital immediately wanted a snack, so she lured an unsuspecting jogger to his doom while running in front of him while wearing a hospital gown. You know, the ones without a back? So she passes in front of him–



So that he can get a good eyeful, I suppose. And the director must have liked this actress’s butt SO MUCH that the film then shifts into a low-motion montage of it bouncing up and down while she’s “running” (even in slow-mo you can tell by her arms that she is clearly skipping for these scenes) and this poor schmo behind her just cannot believe his good luck that morning.


Dear Penthouse…

Anyway, the bouncy butt lasts about 2 minutes before it segues into sexy times, and you get to see her boobs again before she eats him, with both scenes taking up around 5 minutes, give or take.

And if you don’t like that, there are other scenes. Like the one where Garner and Lutz are staking out some woman’s apartment waiting for her boyfriend to show up. But in the meantime they’re more than happy to watch her walk around naked through their telescope. So if you’re a voyeur, this movie has you covered.




This is as close to a nudie shot you pervs will be getting from me.

But even if that’s not your jam then just sit back and wait a few seconds. Because her boyfriend shows up right after that. And even though Garner and Lutz stop their peeping at that point (to go do their damn jobs), you still get to sit there and watch this couple have kinky sex with their toy of choice. Though I’m not sure it’s going to be to many people’s preference any more than the milk was, because their chosen object ends up being one of those blue rotating lights that you see on top of cop cars, which they lovingly roll over each other as an act of foreplay.


At least I have to tell myself that’s all they did, because I find the thought of anything beyond that to be DEEPLY concerning.

Then they finally stop that nonsense and finally get it on in creepy blue-light-special fashion, before the cops come in a couple seconds later. But at least the police were nice enough to let them finish (how long does it take to storm a building?) They also gave them enough time to put their underwear back on. Though I’m still not sure how they managed to do that in the .03 seconds they had between those two scenes.


Though I still consider their thoughtfulness to some of us in the audience as a great kindness.

Let’s see, what else was there…. Ah yes, you also get two scenes with Will and Keli, one of the vampire attacking his second victim (Who he then chains to the wall of his room. Topless, of course), there’s at least 2 masturbation scenes, and…uh…Oh, the one with the dominatrix. I believe that’s it. Though there might be a couple more swift nudie shots I may be forgetting…

No, wait, there’s one with Will’s friends from the hospital too. Because I guess just about everyone in this movie had to get it on with someone so they didn’t feel left out.


I told you there was a lot of these damn things.

So, anyway, that’s the movi–…Oh wait! THE PLOT! I almost completely forgot about it because there’s so little of it. It’s uh…pretty dumb. And damn near non-existent.

The whole thing begins when Will is literally grabbed by a random woman at the hospital–


That is not an exaggeration, by the way. She just yoinks him away from a vending machine.

– and dragged into some kind of observation room overlooking the ER (is that a normal thing?). And instead of leaving and going back to his friends, who were the whole reason he came to the hospital in the first place, he stays with this random woman and they both watch through the large window pane as the doctors do their best to try to save her friend’s life. Naturally, they fail, and normally I’d use this point to complain about the blatant boob shot just so that they could use the defibrillator on her. But they do actually have to have skin contact to use the defibrillator, AND they placed the pads on the correct position on her torso instead of just placing them right over her chest like most movies would (Are you telling me somebody did research for this movie?! Impossible!). So in this one instance I’m gonna let the boob shot slide.

The point is though, Will could have used this opportunity to gently extricate himself and go back to his friends, as he had no reason to be there in the first place. Even the friend had already vamoosed at this point. But for some reason he sticks around long enough to watch  the doctors call a priest into the room, which gives him a chance to notice the cross catch on fire. So basically the entire reason the story starts is because Will likes to hang out for indeterminate amounts of time and stare at corpses.


No, really, what the hell are you still doing here? It’s just creepy at this point.

So then he has to call the police in and the girl suddenly jumps up and kicks all their asses and, in staying with the pattern the series has set so far, our beloved ‘occult expert’ has no idea that this… and the burning cross… and the obvious bite marks on her neck… AND the fact that the only thing that killed her was a stake to the heart, all point to her being a vampire. Nope. Never crossed his mind. He doesn’t come to that conclusion until…*double checks*… About 25 minutes later. Yup. Great ‘expert’ that one.


“Hey, those are some big bite marks on her neck, eh Will?”
“Indeed. And I, the great ‘occult expert’, have absolutely no idea what those marks could possibly indicate.”

Even more bizarre? When he finally does come to that conclusion, Garner and Lutz immediately brush it off. And this is after they’d watched her suck blood out of a man’s neck (Did the jogger dude die? We have no idea!) The puzzling part though, is why do you guys keep contacting and letting Will follow you around if you’re not going to listen to him? If you’re going to do that just tell the schmuck to go home.


So he can frustrate people with his telephone operating skills. NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU ON THOSE OLD PHONES WHEN YOU TALK THAT FAR FROM THE MOUTHPIECE, WILLIAM!

In his defense though, he probably needed to go home. Because as soon as he does Keli starts accusing him of cheating. Now, in ANY OTHER part of the series so far, that would have been a legitimate complaint from her. Because up to this point the plots have all revolved around some boob-tastic sexpot trying to seduce her boyfriend. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they don’t. But either way it’s literally part of the formula. Except it’s not for THIS FILM. So the sudden outburst feels horrifically forced and unwarranted and is just an obvious excuse to add some needless melodrama into the plot.



What makes it worse though, is that Will doesn’t even try to defend himself. No, “Sorry, honey, I got caught in a shootout,” or “Had to stab a crazy, blood sucking bitch today,” or even “It’s not another woman, I just got pulled into another supernatural shit-storm, babe.” She knows the drill by now. She could have even called Lutz and Garner to confirm it. She probably would have accepted that. But no. Instead, he just mopes. Why? Because he’s sooooo upset he killed a woman today. You know, even though she was clearly a vampire and he watched her ‘die’ in the hospital earlier. He’s just really upset by it, you guys, and doesn’t want to talk about it and GOOD GOD, MAN, GET A GRIP! You act like you’ve never killed someone before! You LITERALLY ripped a man’s beating heart from his chest in the 4th film! And you stabbed a woman in the last film and another guy 3 films ago! You kill people ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME! Why is THIS one so upsetting for you?….

Oh, wait, was this entire thing just an awkward excuse so the movie could have you visit your mother’s grave and garner sympathy for a resulting sex scene? Are you kidding me? That’s one of the clunkiest bits of BS I think I’ve ever seen.


And what the hell are you smearing all over your face?! Is that grass? WHY?!

And then there’s some cop stuff (which is usually just an excuse to sneak in even more boobs) and we learn about the evil plan to take over the nation’s blood supply (and again, more boobs) so that the vampires can… Actually, we never learn why Hassa wants to do that. But presumably if he has control of all that blood then they wouldn’t need to kill people in order to get it. Which actually sounds like a perfectly logical and reasonable goal for a vampire, if you ask me. But then he cuts off a guy’s head for no reason, so… Whatever, he’s evil and must be stopped! And he’s after Will and his girlfriend, because Will’s a threat…somehow.



Except he’s really not. Because Hassa’s plan isn’t even foiled by Will. It’s ruined when Garner and Lutz show up (and only Garner and Lutz) during Hassa’s little business meeting, and they start screaming through a bullhorn about how they have the place surrounded. And then one of Hassa’s own flunkies bursts into the meeting room and immediately blurts out, “I knew they’d find out! I knew this was gonna happen! The police aren’t stupid! We were never gonna get away with killing all those women!” It’s literally the funniest moment in the movie. And it also proves that whether you’re a casual business man, or a centuries old vampire, it’s still damn near impossible to find good help these days.


Whatever it is, I’ll just have to have the snake do it.

So then he and Will get to have their ‘grand’ showdown at the end. Which mostly consist of Hassa doing a lot of monologuing about how Will’s ancestors could never hurt him (Wut? Where did that come from?), before turning into a bat… puppet…thing –


Don’t laugh. This is probably the most intricate practical effect the series has had in the last 4 films.

– and starts flying in circles around Will’s head for 20 seconds, before Will finally smacks his dumb, puppet-face into a wall with the stake he brought with him (he sure got over whatever issues he had with killing awful damn quick…) and they tussle a bit and… Well lookie there, it appears that they’ve both stabbed themselves in less than a minute. So I see the vampire boy’s little ego trip up on the landing went nowhere.


Probably could have avoided that whole ‘stabbing yourself’ thing if you’d brought a proper stake to kill the vampire with instead of a GIGANTIC spear, William.

But it turns out Hassa isn’t dead quite yet. He still wants to harass Keli for a couple more minutes. But she’s clearly tired of all this supernatural shit and is having none of that garbage, and the movie is nice enough to let Keli finish him off for us so that we’re never forced to see him or his glorious head of Fabio hair ever again. And then he falls out of the window and…I’m honestly not sure what happens here. There’s either a HUGE inferno absolutely raging right below Keli’s bedroom window, or he’s falling into Hell. The effects are so horrid that it’s kinda hard to tell. But since the movie chooses this point to simply end, I guess we’ll never know.


What is this spirograph of nonsense?

Ugh…I gotta be honest. The 10-15 minutes or so of actual plot Witchcraft 7 has did amuse me in several places. But oh gods, the rest of the movie… these things are almost getting painful to watch. The questionable acting… the horrible effects… the stupid story… the lame police tropes… the painfully forced melodrama that could have been solved if that idiot of a man had simply opened his mouth and said five words. Or if they’d just placed that scene in the appropriate movie two films ago! I just… I can’t with these movies. Why did they keep making these? Who was actually watching them? I know sex sells and all, but… my god, the sex scenes aren’t even that good. The poor teenagers of yesteryear must have been really desperate to sit through all of these. I’m just picturing them in fake mustaches and trench-coats walking into the rental stores and sweating bullets, hoping the pimply asshole behind the counter lets him rent his soft-core flick. Because that’s the only audience I can see who might get any enjoyment out of this film. So if you just want to see a variety of boobies…go forth, ye horny-toad. But if you want even a decent movie about vampires or witches or whatnot…please watch something else.

Witchcraft VII: Judgement Hour is available on a variety of streaming services.

Witchcraft VII: Judgement Hour is also available on DVD, but like most of these films it is long out of print.

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