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BLACK MAGIC WOMAN
Rating: 
USA. 1991.
Director – Deryn Warren, Screenplay – Gerry Daly, Story – Gerry Daly, Deryn Warren & Marc Springer, Producers – Warren & Springer, Photography – Levie Isaacks, Music – Randy Miller, Special Effects Supervisor – Ken Tarallo, Production Design – Elliot Gilbert. Production Company – Trimark.
Cast:
Mark Hamill (Brad Travis), Amanda Wyss (Diane Abbott), Apollonia (Cassandra Perry), Abidah Viera (Carlita), John C. Slade (Detective Burns), Victor Rivers (Dr Yantos), Bonnie Ebsen (Suzanne), Carmen More (Arna Yantos)
Plot: At an opening, art gallery owner Brad Travis is taken by the beautiful Cassandra Perry, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend Diane Abbott, and the two embark upon an affair. But Cassandra is angry when she finds that he has a girlfriend. Soon after Brad finds he can’t sexually perform and that he has developed leukemia. And when people around him start being killed, he realizes a voodoo spell has been cast on him.
This is an interesting little film that doesn’t quite come off. It seems to have been put together as a title concept movie to capitalize on the Santana song that plays throughout. It is quite stylishly directed, especially when it comes to the sex scenes – the first encounter between Hamill and Apollonia with the artwork in the background being used as erotic counterpoint to the flesh shots – champagne being poured over a carved torso, Hamill kissing its breasts, she fondling its buttocks and so on – being particularly cool.
But there isn’t really much to it as a film. It has been designed as Fatal Attraction (1987) with voodoo – and there is not much more to it than that. At least the film makes the hero a lot more reprehensible than Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction was. Indeed the woman in the film are shown to be the ones with the real power and the men just dumb schmucks used by them. There’s a quite effective twist ending where the identity of the real voodooist is revealed, even if this doesn’t really make sense in terms of motivation.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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