Crew
Director/Screenplay – Kevin S. Tenney, Producers – Jeff Geoffray & Walter Josten, Photography – David Lewis, Music – Dennis Michael Tenney, Visual Effects – VCE/Peter Kuran (Supervisor – Kevin O’Neill), Special Effects Supervisor – Kevin “Boomer” McCarthy, Mechanical Special Effects – Players Special Effects, Production Design – Ken Aichele. Production Company – Blue Rider Pictures.
Cast
Ami Dolenz (Paige Benedict), Timothy Gibbs (Officer ‘Mitch’ Mitchell), John Gatins (Russel Upton), Laraine Newman (Elaine Louden), Christopher Michael Moore (Jonas Louden), Sarah Kaite Coughlan (Carla), Marvin Kaplan (Morris Arkoff), Julie Michaels (Susan Sydney)
Plot
In Los Angeles, Paige Benedict rents a studio loft apartment, wanting to set up her own space as an artist. Her ex-boyfriend Mitch is sceptical about her ambitions and thinks she should not give up her job in accounting. As she moves in, Paige finds an ouija board in a cupboard. Playing around with it, she contacts a spirit named Susan. She come to believe that Susan used to live in the apartment but was murdered. However, Paige’s use of the ouija board serves to open the doorway to unleash a malevolent force.
Way back before Blumhouse made Ouija (2014) and a profusion of cheap ‘ouija’ titled films that followed, there was Witchboard (1986). This was a B-budget theatrical release that starred Tawny Kitaen as a girl who contacts a malevolent spirit via an ouija board. Witchboard 2 was the first of two sequels and was followed by Witchboard 3: The Possession (1995) and then three decades later a loose remake of the original with Witchboard (2024). This film is commonly referred to as Witchboard 2: The Devil’s Doorway, although this is a title that was only used on the video cover and promotion, but the title on the screen as the film opens (which we here at Moria take to be the official title of a film) is just Witchboard 2.
I didn’t think Witchboard was that great a film. The main problem with Witchboard 2 is that it has been conceived as more of the same but with a different lead actress. Kevin S. Tenney throws it all together with a hardly interesting murder mystery plot centred around an ouija board. The film also ends up being dully structured. Aside from the death of Christopher Michael Moore and a séance being held in which a mirror shatters, hardly anything happens during the first hour.
What you do end up noting about Witchboard 2 is its ridiculous death set-pieces. The first of these is the eminently schlocky one with Christopher Michael Moore being pursued around his basement workshop by a flying buzzsaw and then trapped in the boiler room as the boiler’s pipes swell up and cook him. In another ridiculous scene, Timothy Gibbs’ vehicle goes out of control and speeds off without brakes, before a moderately spectacular scene where he crashes through a boat being towed by a car. Later Laraine Newman gets creamed by a wrecking ball that spontaneously comes to life and smashes into her car. These bizarre novelty deaths seem to about all that Witchboard 2 has going for it.
Among the cast of unknowns, the film stars Ami Dolenz, the daughter of Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees fame. Dolenz was seen as a rising name around this time but disappeared after appearing in about a dozen films. Alas, Dolenz is little more than another of a hundred identical blonde starlets and gives a forgettable performance.
Kevin S. Tenney made a number of other B-budget genre films:– including Night of the Demons (1987), The Cellar (1989), Witchtrap (1989), Peacemaker/Alien Peacemaker (1990), Pinocchio’s Revenge (1996), The Second Arrival/The Arrival II (1998), Endangered Species (2003), Brain Dead (2007) and Bigfoot (2009), as well as produced the remake of Night of the Demons (2009). Tenney’s best film is the non-genre thriller Tick-Tock (2000).
Trailer here