The Oracle

Moviecut—The Oracle

My review was written in July 1987 after watching the movie on USA video cassette. "The Oracle" covers familiar horror ground with a supernatural tale of a dead spirit contacting the living to enact posthumous revenge. Pic was made in New York in 1984, released regionally last year and now in video stores. Plotline is similar to the subsequent hit "Witchboard": heroine Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) finds an old crate containing a planchette (generic form of a Ouija board, made of a sculpted hand and quill pen). At a Christmas dinner party she and husband Ray (Roger Neil) plus another couple try out the instruments, but no one except Jennifer believes the resulting spirit messages it traces. The ghost is businessman William Graham, murdered bu covered up by his wife Dorothy (Victoria Dryden) as a suicide. Jennifer starts "seeing" the actual muder and when she contacts Dorothy she is trgeted as the nex hushup victim. Though the monster and gore effects are unsatisfactory in this low-budgeter, it sports one neat twist: Dorohty's chief henchman turns out to be a large, chubby woman. As portrayed by Pam LaTesta, this thug i filmmaker Roberta Findlays' main point of interest, styled mannishly (an updated version of the late Madame Spivy), she is androgynous for the first few reels, picking up a prostitute whom she bloodily slashes when mocked for being unable (natch) to "perform". It turns out to be a fresh approach to the slasher cliche and the horror genre's fondness for transvestite villains. Rest of the cast is unimpressive.

Caroline Capers Powers finds a leather-covered box and an odd automatic writing set-up -- Parker Brothers wouldn't let them use a Ouija board -- and starts getting creepy messages that lead her to an unsolved murder. No one believes her, of course, especially husband Roger Neil and his *-star mustache. Her investigations trigger the real killers to target her. It's a blah movie, distinguished neither by excellence nor ineptness; Miss Powers spends a lot of time screaming. The camerawork is very fluid, and the planchette is sort of interesting, but that's about the limit of this one. For fans of the genre.

Saw this thanks to TCM Underground. They almost always deliver on the absurd. This film is a throwaway with merits. I want to rate it 2.75 stars, but the special effects bump it to 4 stars, not because they're exemplary but because they're commendable when you take into account this is an independent film. The female lead cries and screams most of the time while the two male leads look like something out of a 1980 gay * flick. The best performance is from the psychiatrist. I agree this is recommended for those who like crap-tastic cinema. I won't watch it again, but I'm glad I did. The truth is its stupid.

A young woman, Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers), comes into possession of a spiritualist's planchette, and makes contact with the ghost of a murdered man. The Oracle is one of director Roberta Findlay's more bearable films, but that's still not saying a great deal given how dire her filmography is as a whole: it's still got a formulaic plot loaded with trite genre clichés that frequently feels like the product of grade school children; it's still directed with zero finesse by a woman who graduated from *; it still boasts amateurish performances by a cast of unknowns; and it still features laughable special effects. However, it's the sheer ineptitude on display that makes the film easier to digest, the unintentionally hilarious aspects preventing it from being a total snooze-fest like the majority of Findlay's movies. Caroline Capers Powers is absolutely dreadful, and it's no wonder that this was her only film (she's probably still hiding in embarrassment): Powers spends the entire film screaming hysterically, but never convincingly. Fortunately, she's a good looking gal, so we can be a little forgiving; not so for everyone else, who are as equally untalented but not so easy on the eye. Pam La Testa as hired killer Farkas is the biggest offender (and I mean that literally-she's enormous!): every minute she is on screen is a masterclass in bad casting and wooden acting. Roger Neil, as Jennifer's husband Ray, gives Pam a run for her money though, his lack of acting prowess and *-star moustache suggesting that he would be better cast in some of Findlay's 'other' movies. As for the film's most memorable moments, try these for size... Farkas, pretending to be a bloke, picks up a prostitute, and hacks her up with a knife. This is the one genuinely nasty moment in a film that is primarily schlock. It begins on the streets of seedy '80s New York, establishing a sleazy, gritty tone that, unfortunately, is later discarded in favour of cheesy z-grade horror hokum. Apartment building superintendent Pappas (Chris Maria De Koron) is attacked by imaginary critters that look like the rubbery finger puppet monsters that I used to play with as a kid. In an attempt to get rid of them, he stabs himself in the arm and the chest (I think I just lost mine). Unseen forces terrify Jennifer, trashing her apartment, giving Powers yet another opportunity to fail spectacularly at acting terrified. Believing that a wealthy man has been murdered, Jennifer goes to the dead man's wife with her story instead of telling the police. Someone this stupid almost deserves to die. As Ray attempts to dispose of the planchette in an incinerator, a pair of rubbery monster hands grab his head and tear it off. Inept gore, but it's too silly not to enjoy. Farkas pursues Jennifer with axe in hand. Somehow, she manages to keep up with the young woman, despite being three times her weight. Cornering Jennifer, the killer swings her weapon, somehow planting the axe in a cardboard box instead of her intended victim. Her lack of accuracy will be the death of her. Menaced by the ghost of her victim (a hilariously bad puppet creation), Farkas swings her axe again, this time striking a barrel of toxic waste! The corrosive contents spray into the killer's face, reducing it to a molten mess of gooey flesh and bone. The gore is, once again, bargain basement, but impressively messy. The ridiculous ending sees the murdered man's wife trapped in her car by her husband's vengeful spirit, and being choked to death by exhaust fumes. Jennifer stops screaming hysterically and takes up being a spiritualist full time. 4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb. It's garbage, but there's fun to be had.

Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) discovers a necromancy writing box and decides to have fun with the expected consequences. Meanwhile there is a butch looking killer (Pam La Testa) running around in the city. Formula story, bad acting and dialogue. The film attempts to create creepy with red fonts and a Rider Back Tarot deck. It has a shop, "The Magickal Child." That's magick with a "K" so it means something more. I also find it odd that a prostitute would be trying to pick up guys in front of a "male revue" establishment. The film was made in an era where "veal" wasn't a four letter word. No f-bombs or nudity. Sex scene.

The Oracle (1985) * (out of 4) Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) and her husband move into a new building where one night they mess around with a Ouija board. Pretty soon Jennifer feels that someone is trying to contact her but everyone else believes she is simply going crazy. Roberta Findlay has said quite a few things about THE ORACLE and none of them were good. The director has pretty much called this film horrid and it's really hard to disagree with her. I thought Findlay did a good job at at least delivering a professional looking movie but at the same time it's obvious that her heart wasn't into the project as there's simply no life or energy to the picture. The film wants to be something like ROSEMARY'S BABY but obviously it falls well short. There were a number of horror movies dealing with possession inside of an apartment complex and this here really doesn't offer up anything new. There are a couple nice shots via the cinematography but that's about it. The performances are pretty much weak and the screenplay lacks any real imagination. Even the death scenes aren't all that memorable, although I will say that the opening sequence with the hooker appears to have been influenced by MANIAC. With that said, THE ORACLE is a pretty boring film and its 93-minute really drag at a very slow pace.

Jennifer and her husband move into an apartment formerly occupied by a medium, and Jennifer discovers the writing device the former occupant used to converse with the dead. After dinner with friends, Jennifer uses the device and all kinds of weird things begin to happen, as various characters meet untimely ends and Jennifer has to contend with the widow of a murdered man and the obese lesbian hitwoman she employs to keep Jennifer quiet. Will the madness never end? This off-kilter little exercise in no-budget filmmaking was directed by Roberta Findlay who, along with her late husband Michael, created a particularly putrid brand of grindhouse fare in the late 60s. Their flicks were virulent cocktails of lesbianism, violence, torture and perversion, and it's nice to see that the passage of time hadn't improved Roberta's filmmaking abilities one bit! Wires attached to books to make them fly off shelves, a man's head being pulled off by big booga-booga Halloween laytex hands, gratuitous disfigurement via noxious industrial waste-- sheez, this film seems like it's from another era. This thing must have only played in the handful of drive-ins and grimey remnant of flop houses that still operated in the mid-eighties, because no savvy viewer then would have accepted this as the gruesome slash-fest it was touted in ads to be. Only slightly amusing in it's incompetence

A young couple rent a New York City apartment previously occupied by a strange elderly soothsayer. The wife plunders the deceased old lady's belonging and finds an oracle(a hand-shaped device used to communicate with the dead). She unwisely tests the item's power, gradually becoming a living instrument of revenge for a recent murder victim. As her involvement in the situation deepens, so does her frustration when her husband and friends express concern for her mental health...they dismiss her strange experiences as hallucinations, despite a rash of mysterious deaths taking place around them. For a Roberta Findlay film, this one is actually not as spectacularly awful as it should be, and does manage to maintain interest and deliver some fairly gory moments. Standing on its own merits, however, it's a throwaway picture with typically staid performances(a couple of the secondary characters are commendably played, most notably the sadistic lesbian psychopath), and the special effects are...well...neither special nor effective. Not recommendable, but beneath the crust of cheapness is a semi-worthy watch...*IF* you're willing to take a brain laxative and dumb yourself down for 90 minutes. 4/10

The Oracle is about a shrieking, hysterical woman who starts fooling around with a magic automatic writing hand that's possessed by the ghost of a murdered man; unfortunately, she can't convince anyone that what's happening is real, because she comes across like an irrational basket case in everything she says and does. This is not, by any means, an effective horror film; however, it does manage to be unintentionally funny, as the characters around the protagonist - her husband, her best friend, a psychiatrist, the police, et al - dismiss her concerns every time she opens her mouth. The audience is supposed to be on her side, since we know that she's not crazy (at least in regard to the ghost, her constant screeching doesn't say anything good about her general emotional stability), but it's just so obvious why nobody takes her seriously that their completely warranted skepticism becomes comedic. Oddly, the plot resolves itself, with the ghost killing his killers, so it's not clear why there even needed to be a titular oracle in the first place. Outside of the accidentally amusing elements it's a rather dry film overall, with only a couple of moments that are intentionally interesting. More recommended for B-movie fans than strict horror buffs.