Forget THE WITCH, "you should have believed" in SUPERSTITION, on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

To the county, the old Sharack house on Mill Road is a public nuisance, what with locals dumping garbage on the grounds, skinny dippers sometimes drowning in the pitch dark Black Pond, teenagers treating it as a make-out space, and most recently a pair of pranksters gutted, slashed, and microwaved to death. Since the church owns the property, new Reverend David Thompson (James Houghton, MORE AMERICAN GRIFFITI) – he of a new denomination liberal with regards to smoking and ogling teenage girls – decides to renovate the house and grounds as a temporary living space for the parish's other new priest Reverend George Leahy (Larry Pennell, METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCITON OF JARED-SYN) and his dysfunctional family – long-suffering wife Melinda (Lynn Carlin, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS), daughters Ann (HOTEL's Heidi Bohay) and she of the "bitchy mouth" Sheryl (Maylo McCaslin), and son Justin (Billy Jacoby, BLOODY BIRTHDAY) – even after his kindly predecessor Reverend Maier (Stacy Keach Sr., DETROIT 9000) is killed in an accident involving an errant circular saw blade. While the family are moving in, Inspector Sturgess (Albert Salmi, DRAGONSLAYER) and partner Hollister (Casey King, Larry Cohen's BONE) poke around in search of Arlen (Josh Cadman, ANGEL), the mute son of caretaker Elvira Sharack (Jacqueline Hyde, HOUSE OF TERROR) who guards the house against intruders for his mistress. After a dip in the newly drained and refilled pond ends traumatically with the discovery of a severed arm, Thompson looks into the history of the house and the violent deaths of everyone who has lived there going back to 1692 and the execution of suspected witch Elonda Sharack (Carole Goldman, OUT COLD) who cursed the property and all within the sound of her voice. Meanwhile, someone or something starts stalking the family and anyone else unfortunate to be hanging around the house.

A home video favorite from the early 1980s, SUPERSTITION is quite entertaining even if its ambitions are unevenly realized. After an opening fifteen minutes with three gory deaths, we have to spend an hour with a family so annoying that they only catharsis the film can give the audience is to kill them off in painful and gory ways; and this is where the film lets gorehounds down. Even if the rest of the film cannot live up to the opening, there are enough interesting touches to keep things interesting with Hyde's caretaker, the execution flashback, some handsomely lit photography, David Gibney's "Dies Irae" quoting score, and the witch herself during the climax. Presumably, cinematographer-turned-director James Robertson was a Mario Bava fan as this is yet another film that includes a blond ghost girl whose appearance prefigures death. The film was released unrated and there are a couple make-up effects standout setpieces courtesy of William Munns (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD), Steve Laporte (THE ICE PIRATES), and David B. Miller (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET); however, one wonders if some of the death scenes that are more explicitly described than shown were a matter of scheduling or effects that just did not work out (the HD presentation does call attention to some waxy appliances including a spiked head). Although the story was conceived by Robertson and writers Michael O. Sajbel and Brad White he met working on Charles B. Pierce's GRAYEAGLE, the final screenplay was written by Donald G. Thompson who had previously scripted THE EVIL for the film's producer Ed Carlin from which SUPERSTITION recycles its forged silver cross prop. The Italian late eighties horror film STREGHE was exported to English-speaking territories as WITCH STORY but is cited in some references as SUPERSTITION 2.

SUPERSTITION was released in the United States unrated theatrically by Almi Pictures (HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, INVASION OF THE FLESH HUNTERS) and then to VHS from Vestron offshoot Lightning Video – it was actually released on home video in the UK first as SUPERSTITION and proved popular enough that it garnered a theatrical release under the title THE WITCH – where it became a rental store staple. Early Carolco production rights owner Studio Canal struck a digital transfer circa 2005 which appeared on DVD in the UK from Momentum and the US from Anchor Bay. The anamorphic widescreen presentation was a revelation compared to the dark VHS transfer, but Scream Factory's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer from a 2K scan of original film elements is that much more for better or worse. Colors are richer with some gel lighting more noticeable than in standard definition while the blood tends to look like cough syrup (undercutting a shock of blood pooling under a blocked door). Details of production design and little touches like moving background shadows are more evident while the rough edges of the production also stand out: the base of the balsa wood beam on which the witch is crucified reveals black plastic garbage bag wrapping (presumably to keep it from disintegrating when propped in the mud in front of the pond) during a period flashback, the very modern-looking construction of the false wooden wall of the supposedly centuries old hidden room, as well as a couple very subtle usages of post-production slow motion to extend a couple inserts and establishing shots for emphasis as well as one bit of overcranking (motion issues that seem way too specific to be random encoding hiccups). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track gives more presence to Gibney's score including some passages that could easily be mistaken at first for sound design. Optional English SDH subtitles are available.