When it comes to gleefully broad, bawdy, lowbrow "Mad" magazine-style "to hell with good taste and proper decorum"-like zany goofball humor, this unfairly overlooked late 80's period horror comedy riot really takes the splendidly sophomoric cake, ravenously gobbles it up with a commendable lack of subtlety and restraint, and vomits it back up all over the audience with an outrageously deviant gleam in its winningly nutty eye.
1692, the time of the Salem Witch trials: The local rigid, repressive, morally upright and seriously uptight god-fearing puritan residents of a small New England hamlet are whipped up into a furious witch-burning frenzy by the cunning money-grubbing judge Stuart Pankin and insatiably lascivious idiot mayor Dave Thomas (the latter's hilarious portrayal of a leering, terminally on-the-make sleazy politician uncannily foretells former President Bill Clinton's notorious skirt-chasing antics). Little do the gullible townspeople know that both Hizzoners are behind a sneaky real estate scheme; they're manipulating the yokels to barbecue certain folks so they can confiscate their land and make a bundle selling it at the highest possible price (yep, there's some spot-on stinging satire on 80's yuppie corporate greed and self-serving amorality run grossly amok, plus lots of similarly on-target sideswipes at the religious right's expense, what with all the townspeople being exposed as boozing, whoring, two-faced hypocrites). Moreover, real-life lusty, man-eating witch Faith (the ever-ravishing Barbara Carrera camping and vamping it up like nobody's business) takes advantage of the mass hysteria by making sweet innocent baker Sara (a radiant Kelly Preston) look like a witch so she can have her salacious way with Sara's klutzy, but hunky husband-to-be (amiable doofus Patrick Cassidy).
Director John Moffit cranks up the uproariously lewd, silly, most politically incorrect and hence quite delightful poor taste buffoonery to the marvelously brash and dippy max, joyously stooping to many howl-inducing lows for the sake of a solid cheap laugh. Wimpy mama's boy priest Bud Cort goes blind and does a wicked Ray Charles impersonation. Puritans roast hot dogs while burning witches at the stake. A man cursed with flatulence backfires like crazy in a crowded church; the same guy later has sex with a turkey (!) and commits suicide. Sara's breads and cakes take on the obscene shapes of large breasts and erect penises. A Thanksgiving diner degenerates into a boisterous wild party complete with drinking, dancing, pot-smoking, and "Louie, Louie" blasting on the soundtrack. A tavern holds New England clam chowder women's wrestling matches. A solemn funeral procession gets rudely disrupted by a stray cat. Dr. Joyce Brothers is branded a heretic at a witch trial when she diagnoses the puritans as paranoid, homicidal, sexually frustrated lunatics! My favorite gag has the delectable Barbara Carrera transforming into the spectacularly ugly and haggish Anne Ramsey, whose remarkable resemblance to a squat, gnarled, unsightly garden gnome is ingeniously taken advantage of here. Okay, so this ain't exactly a highly insightful and sophisticated work of refined cinematic art, but it's definitely rowdy, wacky, amusing and above all irreverent enough to still earn this particular reviewer's seal of approval.
1692, the time of the Salem Witch trials: The local rigid, repressive, morally upright and seriously uptight god-fearing puritan residents of a small New England hamlet are whipped up into a furious witch-burning frenzy by the cunning money-grubbing judge Stuart Pankin and insatiably lascivious idiot mayor Dave Thomas (the latter's hilarious portrayal of a leering, terminally on-the-make sleazy politician uncannily foretells former President Bill Clinton's notorious skirt-chasing antics). Little do the gullible townspeople know that both Hizzoners are behind a sneaky real estate scheme; they're manipulating the yokels to barbecue certain folks so they can confiscate their land and make a bundle selling it at the highest possible price (yep, there's some spot-on stinging satire on 80's yuppie corporate greed and self-serving amorality run grossly amok, plus lots of similarly on-target sideswipes at the religious right's expense, what with all the townspeople being exposed as boozing, whoring, two-faced hypocrites). Moreover, real-life lusty, man-eating witch Faith (the ever-ravishing Barbara Carrera camping and vamping it up like nobody's business) takes advantage of the mass hysteria by making sweet innocent baker Sara (a radiant Kelly Preston) look like a witch so she can have her salacious way with Sara's klutzy, but hunky husband-to-be (amiable doofus Patrick Cassidy).
Director John Moffit cranks up the uproariously lewd, silly, most politically incorrect and hence quite delightful poor taste buffoonery to the marvelously brash and dippy max, joyously stooping to many howl-inducing lows for the sake of a solid cheap laugh. Wimpy mama's boy priest Bud Cort goes blind and does a wicked Ray Charles impersonation. Puritans roast hot dogs while burning witches at the stake. A man cursed with flatulence backfires like crazy in a crowded church; the same guy later has sex with a turkey (!) and commits suicide. Sara's breads and cakes take on the obscene shapes of large breasts and erect penises. A Thanksgiving diner degenerates into a boisterous wild party complete with drinking, dancing, pot-smoking, and "Louie, Louie" blasting on the soundtrack. A tavern holds New England clam chowder women's wrestling matches. A solemn funeral procession gets rudely disrupted by a stray cat. Dr. Joyce Brothers is branded a heretic at a witch trial when she diagnoses the puritans as paranoid, homicidal, sexually frustrated lunatics! My favorite gag has the delectable Barbara Carrera transforming into the spectacularly ugly and haggish Anne Ramsey, whose remarkable resemblance to a squat, gnarled, unsightly garden gnome is ingeniously taken advantage of here. Okay, so this ain't exactly a highly insightful and sophisticated work of refined cinematic art, but it's definitely rowdy, wacky, amusing and above all irreverent enough to still earn this particular reviewer's seal of approval.