The Haunting of Morella starts 100's of years ago as Morella (Nicole Eggert) is crucified to a wooden cross, denounced as a witch guilty of witchcraft, blasphemy & murder. Morella's husband Gideon (David McCallum) pleads for mercy but it falls on deaf ears, he holds his & Morella's young daughter Lenora as Morella then has her eyes burnt out & is then left there for a week as she presumably dies. Jump 'Seventeen Years Later' & it's coming up to Lenora's (Nicole Eggert) 18th birthday & a lawyer from a nearby village named Guy Chapman (Christopher Halsted) delivers the news that Lenora will inherit Morella's fortune on her 18th. However being a witch & all that Morella had planned for such small inconveniences as being murdered, Lenora's governess Miss Deveraux (Maria Ford) is in fact a servant of Morella who sacrifices the female servant Ilsa (Gail Harris) & her boyfriend Miles (Brewster Gould) in a blood draining ritual to reincarnate Morella so they can have lesbian sex together & do lots of evil things that witches do I suppose. However, Gideon isn't having any of it & sets out to send his ex-missus to the grave for good...
Directed by Jim Wynorski The Haunting of Morella didn't do much for me, I thought it was the below average low budget straight to video Roger Corman produced cheapie that it so obviously is. The script by R.J. Robertson is supposedly based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe which might be true but if it is I doubt if much of Poe's literary work is prevalent here. To it's credit The Haunting of Morella at least isn't boring, it moves along at a fair pace & has the requisite amount of babes, blood & breasts to stop most genre fans going into comatose state like a lot of low budget crap can seem to do. The character's are basic, the plot & narrative is simplistic & caters for the lowest common denominator, the exploitation elements are average & as a whole the film isn't particularly satisfying although I thought it was an OK watch if your not too demanding (& to be honest you'd better not be!). There really isn't much else I can say about The Haunting of Morella except if you like these cheap blood 'n' breast horror films then you may like this one otherwise there's very little here to recommend.
Director Wynorski doesn't give the film any sort of distinctiveness or style, he's a point & shoot sort of guy isn't he? There is a fair amount of nudity but I was disappointed with the gore content, but then if you think about it it's cheaper & easier to film a naked woman than set up a complex special effect isn't it? A fact that I'm sure the economy conscious Wynorski never overlooks...
Technically the film is average, I must give the filmmakers some credit for trying to make a period piece although at times it looks like a school play with limited sets, bad lighting & cheap costumes. The Haunting of Morella contains one of the cheapest & fake looking slit throats I've seen in a long time & the rest of the so-called special effects aren't much better. The acting is of, shall we say a low standard.
The Haunting of Morella is average at best & low budget rubbish at worst. A must for Wynorski fans, if such an animal exists but for everyone else there are much better horror films out there.
Directed by Jim Wynorski The Haunting of Morella didn't do much for me, I thought it was the below average low budget straight to video Roger Corman produced cheapie that it so obviously is. The script by R.J. Robertson is supposedly based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe which might be true but if it is I doubt if much of Poe's literary work is prevalent here. To it's credit The Haunting of Morella at least isn't boring, it moves along at a fair pace & has the requisite amount of babes, blood & breasts to stop most genre fans going into comatose state like a lot of low budget crap can seem to do. The character's are basic, the plot & narrative is simplistic & caters for the lowest common denominator, the exploitation elements are average & as a whole the film isn't particularly satisfying although I thought it was an OK watch if your not too demanding (& to be honest you'd better not be!). There really isn't much else I can say about The Haunting of Morella except if you like these cheap blood 'n' breast horror films then you may like this one otherwise there's very little here to recommend.
Director Wynorski doesn't give the film any sort of distinctiveness or style, he's a point & shoot sort of guy isn't he? There is a fair amount of nudity but I was disappointed with the gore content, but then if you think about it it's cheaper & easier to film a naked woman than set up a complex special effect isn't it? A fact that I'm sure the economy conscious Wynorski never overlooks...
Technically the film is average, I must give the filmmakers some credit for trying to make a period piece although at times it looks like a school play with limited sets, bad lighting & cheap costumes. The Haunting of Morella contains one of the cheapest & fake looking slit throats I've seen in a long time & the rest of the so-called special effects aren't much better. The acting is of, shall we say a low standard.
The Haunting of Morella is average at best & low budget rubbish at worst. A must for Wynorski fans, if such an animal exists but for everyone else there are much better horror films out there.