The Cauldron: Baptism of Blood (2004) - 1.5/4

The sequel to Blood Orgy of the She-Devils is twice as boring, twice as redundant and nearly twice as long! I liked Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, despite the false advertising (no blood, no orgy, and the shes were scarcely devils). It had a certain primal force, what with its saturated, dark colours, castle setting, and bongo music. Cauldron is brighter, more pristine, lacking the primitivism that endeared me to the original.

Cauldron is to She Devils what Corpse Grinders II is to Corpse Grinders: it's a partial retread with some variations. Again, the coven of witches is introduced mid-ritual, killing an innocent man. Again, some utterly pointless subplots occur and are wrapped up in the first 30 minutes never to be referenced again, involving the killing of a man by magic. And again, a man and woman find themselves caught up in a ritual sacrifice.

The variation is that this time, the woman caught in the ritual is the winner of a talent competition. Seems one of the coven was in the competition as well and sang a soulful, but not very people-pleasing song. Whoops. So she uses a magical amulet to get revenge. And her boyfriend investigates her eventual disappearance.

I try to be generous to Ted Mikels' films, but Cauldron is the worst of his I've seen yet. It's not that it's lacking in ideas--Ted's always got lots of ideas--but that they're not well implemented. The runtime is well over minimum feature length, and yet it's still full of redundant shots. Every time someone drives somewhere, we have to see the person walk to the door, leave the house, walk to their car, get in and drive away. Sometimes we even get shots of them in the car for no good reason.

I mentioned the subplots at the beginning that are of no value to the main story. I believe the point of this is to show Mikels' research and fascination with the subject matter, just as in Bloody Orgy of the She Devils. I don't doubt Mikels did research. In that spirit, it's interesting. In fact, to be honest, I found these subplots the best part of the film. There's another moment in which two guests (one of whom is Mikels himself) on a talk show discuss the difference between 'paranormal' and 'psychic phenomena'; it's not useful, it just shows Mikels' research. It's actually my favourite part of the film.

The talent competition, which we actually get to watch on TV in-movie is quite remarkable. It's not hard to see why the character who wins does, because she's up against a witch who sings boring ballads, a ventriloquist who tells blond jokes (he's the male lead of the film!), and a female comedian who makes Kathy Griffin seem hilarious. Like watching The Office, you're torn between amusement and embarrassment. That's another fun moment.

The fun moments, alas, are too few and far between. The ritual scenes, which must take up a good twenty minutes of runtime alone, are interesting, albeit monotonous and lacking in the force of the original. They're also just as chaste as in She-Devils. Plus there's one blond girl whose skirt is on wrong and is showing only a single on of her butt cheeks. It looks silly and is very distracting, especially since the camera zooms in on it.

Another thing that really annoys me with this film is that almost no-one uses contractions. It's harsh to listen to and just makes already too-long scenes even longer.

So there you have it. Cauldron: Baptism of Blood is for Mikels fans alone--and I consider myself a fan. Mikels' attempt to fuse a damsel-in-distress plot with Haxan just doesn't work; I would have preferred something more like Haxan, in fact, since the plotless beginning of this film, with the coven performing tasks for random people, is certainly the strongest part--which isn't saying much. The padding, redundancies, and ugly dialogue just made Cauldron a very dulling experience, despite the many potentially fun ideas.

Bonus points for:
Pig demon with antlers shooting flames from its eyes!
A dummy in a horror movie that doesn't come to life
A museum full of men in Wal*Mart masks
The worst blond joke ever