October Horror Movie Challenge: Mausoleum (1983)

I have not seen this one in years. While demon possession is on brand for me this year, this was not on my preliminary list, it came up as recommended so I thought I would check it out, see how my memory of it was.

Mausoleum (1983)

We start with the funereal of Susan Walker's (played quite memorably to my 14-year-old mind by Julie Christy Murray) mother.  She can't take and runs off to a...you guessed it, a mausoleum. Here she hears the voice of a demon and she uses her powers to kill a homeless guy.

Fast forward 20 years Susan Walker Farrell (now played by Bobbie Bresee) is now married and seeing a psychiatrist.  The 20th anniversary of her mother's death is coming and her friends are worried. She goes out with her husband, but while alone she is accosted by a drunk. He leaves, but she causes him to burst into flames in his car.  And the killings start in earnest. She seduces the gardener and then kills him. They get a new gardener and she kills him too.

She starts to levitate, get all weird looking, and her eyes glow green. A lot. 

Turns out Susan and members of her matrilineal line are all possessed by this demon. They learn how to expel the demon from her Grandmother's journal but not before she kills her husband Oliver and remembers she killed her own aunt.

So this one was much better in my memory than it was in my rewatch. I always liked the idea of a family demon, one attached to a particular family of witches. We saw this in the Anne Rice Witching Hour books and again in my post-Buffy campaign "Season of the Witch."

I remembered Julie Christy Murray well. She would have been about the same age I was at the time and I am certain that she was one of the influences of my earliest witches. By this time I had already created Marissia and more blonde witches would follow.

I had good memories of this movie, but it didn't quite live up to them.  That's too bad, but not a big surprise. Still. It was a fun trip down memory lane.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
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