October Horror Movie Challenge: Night of The Necromancers

This is another one that has been on my list for a bit. Napoleonic Wars. The Black Forest? Dark Elves? Yeah, that sounds great. Does the movie live up to it? 

The Necromancer (2018)

A group of British soldiers gathers after a particularly bloody battle where they learn they are being sent to Waterloo where they will certainly be killed. So they all decide to become deserters and leave for England. To do so they have to cross into Germany and through the BlackForest. 

Along the way the tensions rise and get higher as they all begin to think about what they had left behind in England. Logan for example thinks about his wife on his estate. As they move through the forest though Logan begins to hear voices and sometimes the voices sound like his wife. While searching he sees a naked woman with horns running through the forest. He follows her but can't find her.

They stumble on another British soldier who appears to be shell-shocked. Unsure what to do with him they take him along.  Deeper in Logan hears the woman more. We learn in flashbacks that he argued with his wife before leaving. He accused her of cheating on him with another man. As he gets deeper and deeper into the forest he sees more and more of this mystery woman. As we learn more about Logan and how he beat and eventually killed his wife before he left for war.  He encounters the woman who calls herself a "dark elf" or a "Moriquendi" (ok more on that later). She convinces him to eat berries, which are really stones, and this kills him.  We soon see two other dark elves who also tempt the other men, but they don't get the same level of detail that Logan did. But basically, all of them have dark secrets. One had sex with a woman he was not supposed to (couldn't tell why), and one had a prostitute kill herself, things like that. 

The movie doesn't really get going till about the last 20 minutes. The soldiers, once they see the dark elves and remember their horrible deeds, begin to kill themselves in horrible, but imaginative ways.  We learn that the injured soldier is in fact The Necromancer. He had been a child living in the Black Forrest when he and his family were all killed by Vikings a 1,000 years before. He claims he came back by drinking the blood of unicorns (sounds oddly familiar) and now he feeds on the pain of people that come into the forest.

There are some issues with this movie. I love the idea of strange forgotten creatures living in dark places like the Black Forest. And I love the idea of karmic payback. Even the dark elves looked cool. The biggest issues with this film are they spent too long to get to the interesting bits and too long on just Logan's backstory and so little on everyone else's. Honestly, they were all mostly interchangeable. 

I mean really all really old forests should have something like this in them. Reminded me of driving through the Appalachian mountains last year. 

So, Moriquendi. I knew I knew the word but could not recall where. So I looked it up. Yes, it means "Dark Elf" but in Sindarin in Tolkien's Legendarium. I am pretty sure they Googled "Dark Elf" and they got "Moriquendi."

Necromancer (1988)

It was an early night so I popped this one on. I remember it from the late 80s and thought, hey let's do a a Necromancer night. 

So this is a Rape-and-Revenge movie with a supernatural twist. College student Julie (Elizabeth Kaitan/Clayton) is working late in her professor/lover's office when some dudes break in to steal a test. They find her and one of the dudes, Paul, rapes her.  

Naturally upset she tells her friend (but not her boyfriend because is a self-absorbed prick) who convinces her to see a psychic who is advertised in the local campus paper. They see her, the weird magic/psychic chick Linda, (though sometimes the actors screw up and call her by her real name, Lisa) casts a spell raising the Demon of Vengence.  They think it is a joke until the special effects department gets their say and Julie and her friend run out.

Soon the guys that rapped Julie begin seeing her naked form (coming out of water for some reason) trying to seduce them (they are college guys, this is not a lot of work) in their embrace the form turns into a demon and kills them.  Julie seems to be somewhat aware of what the demon is doing, seeing it in her dreams. Oh and much like poor old Susan from Mausoleum, her eyes glow green before she goes all evil. Must be an 80s thing.

Though soon the demon begins to go after other men in her life. Like her boyfriend (though her professing her love for him stops the attack before it happens) and creepy professor (played by usually better than this Russ Tamblyn) a murder the real Julie gets to witness and we get our first good look at the demon in its true form.

Waide Aaron Riddle plays Earnest who...well, I am not sure what he adds to this other than keep calling Linda Lisa and looking like Patrick Wilson ordered from Wish. I guess he keeps trying to cast protection spells on Julie himself. He does try to give her an athame but it turns out to be the demon/Linda/Lisa again. She gets him to kill himself.

Julie has another "fight" with her boyfriend Eric. Well, she is trying to explain herself and ask for help and he is being a dick. And the demon shows up in his room.  At this point, I am rooting for the demon. Though Lisa/Linda seems to be somewhere else summoning something from the "bowels of Diva" and the demon is in Eric's room. But then she turns from Demon Julie to Linda/Lisa again.  So Julie and Demon Julie are wrestling each other with a knife. And one of them gets killed with a knife to the eye. We assume it is real Julie, but we later see Linda/Lisa laughing in her home.

Yeah this one was not good. 

While both movies share a name, Necromancer, they also share a theme; vengeance on men that have wronged women. Which of course next to nothing to do with a Necromancer.

BUT I do love the idea of a vengeful spirit that a witch in particular can call on.  I did this a bit with The Dirae, but a demon of vengeance would also be nice. The idea from this movie was later "used" in the Buffy series, but I think I could do better than either, to be honest. The Erinyes are a good choice, but they have a lot of baggage of their own.

What ever I decide the demon needs to have glowing green eyes.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
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