Witchcraft 5: Dance with the Devil involves a lot of hypnosis, a decent amount of homicide, and a moderate amount of nudity — but very little of what I would consider “Witchcraft.”
It starts with Marta (a prostitute), taking a businessman to her room. Only it turns out Marta isn’t a prostitute, it’s a scam she and her boyfriend, Bill, are running. Bill hits the businessman too hard, and he dies, so they have to hide the body.
A preacher and his secretary are being driven to a meeting. The preacher is very much the embodiment of goodness (for B-movie values of “embodiment of goodness”).
With the body in the trunk, Marta and Bill are driving out of town when a drunk lurches in front of their car. They sideswipe the drunk, and drive off. The preacher and his secretary see this happen. They get out of the car to see if they can help the dying fellow.
The dying fellow seems to house a malevolent spirit, which takes over the preacher’s body. Whoops.
Marta and Bill are driving through the forest when their car breaks down. They get out on foot to go for help, body in the trunk conveniently forgotten. No one actually says “What else could possibly go wrong?,” but there is a clear sense that things haven’t been going well.
They come across an old man sitting alone at a campfire. He implies that he summoned the two. Marta distracts the old man with seduction while Bill hits him over the head. But not hard enough to kill him this time, Bill.
While exploring the old man’s hovel for stuff to steal, Marta and Bill discover that he is not what he appeared. He isn’t dead. He isn’t unconscious. He has the not-at-all-ominous name of Cain. Cain is an agent of Satan, on earth to collect souls. He uses his fantastic Satanic hypnotist-adjacent powers to make Marta kill Bill, then demands that she serve him as acolyte. However, if she does a good job, he’ll make sure she gets her proper reward when Satan returns to earth. I’m not at all certain if this was meant to be a threat, or an honest enticement. The movie doesn’t give hints either way.
The next morning, elsewhere, Keli and William (two completely new characters) wake up. Keli has the TV on. That preacher from five minutes ago in the movie (“embodiment of goodness” possessed by a malevolent spirit) is a televangelist. She refers to him as her pastor, says he sounds so different recently, and turns off the TV.
Keli has to fly to San Francisco for a meeting, but reminds William that he’s promised to take her out dancing that night. William is grumpy about it, but agrees.
There is no dancing that night. A new magician is appearing at the club. It’s Cain! And Marta as his assistant. Cain selects William to be hypnotized, and Keli convinces him to go up. Cain has sensed the power within William. William is apparently a Warlock. Cain easily hypnotizes William. This won’t cause problems later at all.
Cain collects a whole mess of souls at the dance club after the show. But he still has several recalcitrant ones he needs to collect from prior contracts. What a bother. But wait … if Marta uses her sexuality to seduce William, then William will be forced to do his bidding!
A poorly-directed and surprisingly perspiration-filled sex scene ensues between Marta and the hypnotized William, all the while Keli is asleep next to William.
William kills a dude and returns the dude’s soul to Cain. Was this the same night that Marta and William…? It’s unclear.
The next morning, William wakes up freaked out and with blood on his hands. When Keli attempts to comfort him, he has a spasm of rage and hits her. This is unacceptable! But since the movie was made in 1993, Keli takes the extreme step of … calling her pastor in for counseling.
After some more miscellaneous soul harvesting while William is asleep/hypnotized, the pastor shows up with Anastasia, a random white witch. And yes, I mean “white witch” in all the relevant meanings of the phrase.
The pastor offers to help, but when he hears Cain’s name, he nopes out of the house. But bravely leaves Anastasia to do the curse research, set up candles for the protective circle, and so on.
At night, Marta shows up, kills Anastasia, and has sex with William again. This time instead of excessive sweat, Marta uses wax from the candles in the (not-so-)protective circle.
William kills another guy. As post-coital habits go, that one is unsustainable.
The next morning, William feels great. Keli agrees that he can leave the protective circle to shower. Said shower being in the middle of some sort of rock cavern with running water … Keli’s house is too much. Oh no, an abundance of water, what could that signal? William and Keli have sex in the shower, and again William has a spasm of violence, throwing Keli to the ground. He and Keli agree that he must go back into the protective circle, and stay there.
Keli goes to hunt down the pastor directly. No longer the “embodiment of goodness,” he has finally seduced his secretary, and is in the middle of having (for once, unnecessary-fluid-free) sex with her.
The pastor tells Keli that Cain is almost impossible to kill, except for the sword Cain carries. But it’s always on his person. How can she get it away from him to stab him with it? She doesn’t care, she has to help William!
Keli tries to sneak into Cain’s demesne and is captured. William shows up to rescue her. Cain loans Marta his sword to kill Keli. With Keli threatened, William is able to shake off the hypnotic control. Cain tells Marta to kill William. She fails. William is able to get the sword, and kills Cain.
Goodness has triumphed, the end. Goodness, he’s triumphed. The end?
There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m not sure what it says that Keli being threatened with a sword was able to snap William out of Cain’s hypnotic control, and William hitting her directly with his fists was not.
The three women who have sex scenes (Marta, Keli, the church secretary (who is credited as Secretary)) are all of a certain physical type. If you blurred out their faces, I couldn’t tell them apart. Anastasia was a somewhat different body type, and she didn’t take her shirt off on camera.
Don’t worry too much about any questionable dialogue, though. The odds are that you won’t be able to hear it. The volume of this movie was low, all around. I had all the relevant meters cranked up to maximum, and I still spent half the movie hunched over my laptop, trying to decipher dialogue. I put a lot more effort into hearing the movie’s dialogue than the writers put into writing it.
The most famous person adjacent to this movie is Thomas Jane, the ex-husband of the actress who played Anastasia.
The most famous person in this movie? That’s a trick question.