Jan 25: Season of the Witch

"14th-century knights transport a suspected witch to a monastery, where monks deduce her powers could be the source of the Black Plague."

   I kind of have this love-hate relationship with movies that are set in Medieval times. Put me in front of a movie with knights and swords and even dragons, and I am hooked for 90 minutes. Even the worst of these films are absolutely entertaining. With that, Season of the Witch proves to be another one of those awful films that I watched with too large of a smile on my face. The opening, featuring special effects out of a direct to DVD The Mummy sequel, and the great Nicolas Cage (with gorgeous blonde locks) fighting in a Crusade next to Ron Perlman, completely shows you what kind of movie this is going to be. 

Nic Cage has to have the world's largest collection of awesome wigs by now. 

   Nic Cage plays Behmon, a knight sent in charge of transporting a supposed witch to a random monastery forever away in order to possibly cure the Black Plague. Him, along side his faithful friend Felson (Ron Perlman), realize that this "holy" task may bring them a hell of a lot closer to God. It's kind of ironic that the guy who plays Ghost Rider and the mass of muscle who plays Hellboy are both sent on a mission for God. That's like if Jesus was on the Vegas Strip handing out pamphlets showing you the best "goods" the City of Sin has to offer...it's just wrong. 

Turning water into wine for all the wrong reasons. 

   The dialogue in Season of the Witch has some of the worst lines I have ever heard. Nic Cage and Ron Perlman talk their way through the piles of shit with God-awful accents that are not quite British, but something completely new. It's almost as these two badasses created their own country of origin and came up with their own dialect. Hell, they could have just gotten drunk together and watched BBC until they got it "just right". The supporting cast is equally awful. There is a priest whose sole purpose is to look scared and a thief who sounds like he's from the Bronx, which is kind of funny because he's one of the only actors in this movie who is actually from the U.K.

The Bronx: Birthplace of Medieval thieves since 800 A.D.

   Season of the Witch is the kind of movie that is so bad that it makes you want to drink yourself into a hazy stupor until you think you are actually fighting witches yourself. The movie would make for a surprisingly terrifying video game but, as a full length film, it fails in nearly every aspect. The special effects are cheesy, but not the good kind of cheese (see Evil Dead) and the actors should be burned at the stake (har har) for how bad of a job they did. But, I guess that's the best they could do when the dialogue sounds like it was written by a 12-year old boy obsessed with King Arthur.

Sight: A movie that gets a theatrical release should be held to certain standards when it comes to special effects and visuals. If so, The Season of the Witch would have gone straight to DVD... in Asia.

Sound: The score sounds as though it was "borrowed" from every other film in the genre and at times you can tell that certain lines of dialogue were dubbed in later on, as they fade in and out and all over the place. 

Skill: Even the great Nicolas Cage can't save a turd that smells this bad. 

Script: Me believe script bad. Writing terrible job done. I write good and better than them. It awful.

Overall: 3.3/10

Best Quote:

Behmen: [preparing for battle] "Whomever slays the most men drinks for free." 
Felson: "I'll take the 300 on the left, you take the 300 on the right." 
Behmen: "But if we divide them evenly, who will buy tonight's drinks?"
Felson: "Oh, you're buying, my friend."

At least the "witch" is kind of hot.