LILITH

(A.k.a. THE THIRSTING)

Beneath the opening credits, Father Palmer (Jason Palmer) narrates his notes concerning Sister Katherine (Tina Krause, BLOOD AND SEX NIGHTMARE; NIKOS THE IMPALER).

We learn that Katherine has been the victim of nightmares and possible self-mutilation, brought on by an allegedly abusive childhood. However, thanks to medication, Katherine's symptoms have subsided and Palmer now recommends that she return to work under his supervision.

Bizarrely, for someone who repeatedly dreams of a young girl being imprisoned in a box, and who puts the gashes on her arms down to "ritualistic abuse" at the hands of a demon, Katherine is handed the task of looking after five comely teenagers studying religious faith under Palmer.

In class, we learn that Palmer has set the girls the task of learning about a Goddess of their choice. Prim Mary (Jacqueline Hickel, APPARITIONS: THE DARKNESS) selects the Goddess Lilith. Palmer sends the girls away to a retreat for a week with a homework assignment - a collaborative twenty-page essay covering each of their Goddesses.

Katherine goes with the girls, keeping quiet about the fact that her visions have returned. She also doesn't let on that when she walks in on their girls in their communal shower, she fantasises about them being in a lesbian clinch.

The girls - the five females least likely to ever be studying towards becoming nuns - generally goof around in skimpy clothes during their first day, sternly overseen by the miserable Katherine.

Come the evening, Katherine tells the girls she has to pop to town on business, and tells them to busy themselves with studying.

Mary is the first to read from her book on Lilith, telling her friends how the Goddess was turned into a demon as punishment for betraying God, and how she sought her revenge by slaying Adam and Eve. We then learn that Lilith haunts the minds of humans by filling them with impure thoughts, and giving men wet dreams. Which is all good fun, until an old page falls from out of the back of Mary's book.

The page contains a spell said to be capable of summoning Lilith. Curvaceous blonde Clareese (Nikki Gahan, HOW TO LIVE WITH A VEGAN WITHOUT KILLING THEM) insists the group perform the ritual to see what happens.

This involves the girls lighting candles, sitting naked around a pentagram scribbled onto their country cabin's wooden floor, and each writing down their deepest sexual desire on a piece of paper.

Clareese, Mary, Tiffany (Lauren McCarthy, VACANT), Michelle (Courtney Pahlke, LOST ALONG THE WAY) and Jackie (Lauren Ryland, WITCHES NIGHT) all place their secret wishes in the centre of the pentagram as Clareese reads the spell.

The fun is cut short when Clareese's boyfriend Randy (Brian Cade, DEAD HORSE) turns up to give the girls a scare. He drags Clareese away for sex while the others retire for the evening, wondering whether the spell has worked.

During the night, all five girls share the same nightmare of a little girl being tortured. Worse still, Mary dreams that Randy seduces her in the night while Clareese sleeps beside her. In the dream, Clareese wakes to find Randy on top of Mary, strangling her during sex.

The following morning, Mary awakes to discover Clareese in tears. Clareese says she saw Mary and Randy romping during the night. Unable to convince Clareese that they have shared the same nightmare, Mary is left reeling when her friend slaps her before running away.

Upon discovering that Clareese has disappeared, an angry Katherine demands that the girls split up and search the local woods for her.

That evening, with no trace of Clareese, the girls retire downhearted to their retreat. Jackie blames Lilith for the day's events, and says they must burn their secret wishes to reverse the spell. They do this and go to bed, hoping things will return to normal the following day.

But will their efforts work, or will the kinky dream sequences and flashbacks to Katherine's abusive childhood continue to haunt the hapless campers? Will anyone else meet a similarly grisly fate to Clareese's, at the hands of a mysterious hooded figure? Will Katherine prove to be the saviour, or the killer, of these girls?

More pertinently: Will any more terrible actors turn up in cameos as religious nuts warning the girls of the danger they're in (Gary Sugarman [DAMAGED GOODS] take a bow, that was the worst performance I've witnessed in years - very funny).

Speaking of lousy performances, this film is littered with them. Palmer gets the ball rolling with his wooden and thoroughly unconvincing portrayal of a young priest. Then Krause appears as the troubled Sister, all pet-lip and doe-eyes, barking at the girls then gasping amusingly each time she suffers a vision. The girls have nothing to do but act like brain-dead bimbos who get their breasts out now and then. Not one of them registers any further than allowing you to appreciate they have very nice figures.

Even Mickey Rooney (BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S; PETE'S DRAGON; NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM etc) can't muster a decent performance when he turns up in a cameo as Savy, the groundskeeper who passes an amulet on to Mary for good luck.

Complementing the dire acting is the nonsensical plot. Nothing makes sense, our sense of disbelief is stretched beyond breaking point, and the dreamlike sequences that signify whenever something horrible's going to happen are needlessly confusing.

The dialogue is heavily reliant on allusions to faith and miracles, religious beliefs and Catholic guilt. It all sounds terribly self-important and possibly in more capable hands, this could have been moderately thought provoking. But writer-director Mark Vadik (SUMMER SILENCED) delivers a clumsy and heavy-handed musing on repression and religion, one that elicits unintentional laughter each time one of his incompetent cast starts spouting passages from the bible or "profound" moral advice.

As a horror film, LILITH offers nothing remotely resembling originality. From it's SEVEN-style edits to the Marilyn Mason music video-style flashbacks, through the grinding score and shaky camera designed to disguise the cheap gore FX, to the obligatory twist ending - there's nothing you haven't seen umpteen times before.

The film does have a polished look to it, and visual style is one of its strong points. But even this works against the film - the slick look of the film renders it harmless, taking away any raw energy a less polished production may have achieved. Instead, this looks like an episode of CHARMED, with its glossy photography, orange-hued studio shots, attractive young cast and several pop songs peppered throughout. It's not only badly made and predictable; it's totally innocuous too.

The only people I could possibly recommend LILITH to are those who have a particular penchant for fetishist scenes involving Clareese being bent over and spanked with a ruler, and Michelle straddling a gimp only to realise when his mask is removed that it is her father …

The screener disc was a bare-bones affair without even a main menu page, which took me straight into the film. Although there was no scene-selection menu, the film did possess 9 chapters.

LILITH was presented uncut in a decent 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. Images were generally solid, with strong colours and good blacks throughout.

The English 2.0 audio did a good job.

Heavy on the religious babble, rife with terrible performances, slick and polished and not without it's fair share of boobs, but ultimately boring. LILITH isn't a good film. Nor is it a so-bad-it's-good film. It's just bad.

Review by Stu Willis