WITCHBOARD (1986) **1/2 There's plenty to criticize about the plot, production, acting, etc., all that, it's a film that can easily lead one to become a pompous windbag on paper. It's also a film where those minor matters aren't all that important. What's important is that it keeps your interest, and that it delivers the spine-tingles when it wants to. Keeping interest in the story is probably the bigger achievement, in a film devoting so much time and energy to Tawny Kitaen's fingernails as she plays with a Ouija board. Could have got old fast but it doesn't, because the actors are all appealing. Tawny is particularly striking all dolled-up for the psycho scenes, but she's never less than a credible and amiable presentation, and Todd Allen and Stephen Nichols are winning approximations of the kind of guys who might be orbiting her. They're more than just sidekick throw-away eye candy for the babes, towards a physical manifestation of the polarised Dionysius and Apollo in a Nietzschean context. That would make Tawny the totem of truth (or perhaps a Freudian one) I guess, though most sane people wouldn't bother thinking of it that way and it's not entirely called for. Kevin Tenney lets it pace itself whilst gently padding his portfolio with cool shots, until he suddenly pulls out the stops and delivers the bang that you'd kind of hoped for but didn't really expect. Hints at things greater than itself, an excellent study of addiction, really.
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