The Oracle (1985) — Triskaidekafiles

THE ORACLE

WRITER: Screenplay and Original Story by R. Allen Leider

DIRECTOR: Roberta Findlay

STARRING: Caroline Capers Powers as Jennifer

Roger Neil as Ray

Victoria Dryden as Dorothy Graham

Pam LaTesta as Farkas

Chris Maria de Koron as Pappas

QUICK CUT: A young couple struggles to settle in to their new apartment, when the wife makes some new friends that really shake things up.

THE MORGUE

Jennifer - A young woman, newly married, and easily sucked into the world of the occult, thanks to her apparent aptitude. She loves running, and gives in to a bit of hysterics.

Dorothy Graham - The wife of a recently deceased rich guy, eager to hear what Jennifer knows about his demise.

Farkas - An imposing figure that lurks around the story, responsible for Graham’s death, and just really likes the killing.

Oooh, I hope Black Canary and Huntress are in this, too.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Merry Triskmas, one and all! So, much like my entire year, the plans for the original movie in this slot got botched (translation, the DVD has yet to ship) but I was assured The Oracle was indeed a Christmasish movie, and since it was on my radar anyways, it was easy enough to slot this in and do this instead! So, let's unwrap this puppy.

The movie opens up on an old woman, a fortune teller it seems, receiving some bad news, and then cut to some time later, with some men packing up her belongings to clear the apartment for the next tenant. Turns out the message she got was, “You shall be evicted…”

Later, Jennifer gets lost down in the basement, and finds the old woman's things. When the building's superintendent shows up, he says if Jen sees anything she likes, have at it. A Christmas gift! And there we go. She lays claim to some of the old woman’s divination toys, and heads back to her apartment.

Meanwhile, a hooker is getting picked up by a large person, and when they lay atop her, there doesn't seem to be much going on. The prostitute reaches down to help the guy out, and is surprised by what they find.

To keep their secrets, more on those later, the person pulls out a knife, toys with the hooker for a bit longer, and eventually stabs her dead.

While the killer, Farkas, gets a bite to eat, and gets a phone call, Jennifer and her friends have Christmas Eve dinner in her new apartment, and she decides to bring out the scribblin' hand to hold a seance.

They don't get much in the way of results at first, but eventually the message "Help me" does get scrawled out.

Of course, no one but Jennifer believes any of this is real, and she goes to sleep grumpy. She gets woken up in the middle of the night, hearing scratching from the hand.

All this commotion wakes Ray up, which annoys him, and he vows to get rid of the hand in the morning.

The message is a name, William Graham, and a phone number, which her best friend urges her to call, just to prove or disprove it, once and for all.

When the person on the other end answers, the ladies discover that William Graham killed himself several weeks ago, spooooky.

Jennifer hears more construction paper cutting when she’s at home. So, I guess Ray did a shit job disposing of the hand, but now Jen takes her own try, and dumps it in the trash.

Immediately, things start flying around the room, falling off shelves, and even Jennifer is thrown to the floor.

Ray tries to enter the apartment to help her, but a desk is shoved against the door, keeping it from opening. Eventually the pair do manage to calm things down...but Ray thinks Jennifer is losing it.

He decides to take the hand to the incinerator, and runs into Mr. Pappas, who takes the hand off his hands, and will toss it away for the couple.

Pappas tries to use the hand to get the winning lotto numbers, but it won't work for him. He yells at the hand, and it sends puppety minions to take Pappas out.

But since they don't seem to REALLY be there, and only things the hand is making Pappas see, when he tries to get them with his knife, all he does is stab himself. Repeatedly. In the face.

Meanwhile, back with Jen and Ray, she's having another bad night of sleep, and the tv starts acting weird. It flashes a ghoulish face at her, and when the remote is unresponsive, Jennifer begins howling.

The seeming nightmare continues as a creature tries to get her from the shower, and Pappas' zombified body comes to see if she needs her plumbing fixed

Ray gets some info on William Graham, and he was apparently some rich important bigwig that...no one has ever heard of, who embezzled money, and was found dead, sucking a tailpipe.

A seeming suicide that is proven otherwise, when Jennifer has a sudden vision of the event, seeing two people, one of them being Farkas, dragging Graham's unconscious body into the car.

Later, Jennifer stops in at Ye Olde Expositione Shoppe, and learns about what planchettes are, and how they work, to clue in the audience.

All of this leads Jen to visit Graham's widow and flat out tell her that she saw him get murdered, and has been conversing with his spirit. Yeah, that went well.

You can tell how old this movie is by counting the rings on her shoulder pads.

But Dorothy humours the girl, and takes her to the place she described from her vision. While she's relating what she saw, one of the factory workers, and murderers, walks by and hears himself being identified. So he books it to Farkas, to get the problem taken care of.

Jennifer and her husband head to a Christmas party, where Farkas is posing as a maid serving drinks. A disguise good enough to not have Jennifer quite recognise her.

The topic of her communicating with Graham comes up again, and people continue to not believe Jennifer. So she decides to head outside to get some fresh air.

Farkas sneaks up behind Jennifer, and tries to throw her off the balcony. She only fails thanks to the timely intervention of a drunk thinking there's some hanky panky going on, allowing Jen to escape.

But once she's inside, Farkas grabs her again, drags her into the kitchen, and the sounds and screams from their fight go completely unheard by everyone at the party. I know parties can be loud, but the people right outside the door??

Eventually, Jennifer clobbers the killer with a frying pan, and wanders back to the party. Ray still doesn't believe her, and they go to show them the body...but of course Farkas is nowhere to be seen.

Since everyone thinks she's crazy, Jennifer reluctantly agrees to speak to a doctor, and it's pretty much your typical psychiatrist trying to blame the parents.

Doctor Riker urges her to destroy the hand, but we know how that goes. So she agrees to come over and help Jennifer destroy it.

When she shows up, however, the doctor is attacked and dragged off by some unseen force. I don't think it's ever clearly established who or what got her.

Carolers are getting more and more persistent with every passing year.

Later, Farkas is back at it, flat out trying to run Jennifer over on the sidewalk. The poor girl ducks into a museum to hide out, but she is followed.

She runs into one of the museum guards, loses it, and they send her off to a mental institution to get herself together. Farkas is told to go inside and take care of it, but that level of difficulty is a step too far for them.

Meanwhile, Ray discovers the planchette, and makes to toss it into the incinerator. But it's powerful protections have a creature reach out of the oven and pop his head off like a dandelion.

Back at the mental hospital, Farkas' accomplice Tom ha somehow snuck in, and plans to take his stab at taking care of their witness problem.

He poses as a doctor to get into the girl's room, and is about to inject her with something or other, when a glowing green light distracts him.

Tom peeks out the window at the strange light, and a flying head comes rushing at him. It refenestrates through the window, and takes out Tom with the glass.

Jennifer wakes up, sees the co-murderer bleeding all over her bed, and runs off in a panic. Which seems to be her go to move.

After a long run through the hospital, she exits and runs right into the helpful arms of Mrs. Graham, who gives her a ride. And I hope you don't mind you have to share the back seat with Farkas.

So yeah, the Widow Exposition shares how she couldn't stand her elderly husband, and had him killed to save herself from the marriage.

Once they reach the factory where William’s murder took place, Jennifer escapes again, and even more running ensues.

The chase goes on for a REALLY long time. No, longer than that. Poor Farkas is so overweight, that if it goes on much longer, she just might have a heart attack, problem solved.

But finally, Jennifer runs out of places to run, and hides behind some boxes, hoping that heart attack shows up real soon.

Farkas sees this as an easy win, but as they're about to swing the killer blow, the ghost of William Graham appears.

But Farkas killed him once, how hard can a second go around be? Unfortunately, ghosts are immaterial, and they swing the ask right into a container filled with chemicals, that spray all over Farkas, causing her to melt like she’s dying in a RoboCop movie.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Dunham and Walter!

It is a shockingly gnarly death, for a movie that has thus far played it fairly straight, without too much gooey.

Jennifer runs away some more, steals Dorothy's car and drives off to live her life as an oracle, and the widow tries to follow her, before this kinda sorta witness can ruin everything.

Dorothy jumps into another car, but her husband's ghost gets poetic revenge by making her suck tailpipe and dying the same why he did.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks really good for a flick from the mid 80s.

Audio: Not bad at all.

Sound Bite: “They're not LIKE dead people, they ARE dead people."

Body Count: A decent amount of weird deaths.

1 - Nine minutes in, and first blood is drawn when a hooker is sliced up by our killer.

2 - Pappas kills himself trying to take care of invisible creatures.

3 - We get to see Graham's murder in uh, let's say 'flashback'.

4 - Therapist killed by an unseen force.

5 - Ray gets decapitated by thing in the incinerator.

6 - Doctor Tom gets impaled with glass shards from the floating head of William Graham.

7 - Farkas gets sprayed in the face with chemicals

Best Corpse: That melting Farkas face is gonna stick with me. Good job.

Blood Type - B+: Quite a bit of blood, and a great melting head

Drink Up! Every time you see a mustache.

Movie Review: This is an odd movie. It’s well made, well directed, the acting is fine, and the plot is solid. It’s a bit strange at times, feeling like it’s cobbled together from other ideas, but something about this movie makes it stand out. It won’t change your life, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it has a very distinct voice. I enjoy some originality in the paranormal, even if it’s similar tropes, some new presentation is a nice change of pace. Not a bad movie at all. Four out of five stone hands.

Entertainment Value: The highlight here is the kills. They’re pretty unique, and the lengths they go to, for otherwise very minor scenes, is very commendable. To make all the little creatures Pappas is dealing with, when they’re barely seen, and not there to begin with, is worth noting. They made an entire corpse puppet for a few quick scenes. The standout performance is Pappas, doing a wonderful job of a friendly superintendent, who plays it big. Nothing so bad as to be entertaining, but a solid watch. Three out of five tailpipes.