Starring Debra Mayer, Riley Smith, Chad Burris, Kevin Calisher, Huntley Ritter, Ben Indra, Drew Fuller, Travis Sher, Rhett Wilkins
Directed by David DeCoteau
Expectations: Hopeful, the cover is promising.
On the general scale:
On the B-movie scale:
I never quite know what I’m getting myself into with a B-Movie, but I have developed a fond familiarity with the films of David DeCoteau after seeing about 30 of them. Voodoo Academy is an unexpectedly important film in DeCoteau’s filmography, so I’m glad it ended up in the final stretch of my Full Moon review series. If I had seen this a few years ago, it would be a homoerotic curiosity, but after seeing almost all the Brotherhood films, and a number of other post-2000s DeCoteau films, the resonance of Voodoo Academy is felt all the more. To put it bluntly, Voodoo Academy is basically the film that launched DeCoteau into the “hot guys in boxer briefs” genre, and honestly it’s one of his best movies.
The Carmichael Bible College is just about as unique as a college can be. The school only accepts six students at a time — it’s in an experimental phase — and its focus isn’t simply on bible studies. The good Rev. Carmichael (Chad Burris) heads the NeuroCystic Christianity Church, a new take on Christianity that recognizes God created both man and science. A main tent of the religion asserts that only through technology can man ascend to a higher closeness with the Lord. Rev. Carmichael also believes in the Catholic practice of confession, but his confessional is equipped with an electromagnetic device. Conventional confession relieves the burden of sin from the penitent man, but Rev. Carmichael’s device allows the sins to be eradicated from the mind, as well. He seeks to heal the soul through electromagnetic means, similar to the way that Scientologists go through auditing to clear themselves of past negativity.