A year before Witchboard bewitched enough audiences to beget follow-ups and facsimiles, Roberta Findlay (Tenement) summoned similiar subject matter in The Oracle, but with nary a witch nor a board. Here, the evil antique in question appears to be the painted hand of a child mannequin clutching a calligraphy feather long enough to have been plucked from Captain Hook’s hat. Preloaded with ink, it scrawls simple messages from the beyond (e.g., “Help me” and “Nooo”) onto stationery. Its penmanship is ghastly.

When mousy housewife Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers) finds it in the basement of her apartment building, the label on her overalls is practically her reaction: “OshKosh B’Gosh.” The kindly Italian maintenance man (Chris Maria De Koron, in full “I make-a the pizza!” mode) encourages her to keep it, not realizing it will ruin Christmas for her and her asshole husband (Scrambled Feet’s Roger Neil, who looks like an attempt to clone Tom Atkins at a Duane Reade photo counter).

After Jennifer communicates with the spirit world, results include a poltergeist tantrum, a runaway car, animalistic snarls in the elevator, claws emerging from the trash chute, things glowing Listerine-green — not coincidentally, all fit Findlay’s threadbare norm. That’s hardly a negative; rather, the in-camera action allows The Oracle to hit the sweet spot of ’80s indie horror, goofball faults and all.

Ending excepted, the money shot comes when a character stabs his own arms as he hallucinates them covered by tiny creatures — unmoving rubber things from a kid’s Fright Factory set (ages 8+, batteries not included). That Findlay puts more of her stamp on the single scene she could graft onto a porno — a hooker slaughtered by an androgynous killer (Pam La Testa, Findlay’s Blood Sisters) — says how little she cares for the horror genre. However, as framed by her XXX Liquid A$$ets collaborator R. Allen Leider, the story beams are just solid enough to overcome the director’s evident disdain.

For someone who never acted before or since, Powers brings what matters most: lungs. Has anyone ever screamed more on film? Hopefully a few of her cries were for a lozenge (“Riiiicolaaa!“), because they clearly weren’t asking for less dowdy dresses that didn’t look swiped from a community college production of Anne of Green Gables. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Hey, everybody, it’s spring break! Never mind that we all look like we’re 30 and in vo-tech! Or that our old, gross neighbor lurking around the house in broad daylight is trying to kill us! Let’s party hearty! Woooooohoooooo!

There you have Sorority Slaughter in a nutshell (unsalted, mind you, due to budgetary constraints). It’s a relentlessly stupid, plotless exercise in misogyny, wicker furniture, wood paneling, shag carpeting, hairy arms, Korean deli-counter gore, American cellulite, acid-washed denim, pawed asses and lawn chairs for those asses. But mostly misogyny and wood paneling, given this is a shot-on-VHS production of the mail-order murder specialists of the New Jersey-based W.A.V.E. Productions.

I could and would forgive all that, except it’s so oppressively mundane. With W.A.V.E. impresario Gary Whitson ostensibly writing and directing, Sorority Slaughter stars stalwart Sal Longo as the neighbor who individually — and very, very slowly — sacrifices the cast members one by one to the devil himself. It also features more minutes of car washing than Car Wash, The Bikini Carwash Company and The Bikini Carwash Company 2 combined. (You know what? Imma throw Cool Hand Luke in there, too.)

Look for cameos from scream queen Titanic 2000’s Tina Krause, TV Guide and a shelf full of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books — or don’t look at all. That last option gets my highest recommendation. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

After you’ve given world cinema a robotic penis drill, what’s left? For Shinya Tsukamoto, the answer had zip to do with terrifying genitalia and everything to do with spritzing neck stumps, poltergeist kitchenware and singing disembodied heads — among other, spindly legged things — in Hiruko the Goblin.

Based on a manga by Daijirô Morohoshi, Tsukamoto’s first post-Tetsuo: The Iron Man project concerns famous archeologist Hieda (Kenji Sawada, Samurai Reincarnation), grieving his wife’s accidental death. When a colleague contacts him with news of discovering an ancient burial tomb on the grounds of a school and said to appease evil spirits, Hieda suddenly regains purpose — not to mention a questionable slapsticky presence.

Needing the type of distraction only an invisible demon can provide, Hieda investigates with the chance assistance of the school custodian (Hideo Murota, Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha) and a student (Masaki Kudou, Tokyo Heaven). The teen knows a thing or two about curses, as his back occasionally smokes ’n’ sizzles — like a fresh package of Hormel Black Label bacon on an oily griddle, but with crispy faces emerging from the burnt meat.

Hiruko would be unmemorable if not for its creep du grace taking hold at halftime: human-headed spiders. Who cares if they’re a pair of legs short? Arachnophobes are guaranteed at least one serving of the heebie-jeebies as these unholy creatures skitter about, crawl up walls and — shudder — leap toward our heroes. All done with models, the spiders give Tsukamoto a stronger tool for conjuring horror than the film’s dull, drawn-out first block, which lifts the frantic-cartoon tricks from early Sam Raimi.

A senseless but gonzo adaptation (and/or approximation), Hirkuo the Goblin is reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Sweet Home, with Tsukamoto having a slight edge in creativity and, of course, a surfeit of industrial steam-engine sounds. His movie feels like a dream, (in)complete with the gaps of logic that function as connective tissue, lending an additional layer of discomfort and otherworldliness. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.