The Believers [1987]

Police psychiatrist Cal Jamison [Martin Sheen], barely recovered from the accidental electrocution of his wife, is called in by cop McTaggart [Robert Loggia] to help an undercover man who's freaked out while delving into a case that involves ritual child murder. Jamison becomes aware that the killings are connected with a dark form of Santeria, a voodoo-like religion practiced mainly among New York's black and Hispanic population. Despite McTaggart's declaration that 'cuttin' up chickens ain't my idea of a religion', Jamison learns to respect the wholesome ethnic practitioners of Santeria, like the maid who is always casting protective spells over his son and girlfriend, but discovers that a cadre of evil worshippers would like him to cut his own [admittedly irritating] brat up to help them achieve their ends.

The Believers is well-acted by a line-up of strong supporting players, and competently directed by Schelsinger in his Marathon Man commercial thriller style, but it's also a touch empty. while the film plays lip service to the apparently beneficial effects [unless you happen to be a chicken] of real-life Santeria, it does as a melodrama have to concentrate on the nastiness of its villains. Therefore, more than a trace of racism creeps in whenever the good guys have to deal with non-Christian beliefs. Furthermore, the plot is all-too clearly the 101st retread of Rosemary's Baby, as a coven of high-placed New York sorcerers try to get a parent to sacrifice a child for evil.

However, individual sequences work very well, particularly when something horrible is happening: spiders erupt from a zit on Helen Shaver's cheek [ugh], an autopsy reveals live snakes wriggling in a victim's guts [ech], Loggia is consumed more subtly by an unspeakable but unspecified spell, and the finale involves a good one-on-one confrontation between our hero and the witch doctor in the traditionally vast deserted warehouse where the sacrificing goes on.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: City Limits [issue unknown]

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