You'll have to excuse my cinematic ignorance, as I've never seen Witchouse 1 or 2. I have no basis for comparison, but I feel comfortable in saying that Witchouse 3 stands as its own complete entity. Shot on DV (digital video) in a very short time frame, it seems as if the sole purpose of this film would have been to make a quick couple of bucks. Well, somewhere along the way, a real film somehow wound up being made. It isn't exceptional filmmaking mind you, but for its budget and limited resources, well it ain't half bad.

The story is quite a simple one. While trying to escape the clutches of her evil abusive boyfriend, Annie escapes to the beach house of her two estranged friends Stevie and Rose. It turns out that Stevie and Rose are in the midst of filming a documentary on witchcraft (how they got funding for this, I have no idea). That evening, the three decide to hold a faux seance (for the good of the documentary, natch) and they unwittingly release a demonic witch (played by Brinke Stevens) thirsty for blood. Needless to say all holy hell breaks loose and the bodies start to pile up (is 2 bodies considered a pile?). Of course the ladies find some time to soak in a hot tub, take an erotically cleansing shower (they're very dirty don't you know) and prance around the house in tight shirts and panties (Yay Wicca!).

I'm not going to lie to you. Witchouse 3 is not a great film. That said, it is ten times better than half of the SOV (shot on video) crap that is currently available (then again, that's not really saying much). I was actually quite surprised to discover that Witchouse3 has a real professional look that seems to extend much farther than it's obviously tight budget. All things considered, it's a nice looking film with tight editing, nice camera shots and fairly decent performances all around. The actual story is a bit thin and seems to really wear down towards the final act but at 77 minutes, the film never really overstays its welcome. Don't get me wrong, Witchouse3 is by no means a replacement for the plethora of great films available on DVD to the online community, but for fans of independents and SOV horror (you know who you are) Witchouse3 is definitely at the head of the pack.

Presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer, the framing of Witchouse3 does look comfortable, so I'd say the filmmakers compensated for this widescreen framing during the shoot. The image is anamorphically 16X9 enhanced as are most of the extras. Since the film was shot DV, there is no film transfer involved, which means no speckles, scratches, film dirt etc. The transfer here looks quite sharp, with minimal evidence of artifacting. There are some compression artifacts noticeable, but nothing too distracting.

Audio is presented in a very impressive 5.1 mix. This is without a doubt the best 5.1 audio mix I have ever heard for such a low budget DV production. It's also worth mentioning that the soundtrack score is also very impressive with a great synth sound. Audio just fills the room and there are some really impressive directional effects as well. This is an extremely impressive audio mix that I enjoyed very much.

The crowning achievement of this disc would have to me the massive amounts of extras. There is so much goodness packed into this little silver disc, I don't even know where to begin. We'll start with no less than 3 individual feature length audio commentaries. Commentary 1 is with director JR Bookwalter and actress Debbie Rochon (I dig her), commentary 2 has stars Tanya Dempsey, Brinke Stevens and Paul Darrigo. The last track features producer Tammi Sutton, director of photography Danny Draven and crew member "Spud" Scatuto (no, that's not a joke). Next up is a 34 minute feature of random behind the scenes footage, followed by a 23 minute interview with actress Debbie Rochon (did I mention that I dig her?). Moving along, there are more cast interviews that run about 10 minutes and a blooper reel that runs about 16 minutes. Onward still we have a feature entitled The Eyes of Debbie Rochon (I really dig her by the way) which is basically 10 minutes of random video footage shot by Ms. Rochon with a handheld camera. We round things off with 2 still galleries, assorted trailers for other Tempe titles, cast and crew filmographies and a short film made by J.R. Bookwalter in 1979 when he was just a wee lad that runs just under a few minutes. Whew! Now that's an impressive list. The extras are actually great fun to go through, there's some pretty cool stuff packed in here.

Despite the fact that Witchouse3 is not a great film, for a DV product it's pretty damn good. Brinke Stevens is pretty cool as the demonic witch and Debbie Rochon is just plain hot. This is quite an impressive package considering what you get in the extras dept. and the audio quality is simply fantastic. I'm not going to say you couldn't do better, but you could do a hell of a lot worse (trust me on this one). It's a neat little package most places are selling for less than 15 bucks and if you're so inclined, it may just be worth a look.