The Thirsting

Catholic school girls, on summer retreat, conjure the spirit of Lilith, a soul-sucking spirit, during a playful ritual they aren't taking the least bit seriously. In doing so, even in jest, they perhaps are condemning their very souls.
**

Word of warning: review has images and content of an adult nature.

There are a handful of horror films spawning from 1996’s The Craft concerning a small group of girls getting caught up in dark forces typically dealing with demonic possession or witchcraft. I have noticed some of them have Catholicism or the Catholic Church as thematic backgrounds and settings, perhaps because the girls, who are supposed to be learning about how to behave and mature often are drawn to the darkside and find an allure in fooling around with the forbidden. Some even gain powers, play around and enjoy them for a bit, but soon the darkness behind them threatens the girls’ lives, sometimes enveloping their very souls. 

 

Besides The Craft (I have a copy of the dvd, but I haven’t ever even watched it; I need to rectify that, considering I was a fan of the movie when I was a teenager/twenty year old), there were a couple other films about girls and the bouts with the evil behind “the craft”, like 5 Girls (my review for this film is one of my most viewed on the blog) and Little Witches (some consider this just as good if not better than the more recognizable The Craft), that weren’t half bad, but The Thirsting, sad to say, isn’t among them. It just isn’t that good. 

It has Mickey Rooney in it, for Petesake, with a supporting part that comes right out of left field and seems forced like the square peg in a round hole, as some groundskeeper of the “local retreat”, like a summer camp for Catholic School girls, ordered around by Sister Catherine (Tina Krause), giving a family heirloom amulet to the lead, Mary (Jacqueline Hickel, giving a rather cringe-worthy performance at times, proving that perhaps one of the other actresses should have been chosen as the focal heroine of the girls in the film). 

Mary, like her other students, have impure thoughts, dream sexual fantasies, and when they call upon a demonic spirit named Lilith (she was the subject of one of the girls’ assignments in differing religious figures opposed to Christianity) in a ritual just for kicks one night, they had no idea what was conjured up. Fantasies become vivid and real, with quite a bit of kink and death following. Catherine, the Nun, is a bit disturbed and soon she succumbs to the same spiritual wickedness that seems to infest her girls.

Throw in the aforementioned randomness of “believe in small miracles” Rooney and some tit-illation (the girls, all of them, get naked for a shower and when they gather around the chalked floor pentagram star for the Lilith ritual, pop their tops), The Thirsting, you’d think, would at least register as mildly diverting. But the minuscule budget (the audio of the dialogue has a tendency to sound as if in a vacuum, and the special effects aren’t particularly special) just damns this movie more than Lilith does the souls of the girls. I will admit that one lesbian scene shrugged me out of a near coma (this movie really was boring me), and, you betcha, one of the ladies involved is Sister Catherine. 

The film does give male viewers (and whoever else likes them) the girls in short skirts and scantily clad nighties, as well as, volleyball uniforms (yep, they play volleyball at one point). The demographic aimed for might at least get something meaningful and life affirming from scenes with the girls sans much articles of clothing. That and Rooney providing spiritual guidance like some angel dropping by to ease poor Mary’s emotional state. Scantily clad girls battling spiritual crises and Rooney offering hope to one of them should seem like enough to warrant essential viewing. It is quite something that it is right the opposite. 

Once the film turns Lilith loose on her victims, the girls don't stand a chance. The vain one believing her looks will benefit her in the future has a dream regarding being a starlet in need of some extra cosmetic surgery (the girls rise from their beds in a trance, basically sleepwalking), meeting a creepy, "underground surgeon" who bloodies her face (she sleepwalks to a shower, takes a blow drier from Lilith (in black cloak), and electrocutes herself while under the spell). Another victim emerges into a bar needing to call someone to help her because of a car that won't start, with the bartender sexually molesting her in the process after some degradation (she sleepwalks to a kitchen, picking up a knife from a sink, accidentally puncturing herself, believing she's stabbing the bartender). Speaking of degradation, another victim walks in on her priest in S&M gear whipping on a man he forces her to give felatio to (later learning after riding him for a bit that he's her father!), with her rushing away into a lake (she drowns in the nearby pool after sleepwalking into it) to cleanse her filthy flesh. Towards this point in the film I was pretty much exit stage left...my interest piqued at the lesbian bit of erotica, but eventually I checked out interest-wise. The film features Lilith's presence in the dream sequences to emphasize her dominance over them. It gets particularly silly when Lilith "sucks away their soul" with a momentary lip-lock as the victims shake and tremor. During the ritual, each girl wrote a wish down on slips of paper. Well, Lilith wads them up after taking their soul and stuffs those slips in the mouths of her victims. Just kind of loses me in all of this corn.

All of that said, one sequence, where Sister Catherine’s latent homosexually is exploited by Lilith, allowed to inflame (we see her fantasizing about a naked Mary on a bed as she herself prays while without clothes, with her shown actually touching herself asleep in bed clothes outside of the dream), is really hot and erotic. That sequence, where Mary (or should I say Lilith?) entices Catherine, who eventually lies next to her, leading to kissing and groping. It is kind of Catherine’s accepting what she desires despite her religious belief system. Out of the entire film, this sequence, which admittedly turned me on, is probably, besides just the really weird Rooney appearance, the only true reason to recommend this at all. It didn’t hurt that Lilith, in Mary’s form, insists seductively (so the seduction to her desires is complete) to touch her, taste her, “quench thy thirst.” There aren’t enough of these types of catchy sequences to hold my attention and captivate me. I mean, eye candy can only take you so far, right? If the film is basically worthless besides that, I can’t really proclaim it as necessary viewing. If maybe the film had a bit more budget, there could have been some potential in the film. I hate getting on that soap box because I root for low budget filmmakers and hope they succeed. I think supporting them so that the horror genre can thrive is essential, but if a film about demonic possession or the conjuring of witchcraft is to succeed, a budget of some quality is important. If you have effects that aren’t convincing, the word “cheese” is used against the film.

I think from these images, you can tell that The Thirsting (or maybe Lilith is a more apt title for the film and the version I watched had that listed instead) borders on nunsploitation. A nun fights the desires for Mary, and the film documents a moment, a fantasy that has probably been building for some time, that comes to full bloom. Yes, "soft core porn" will be tossed out there as well. I myself never felt the film could quite recover from this point forward, though. It smolders while the rest of the film just runs the girls through ugly sexual situations wrapped within deviant dreams involving rape and incest, and stealing sex with a friend's beau.