Christopher Lee, Jennilee Harrison, and a Chris Walas sea monster are the new "Three's Company" in the direct-to-video horror film CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE, on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

In post-war West Africa, American Elizabeth (Harrison) has wed sugar cane plantation owner Geoff Armstrong (BLACK SAILS' André Jacobs) and is expecting a child. She feels uneasy in her new surroundings and her visiting younger sister Cindy (Jennifer Steyn, NIGHT OF THE CYCLONE) spends most of her time in the company of Geoff's layabout nephew Robert (future WOLVERINE director Gavin Hood). While Elizabeth is on the way to visit neighbor Anthea (Zoe Randall) and her young granddaughter (Olivia Dyer), and to drop Cindy and Robert off at the beach for a picnic, they come across a local ritual sacrifice of a goat for the son of a village woman who has been killed. Cindy interrupts the ceremony and takes the goat. Against the advice of Geoff's trusted foreman Mletch (SHAKA ZULU's Henry Cele), Elizabeth intercedes and the Nyonga (Dumi Shongwe) lays a curse on her which Mletch translates as "you had a baby… past tense." When Elizabeth suffers an abdominal attack, Dr. Pearson (Lee) attends and is as visibly disturbed as Geoff upon hearing about them interfering in the sacrifice, telling them about Ooma Omubai, a "ritual killer" who can be summoned from the sea by Nyongas. As a powerful electrical storm moves in on the countryside, someone or something wielding a machete starts stalking Elizabeth and her loved ones.

A British/South African production, CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE – originally known as PANGA (referring to the cane-cutting machete) – wants to be a Val Lewton-esque horror film combining the likes of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE LEOPARD MAN but it is also a late eighties/early nineties horror film with concessions to the body count formula and the demand to show an onscreen monster. Although not everything to do with the former succeeds. The film boasts an excellent atmosphere but the attitudes of racism and exoticism that are of-the-time feel blunted to the point of seeming to accept them uncritically, while the extended stalking sequences through the cane fields utilize light and shadow nicely but ultimately lack any real tension. The reveal of the monster is the film's other great disappointment, with Walas' creature looking like it was recycled from the suit he created for the Roger Corman-produced prologue for the SCREAMERS cut of Sergio Martino's ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. Lee maintains his usual professional level of performance, given a chance to stand out with a monologue during the climax, while Harrison is at least written as a tougher than average heroine for the both the period of the story and the horror genre (screaming when she discovers a decapitated body in a jeep but then shoving it out the door and slipping into the driver's seat herself). The film was the only directorial effort of editor Sean Barton who edited mainstream films like RETURN OF THE JEDI and JAGGED EDGE but also Lindsey C. Vickers' underrated arty horror film THE APPOINTMENT.