Apprentice to Murder

If you're planning to watch this simply because you're a Donald Sutherland fan, don't bother. He isn't likely to impress you with his mediocre performance here. As the for the film itself, it's watchable but very minor. It manages to remain reasonably interesting most of the way, but it doesn't have many surprises to offer and it MOVES LIKE MOLASSES!

"Apprentice to Murder" carries an interesting theme with its narrative about a young man (Chad Lowe) who befriends a medicine man (Donald Sutherland) who can feel the presence of demon in other people and decides to commit murders in the name of God. Sounds something you seen before in other movies but this time we have a real life story that took place in the late 1920's. However the movie fails to deliver an interesting story and also fails to make viewers curious or deeply interested in the story thanks to a slow oriented presentation that takes ages to reach its summit and present the horrific elements behind the final murder.

Here's a regular and weak movie with some fine performances. Too bad those don't match with such a film that wastes the use of good actors (Eddie Jones is amazing as the boy's drunken father, and Donald plays the usual sinister type). The more it progresses the more the film gets stuck with repetition and a really progression of events that waste everybody's time. Don't waste yours, not even out of curiosity in seeing how the performances and settings go. 5/10.

A very fine movie, totally underrated. Despite a bad box for the DVD edition, this is NOT a "horror flick", but a greatly interesting and subtle approach of a strange and complex relationship between an influenced young man (Lowe) and a disturbed pow-wow-preacher, tortured by his secret fears -- and desires... Homosexual implications, wonderful camera work, and great musical score by Charles Gross. There is a magic in this movie, which places it somewhere between "The Night of the hunter" and "The Reflecting skin". Felicitations to R.L. Thomas. Oh !... and Donald Sutherland is memorable !... His performance is suave, well balanced, and constantly precise.

I love this movie and have recommended it to my students in folk-magic because it is closely based on a true story of murder, mysticism, and (possible) madness concerning a Pennsylvania Dutch Pow Wow doctor in the mid-1920s. Donald Sutherland is superb as John Reese, the highly eccentric conjure and herbalist. Chad Lowe is quite good as his young apprentice. The location shots, filmed in Norway, are spectacular -- not Pennsylvania Dutch country, exactly, but a wonderful rural landscape, with great old 19th century buildings. There is also a very good look at contemporaneous hoodoo practices, as the Pow Wow doctor seeks an outside consultation to cure his ills. If you're a prop and set decoration fan and knowledgeable about magic, look for the couple of Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs (inexplicably called "hexagrams" -- the movie's one false step) that contain Norse bind-runes thrown in on them -- obviously that was the Norwegian prop-maker's little in-joke. This is a great little underrated classic, and the perfect vehicle for Donald Sutherland.

This direct to video film has a strange pedigree. It's supposed to be set in a Pennsylvania Dutch town and is made by a Canadian production company...and it was filmed in Norway!! To make it even more confusing, the term 'Pennsylvania Dutch' is an erroneous one, as the settlers were Germans, not Dutch...and the word 'Deutsch' (meaning German) was somehow bastardized into Dutch. I mention this because my family is originally from that part of the country and my relatives HATE folks thinking when they are Dutch when they are usually German or French-German. Now that I've given you a bit of a history lesson, on to the film!

The film claims to be based on a true story. It stars Donald Sutherland as an odd preacher/medicine man/exorcist as well as Chad Lowe (Rob's brother) as a young man working in a tannery (a really awful job). Over time, the young man becomes the assistant to the odd preacher and ultimately they get in trouble when an exorcism goes wrong.

This is a weird film. It tells the story from the point of view of the preacher and his assistant. In their eyes, they did nothing wrong exactly....but the law saw it differently and you'll just have to see it to understand more about this.

The acting is pretty good and the production values aren't bad. But the story itself is a bit nonsensical and weird...and not in good ways. I really am not completely sure why they even made this strange movie...suffice to say many people watching it will likely not be all that impressed with it.