Spellbinder (1988)
How I watched: Tubi
I was totally a 90s kid so you guessed it I grew up on VHS tapes. I remember this one time I was just wandering outside and there was a dumpster at our apartment complex and spotted some nice goodies! By that I mean Atari plus games along with some VHS tapes. Looking back, I'm totally cringing at how bad this could have turned out but I am proud to say that no, I did not find snuff tapes or even porn on them. THERE WERE RECORDED MOVIES!
Spellbinder was one of them. I watched this one a lot as a kid and thought it was pretty rad. I've moved a lot from place to place since then and I guess somewhere down the line it got hidden in the deep depths of unknown boxes and eventually thrown out since the rise of DVD's. Every now and then I think about this movie and for the past 12 months it's on my mind moreso now that I want to track this down. And then FINALLY Tubi finally has it! It was expiring by the time I found it but hey better late than never, right?
For the short of it, this movie is about the dude who rescues a woman from a lover's scuffle. This woman, though, has some mysterious secrets to be found.
The long of it? Well...
This movie starts out like the intro to The Fresh Prince of Bell Air. 2 guys out playing B-Ball chilling out, maxin', relaxing all cool. Stepping outside, they see this guy up to no good. With this girl starting makin' trouble in the neighborhood. They split up the fight and the guy tried to scare: "You have no idea WTF you doin' ? Don't you dare!"
lolz aside that's basically what happened.
The abusive boyfriend skedaddles so now what's left is the woman and the 2 good samaritans. One of the guys, Jeff, volunteers to drive the young woman home. That's that.
Except that she makes it clear that she doesn't have a home to go to so after barely any prodding, she agrees to go back to Jeff's house. Immediately upon arrival, she makes these random ass statements. First she says his pets are pissed off Jeff comes home so late, the name of a song he puts on and then she just so happens to know the artist of paintings he owns. She does this palm reading thing where she accurately pinpoints that he has no family and he all alone (meaning he's looking for LOVE). He's like "OMG that's totally me!" Apparently HE is he one being swooned over by this temptress. And they fuck.
Things are going pretty damn aggressively well and they enter a relationship almost immediately, much to the approval of his colleagues even Derek, the friend he was with on that fateful night. Jeff hosts this party at his house with all his friends where they officially meet the new girlfriend and what a shocker everyone loves this gorgeous bombshell gal.
That is, except Jeff's secretary, Grace. Grace arrives fashionably late to the party but Jeff drops everything the second he sees her enter. He quickly introduces the two. He playfully yet firmly states that he is nothing without Grace and she is his backbone. Nope, I know what you're thinking. She isn't a young woman, but an older woman. Grace is more of a motherly figure rather than the stereotypical younger homewrecking side chick. Basically from the get go she doesn't seem to warm up to Miranda like everyone else obviously has. She first hand saw Miranda take this fresh pan of chicken from a 400 degree oven like it was nothing. She also caught her in a lie so the next day, she warns Jeff that Miranda is nothing but trouble. However, Jeff is in love. Yeah.
Not too long after, an unknown woman visited Jeff in his office giving him the warning that they knew he has HER and they want her back! So Jeff phones Miranda and she just fucks off and away from his house. So he's like WTF, bro?! He goes to file a missing person's report or something. And guess who is the detective on the case?? SHANG TSUNG!
