Only now does it occur to me... WITCHBOARD (1986)

 In this, the first installment "Of Whitesnakes and Witchboards... a Tawny Kitaen Retrospective":

 

Only now does it occur to me.... that Tawney Kitaen's acting skills are... um... pretty good, actually! She acts circles around basically every other performer (with one slight exception) in WITCHBOARD, a delightfully half-assed 80s horror flick (which spawned two sequels) about a killer Ouija board.

 

Tawny doesn't need competent scene partners to ply her trade

Tawny Kitaen––whose real surname is indeed "Kitaen" and whose first name is a childhood sobriquet––is probably best known for performing in a series of music videos by Whitesnake, whereupon she was draped across the hoods of cars, giant staircases, grand pianos, etc. I imagine these videos were a blessing and a curse––they seemed to pigeonhole her as "exhausted babe lightly gyrating on the hood of a expensive car" and catapulted her to a form of stardom she could never quite escape. I actually grew up thinking her last name was the quasi-sleazy nom de guerre "Kitten."

I suppose you wouldn't know it from the "Here I Go Again" or "The Deeper the Love" music videos, but Kitaen is a likable, versatile actor who absolutely deserved a Sharon Stone/Mimi Rogers/Gina Gershon-sized career; she's the sort of performer who can navigate the Scylla-and-Charibdyean passageway between "sex object" and "talented character actor," whether she's messing around on a Ouija board while wearing a statement bow

 

or totally possessed by a Depression-era axe murderer (who apparently teased her hair mid-possession). At any rate, we see a whole range of acting here that doesn't involve reclining on random luxury objects while fans blow at her hair.

Linda Blair, eat your heart out

Speaking of THE EXORCIST, director Kevin S. Tenney––who would go on to perfect his schtick a few years later with the lovable NIGHT OF THE DEMONS––turns in a film clearly inspired by Blatty's leftovers. It suffers from many of the (pacing) problems that plague freshman indie pictures, but it's really not bad! There's inventive, lively, Sam Raimi-esque cinematography by Roy H. Wagner (NINE DEATHS OF THE NINJA, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS)

and, obviously, there's Tawny Kitaen. But I must conclude with a shout-out to a performance I alluded to earlier: Kathleen Wilhoite's. You may remember her as Dr. Lewis' sister in the early seasons of ER, or you may remember her immortal role in Cannon Films' MURPHY'S LAW, where she called Charles Bronson "Scrotum cheeks," "Jism breath," "Camel crotch," and "Dinosaur dork," among other poetic nicknames. Here she plays Zarabeth the Medium, and while she only appears in one and a half scenes,

she is the 80s witchy woman/subculture valley girl that we all deserve. Amen.