WICKED STEPMOTHER begins when a policeman (Tom Bosley) finds that a family of missing persons has been shrunk to death. If witchcraft is afoot, whose beleaguered relatives will be next? We get our answer when Jenny (Colleen Camp) and Steve (David Rasche) return home from vacation, only
to find that her father (Lionel Stander) has fallen under the spell of a new wife, Miranda (Bette Davis). Jenny, who is allergic to cats, is determined to prove that her strange stepmother has a feline hidden somewhere, but what she doesn't know is that the cat houses the spirit of Miranda's
fellow witch Priscilla (Barbara Carrera). When Priscilla turns up on the family's doorstep later and virtually takes over the place, Jenny must do a little withcraft of her own to save her clan from getting shrunk. Davis--terminally ill when shooting began and unhappy with the way she was being
photographed--walked out in the middle of filming, which may partially explain the overly complicated, disjointed plot. Still, WICKED STEPMOTHER is a good-natured, occasionally hilarious spookshow, graced with a few ingenious special effects and sassily acted--with Davis giving a gleefully nasty,
if abbreviated, last film performance.
