www.imdb.com/title/tt/00943038SPOILER ALERTTHE STICK (1988) DARRELL ROODT
Long banned by the odious Publications Control Board’s hoary old excuse of “this film has merit but” this is a very frightening tale of the border conflict in South Africa and its’ harsh (to say the least) effect that it has on the impressionable young men who served the cause of the Nationalist Party – a cause that not all of them believed in.
A stick (detachment of soldiers) is sent in pursuit of a band of savage, half-black, half white killers responsible for the death of countless soldiers and end up being slaughtered themselves one after another after killing an entire village’s inhabitants and their witchdoctor, the latter being shot in the back by one of the brave soldiers and whose corpse rots away overnight, leaving only a skeleton with spiders as tenants in the hollows of its’ eyes. Only one survivor is left.
Traumatized and scarred, he is discharged from the army and on arrival in Johannesburg, is met by the eerie, seemingly solid spectre of the witchdoctor that he had supposedly killed. Starring Greg Latter, Sean Taylor, Franz Dobrowsky, Gys de Villiers, Frank Opperman, James Whyle, Nicky Rebelo and Winston Ntshona as the terrifying
sangoma (witchdoctor)
