"When simple revenge isn't enough," Vinegar Syndrome recommends their limited edition Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray of NECROMANCER.

Working late one night, drama student Julie Johnson (Elizabeth Cayton, SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY) catches rich fratboy trio Paul (Lee Cole), Carl (Edward A. Wright), and Allan (Shawn Eisner) in the act of stealing exam answers from the office of drama teacher Charles Delonge (Russ Tamblyn, THE HAUNTING). They rape her and threaten her into silence with the threat of exposing her former affair with Delonge, but she is more worried about losing her music student boyfriend Eric (John Tyler) finding out than losing her scholarship. Angry and feeling powerless, Julie confides in classmate Freda (Rhonda Dorton) who takes her to occultist Lisa (Lois Masten Ewing) who conjures up an "angel of vengeance" to avenge Julie. Julie and Freda are freaked out but ultimately laugh it off until a demonic double of Julie starts seducing and killing anyone who makes Julie angry. A frightened Julie tries to get Lisa to call off the spell, but she learns that Lisa's services come with the price of damnation. Nerdy Satanic acolyte Ernest (Waide Aaron Riddle) tries to help her with magic, but Lisa craves the killing and Julie's boyfriend may be the next victim when he starts to believe Paul's lies about Julie's reputation.

A demonic take on the rape-revenge film, NECROMANCER is an entertaining and efficient low-budget genre pic, well-shot and relatively well-acted by mostly inexperienced performers, and buoyed by seasoned Cayton's earnest and dedicated lead performance. The revenge aspect is pretty much swept aside by the midpoint rather than drawing out the torment on her assailants, but there is a degree of resonance in the characterization as Delonge touches early on Julie's need to access her anger when he wants to cast her has Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew" only for Julie to realize once she has vented her anger that she does not actually want anyone dead and it is established that she did not know what she was getting herself into with the Necromancer; setting it up for her newfound courage rather than "true love" arming her for her confrontation with the demon. The optical effects are modest while the creature and gore effects are passable but may evince more titters than terror. The film was written by William Naud (ISLAND OF BLOOD) who was a few days into directing when he was replaced by Dusty Nelson (EFFECTS), and that may explain the somewhat lopsided storytelling in which the Ernest character seems shoehorned into the film to provide some exposition.

Released to VHS by Forum Home Video and laserdisc by Image Entertainment, NERCOMANCER has always looked like a DTV production, and one presumes that Image Entertainment's 2000 DVD does not look significantly different. Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray from a 4K scan of the original camera negative – by way of a deal with current rights owners Filmrise who have the old video master on streaming services – gives the film a sheen not evident before, with colors that pop and a look at some striking location choices that enhance the film's production value while the film's make-up and creature effects still belong to the realm of the no-budgeter. The synth scoring and some directional effects also benefit from the restoration and lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo encoding. Optional English SDH subtitles are also provided.

Extras are sparse but quite informative. In "Taking the Reins" (55:51), director Dusty Nelson discusses his beginnings at KQED television in Pittsburgh while studying at Carnegie Mellon, getting into sound editing and forming a company with editor Pasquale Buba (TWO EVIL EYES) where they met George A. Romero while working on the sports documentary TV series THE WINNERS. Nelson made his feature debut directing EFFECTS with a number of Romero-adjacent collaborators but found work hard to get when he moved to Los Angeles where he started working at The Overseas Filmgroup as a low-paid editor before getting to direct some additional scenes to complete the company's Taiwan-lensed SAKURA KILLERS and then getting to direct the follow-up film WHITE PHANTOM. He was hired to edit NECROMANCER but cannot answer why Naud left but does recall that the script had several passages that were just descriptions that needed to be scripted to allow the film to cut together. He recalls some of the scenes he shot and speaks highly of Cayton and the morale of the cast and crew when he came on as replacement a couple days into production.

In "A Despicable Job" (15:16), actor Cole explains that he was billed as "Stan Hurwitz" because he had just received his SAG card and did not want to get into trouble for doing a non-union film. He recalls getting recommended to Naud by Michael Michaud, the star of Naud's ROCKY parody RICKY 1, and speaks highly of Naud and replacement Nelson who allowed him and his friend Brian Thompson (HIRED TO KILL) to flesh out his dialogue. He also recalls working with Cayton on difficult scenes, and offers his views on the film after a recent watch. Of his sparse filmography, he notes that he did ten years on the Universal Studios live show THE ADVENTURES OF CONAN and had some TV work before turning to special effects pyrotechnics for a more stable career.