The Witches, 1966.
Directed by Cyril Frankel.
Starring Joan Fontaine, Kay Walsh, Alec McCowen, Ann Bell and Ingrid Boulting.
SYNOPSIS:
Returning home to England following a harrowing and life threatening encounter with the occult in Africa, schoolteacher Gwen Mayfield takes up the position of headmistress in a quaint English village.
In a distinctly English fashion, Hammer’s 1966 film The Witches drew the curtain on Joan Fontaine’s film career, a tidy link to her earlier starring role in the English born “Master of Suspense” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 classic Rebecca.
It is not without the resemblance of irony that The Witches is compared to The Wicker Man of which director Robin Hardy’s “Final Cut” has only just received a theatrical and home entertainment release courtesy of Studio Canal; the folks behind this latest Hammer re-release.
In equal ironic measure, The Wicker Man was of course always intended to be the antithesis of Hammer, despite intentions for it to be a vehicle for Hammer star Christopher Lee. In spite of the sacrificial plot point, which one could argue links the two films, stylistic and narrative distinctions make it a tenuous link at best.
So whilst Lions Gate have been busily re-releasing the classic Hammer films of the late fifties: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959), Studio Canal have turned their gaze to one of Hammer’s lesser known films that sought to disturb the idyllic English village life, and draw comparisons to the magic and superstition of Africa.
Firmly embedding itself like its Hammer forerunners Frankenstein and Dracula, The Witches deals with the theme that permeates the genre: the conquest of death. Despite an intriguing central premise that merges the dark arts with the lead protagonists haunting past experiences of foreign magic and superstition, The Witches lacks heart and conviction of belief. Perhaps its most significant flaw is that it is, and this is a strange criticism, perfectly pleasant.
Even in its most effective stretch of set-up as new headmistress Mayfield acquaints herself with the town and the pervading sense of unease emerges, the film struggles to escape the shadow of mediocrity and provide any genuine sense of a thrilling narrative to unfold. Any such feelings are more likely, and are in fact proven to be naïve optimism. The Witches evolves without any serious attempt to engage in a little gamesmanship with its audience, and so it fails to check the boxes of the paranoid narrative arcs of who think we can and cannot trust, what we know and what we think we know, and the teasing prospect that we have trusted and unquestionably put our faith in the perspective of a fractured mind.
In and out of its time, The Witches struggles to escape the shadows of its predecessors and successors. Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby would conjure itself into theatres just two short years later, casting The Witches and its immature conclusion of dancing occult practitioners and insinuations of a sexual orgy as immature and outdated. But if one looks back to the past, to the two black and white British horrors: The Innocents (1961) and The Haunting (1963) that followed Hammer’s fifties colour classics that were jarring and provocative, The Witches can be perceived as a tired and worn entry in British horror. Perhaps it is a look back to a bygone era, but regardless it is one that suffers at the hands of its predecessors that offered more creative interpretations of onscreen horror – the question of whether the building or the person is haunted as well as merging the psychological thriller with the ghost story -, as well as new emerging filmmakers like Polanski who were propelling horror forward into a new age.
Summoning up only the feeling of indifference, that this mediocre and uninspiring entry in the Hammer catalogue fails to conjure up feelings of a more potent nature, brands it as a re-release difficult to recommend to anyone other than the Hammer completest.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.
