The Naked Witch

In addition to writing, directing, and editing alongside Claude Alexander, Larry Buchanan also served as producer (and cinematographer) for this movie, distributed by "Alexander Enterprises." One man or the other - I assume Buchanan - was responsible for the decision to have the actual film preceded by a narrated prologue of almost eight and one-half minutes giving a(n incomplete) history of witches and witchcraft. Even generously recognizing that this was a low-budget B-movie made of, by, in, around, and for Texas, to fill nearly one-sixth of the runtime thusly is simply perplexing. Robert Short's continued pervasive voiceovers as the unnamed protagonist are hardly any less perplexing. For that matter, 'The naked witch' clearly takes most of its cues from movies and TV shows of another era, and the proceedings are sterilized in a way that will pointedly dampen most genuine meaning of the word "horror." The pacing is also astoundingly sluggish as it is longer still before any plot truly shows up; before you know it the feature is more than half over.

I won't say when the titular figure first makes an appearance in the active narrative, but suffice to say that it is later than you think. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of a picture labeled as "horror," the quantity and quality you'll get out of 'The naked witch' are decidedly low. In fairness, extra abbreviated as the actual tale is, all the same the right parts are here: a witch, a return from the grave, murder, enchantment. Why, plentiful fare has been made with much the same narrative ingredients. The problem is that Buchanan and Alexander pad out as much of the small length as possible with anything but plot - the prologue, more exposition, gratuitous nudity, deliberately slothful or extended execution of scenes, long shots highlighting the admittedly beautiful landscapes, and more. If you're here for a familiar story, you'll get it, but one should perhaps just stick with other flicks with that familiar story, because the iteration here is wildly underrepresented, and just plain treated poorly. There are good ideas here, sure; only, they're relegated to a fraction of the runtime.

For what it's worth, the "effects" that are employed, though modest, are decent enough. The cast of inexperienced nonprofessionals aptly play their parts, with Libby Hall especially leaning into the chewing of scenery as the witch. Humble as it may present - all too little of these sixty minutes, and with some inclusions that raise a skeptical eyebrow - the tale is enjoyable in and of itself. So many of the choices that were made here, however, plainly reduce the lasting value of the production, and ultimately it's not even a question of tone (rather light), or how the genre elements are handled. (For the record, on a spectrum for horror that broadly ranges from "kid's gloves" to "See Everything," this is on the gentler and less impactful side.) It's just that the basic premise that one might use to describe the film pertains to so small a part of the whole. So there's that.

There are far worse ways to spend one hour of your time, but in 2023, the truth of the matter is that there's not much reason to spend time with 'The naked witch' in the first place. Alas.

THE NAKED WITCH begins with voice-over narration by someone known only as "the student". The story takes place in the German part of Texas, where German kids sing German songs while running around in German clothes.

"The student's" car breaks down, so, he walks to the German village full of German people doing German stuff. He meets Kirska, who guides him around town, accompanied by more narration. Then, "the student" has a German dinner with an elderly German man who smokes a big German pipe. "The student" is researching his thesis paper about witchcraft, but Kirska explains in her Kirska way that no one wants to discuss the subject.

"The student" presses on.

He simply must hear the story of the Leuchenbach witch! He can't resist going to the graveyard and resurrecting said unclothed spellcaster! Watching her stroll around is amazing! Watch, as she saunters behind walls, gates, and trees! See her eeevil magic turn the film blotchy and blurred, obscuring her naughty bits!

Thankfully, she starts killing people.

Filmed in the style of an ancient travelogue, this is a classic example of a cinematic fuster-cluck.

To be fair, the first death, causing the water to turn red, is -almost- effective, and the witch herself is just cold and devilish enough to make the rest -somewhat- endurable. At an hour in length, it feels more like ten, with the only semi-naked part coming toward the end. The witch also does a dance!

Another harmless "nudie" movie from yesteryear...

This early Larry Buchanan opus is barely feature length at 59 minutes, yet it requires considerable padding to get even that far: It opens with a nearly ten-minute pseudo-documentary prologue discussing the history of witchery (and making use of a lot of Hieronymous Bosch imagery), then follows that with travelogue footage and an explanation of how a Texas small town remained a largely German-speaking one, over a century since its creation by German settlers. (This is accompanied by shots of flaxen-haired children in traditional garb dancing, singing and skipping around, very much kitsch like the German part of Disney's "It's a Small World.") Then our handsome collegiate hero tells us in voice-over-- there's not a lot of actual dialogue in this movie--why he's driving to this outback. He's researching a thesis paper on the region, notably its own witchcraft legends and persecutions.

Other people have described the minimalist plot well enough. What should be pointed out, however, is that "The Naked Witch" is--as the title suggests--more a "nudie cutie" masquerading as a horror movie than anything else. The witch does indeed appear nude-- raised from the dead, she's nekkid, and wanders around teasingly semi-hidden by shadow, shrubbery and fences until she literally rips off a dress from the heroine. (At one point the witch actress was apparently over-exposed, because a crude black bar appears on screen to cover her naughty bits.) Later the hero spies her skinny-dipping in a pretty murky-looking river, and we see her topless for quite a stretch. She seduces him, and they have a sort of sex scene--of course not at all explicit, but it's still rare for a movie of this era to make it so clear that intercourse has occurred.

Anyway, this quirky sexploitation/horror melange--with its violence so discreet as to be almost non-existent--is amusingly odd and too brief to become boring.

The Naked Witch (1961)

1/2 (out of 4)

This 59 minute movie starts off as a documentary on witchcraft and it's slightly interesting for what it is. Then, around the ten minute mark we switch gears to an actual "movie" about a student who is doing research on witchcraft and comes across the grave of a witch. The witch returns and is sometimes naked. However, she's not naked enough to earn the title THE NAKED WITCH, which was obviously just a way to get creeps like me to watch the film.

This was co-directed by Claude Alexander and Larry Buchanan but it seems the majority of the "student" footage was from Buchanan. I'm really not sure why his name isn't brought up more when people discuss some of the worst directors of all time because he has certainly made some major stinkers and this here is one of the worst. Even though this turkey clocks in at less than a hour it's still rather hard to sit through and it's just about as boring as watching paint dry. The incredibly dry narration will have your eyes drying out to the point where you'll want to take a nap.

Apparently this originally played on television in B&W but the print I saw was in color. Also, while there's a limited amount of nudity, some of it appears to have been blacked out with a marker of some sort. Yes, it looks that cheap and bad. I've read this happened by the distributor but I don't know the whole story. Either way, THE NAKED WITCH is pretty pointless and only for those who enjoy really bad movies.

I can understand why some people wouldn't like this movie. It's very low-budget and goofy, it has plot holes you could drive a truck through, and when it comes to the (not-so)Naked Witch herself even the unedited version is incredibly tame by today's standards. However, I LOVE this kind of regional, low-budget film-making. This early Larry Buchanon flick, was actually filmed entirely in Luchenbach, Texas, a small town founded by German settlers and later made famous by a Waylon Jennings/Willie Nelson country song. And it makes a GREAT setting for a low-budget horror movie. With the cheesy voice-over narration, Buchanon even manages to anticipate later 70's regional exploitation movies like "The Legend of Boggy Creek" and the whole bigfoot/ "In Search of" craze, and even many more modern-day films about local legends like "The Last Broadcast" or "The Blair Witch Project" (although don't hold the last one against him).

A college student comes to modern-day (as of 1961) Luchenbach, Texas, to research the legend of the "Angry Widow", a widowed woman who was skewered by the superstitious 18th century German settlers of the town after being betrayed by her craven married lover. In a rather ridiculous plot twist, the college student decides to dig up the body of the widow for some reason and remove the stake from her heart. The "Naked Witch" then rises from the grave to take her revenge on several locals who are related to her original tormentors. But when she threatens the pretty daughter of the innkeeper, who our rather dimwitted hero has fallen for, it is up to him to find the mountain pond where the pretty young witch is skinny-dipping and drive his stake into her (and then he has to figure out a way to kill her!)

I'm not going to claim this is great film. If you want a big-budget, go see the latest "Transformers" sequel, or if you want sex, go rent a porno. But I found this quite entertaining despite some illogical plotting and a very perfunctory ending. And this is only the second best film to ever be shot in Luchenbach--even better is Larry Buchanon's later film "Strawberries Need Rain". These kind of films aren't for everybody, but you like this kind of low-budget, off-Hollywood, slice-of Americana film-making, you shouldn't miss this.