Witchcraft

I first saw Witchcraft on TV when i was around seven years old and it scared the pants off me! I used to have this feeling for years afterwards that the witch stood in my garden looking up at my window waiting for me to peek from behind my curtain late at night! Since then of course I've grown up and out of that fear (ive also moved house umpteenth times) and if anything i now find the witch (Yvette Rees) quite sexy and she could haunt me anytime! Even though I'm lucky enough to own a copy of the film i think its a shame that it isn't available on DVD. Its now perhaps thought of as dated and is to all intents forgotten but for me it will always remain the horror movie that showed me for the first time what the cinema was capable of. Itll always have a special place in my heart. Ill watch it every now and again and it takes me straight back to my childhood and daring myself to peek around that bedroom curtain. A forgotten horror classic.

A 300 year long feud between a a coven of witches and a family of wealthy land developers comes to a head when an old cemetery plot is disturbed, unearthing the grave of a witch once buried alive. Morgan Whitlock, head of the coven , now has his means to take revenge on the usurpers of his land and sets the resurrected witch upon them.

A rarely seen and almost forgotten horror, Witchcraft is now available on the MGM / Fox "Midnight Movies" label, paired as a double feature with Devils of Darkness. The big draw for me is that it's one of the last legitimate horror films in the career of Lon Chaney Jr., so seeing it nearly pristine on DVD is a treat I never thought I might indulge in. To my surprise, Chaney's part wasn't quite as big as I hoped, but this is okay as the rest of the cast is made up of mostly British actors, and the Brits rarely disappoint in the realm of horror. Better still is that Hammer Film veteran Don Sharp is at the helm, who has given us Kiss of the Vampire, and Rasputin the Mad Monk, among other genre pictures. Handsomely shot in black and white, Witchcraft has all the atmosphere that both Gothic and 60's contemporary horror fans crave. The mute witch makes for an eerie apparition as she silently stalks her prey, I might liken the scenes of her on the prowl to scenes in A Drop of Water from Bava's masterful anthology.

While it's true that the plot is nothing new I do feel the film has style to burn. Modern viewers will likely doze off as it is bloodless and the pacing is a bit lethargic, however in many scenes this deliberate pacing works very well. 7/10

When I finally caught up with it, this turned out to be a nice little mid-1960s thriller, made very much in the style of a Hammer Films production (indeed, as such it makes a suitable double-feature with the film it's paired with on DVD, DEVILS OF DARKNESS)- it makes good use of settings, has a decent script and quite adequate acting (especially a typically hammy late-career performance from Lon Chaney Jr), and evokes a very effective atmosphere of evil. What I was most surprised about (and impressed with) was the striking black-and-white photography and lighting, which really contributed to that atmosphere, particularly in its use of the reawakened witch. Definitely a fun, creepy movie for a rainy Saturday afternoon!

I remember this being on telly one Saturday night when I was 8 or 9 years old, we were being babysat, and had been allowed to stay up.

The appearance of the witch in the back of the car completely freaked me out then, and it's a memory that I carry with me 50 years later. While it's been completely superseded these days with CGI and a desire for much more in-your-face violence and gore, it's still got a gothic dread about it.

Hard to find these days, but worth watching if you do come across it.

The movie WITCHCRAFT certainly was never meant to be Shakespeare nor an episode of "Masterpiece Theater", so you can't expect it to be great intellectual entertainment. However, as a relatively low-budget horror film, it manages to deliver quite well.

While the film stars Lon Chaney, Jr., he doesn't seem to be the star and he's not a welcome addition to the film. All he seems to do is yell a lot and you wonder why everyone in the film has a nice British accent while Lon doesn't!! Still, it's a dandy tale about a couple greedy land brokers who accidentally unleash the spirit of a dead witch when they thoughtlessly bulldoze a graveyard. Considering that the witch was buried alive and had the powers of Hell at her disposal, it isn't surprised that she returns to seek vengeance on the family who buried her. Heck, maybe she's so angry because she was alive all that time (about 300 years) waiting to be released--gee that would be boring!!

The film has an intelligently written plot, good acting (apart from Chaney) and solid pacing--making you believe, somehow, that all this COULD be real! The only problem, and it's a small one, is that in one scene where a lady discovers a Satanic coven, she yells out to one of them as she recognizes her! If any SANE person saw these human sacrificing nuts, I doubt if their first impulse would be to yell out but instead would just leave....and very, very quietly!! Good low-budget entertainment that manages to be better than usual even with this one silly mistake.