The Witchmaker

I am definitely giving this movie another chance, IF it ever receives a proper DVD release complete with restored sound and polished up picture quality. I couldn't really enjoy my viewing of "The Witchmaker", but most likely that was due to the questionable quality of the VHS-rip rather than the actual movie. I found myself staring at a black screen most of the time, yet in between all the vagueness it was obvious that this movie is worthwhile enough to deserve a decent DVD edition. Unfortunately that still doesn't mean it's a great film. "The Witchmaker" is merely a hodgepodge of good conceptual ideas, outstanding locations & scenery, ominous atmospheres and genuinely spooky images, but sadly the script is massively incoherent and several of the plot's details aren't elaborated to the fullest. The main trump is undoubtedly the grisly swamp setting! I used to think the British countryside had a monopoly on forming the ideal setting for stories about witchcraft and devil-worshiping ("Blood on Satan's Claw" and "The Witchfinder General" are two prime examples), but that was before I saw the same story set in the Louisianan bayou region! The area looks as good as impenetrable and feels genuinely inescapable and isolated. At a certain point in the story, the remaining survivor characters desperately want to get out the swamp – and who could blame them – but it simply isn't possibly because their cabin is only reachable by boat and the boatman one passes by per week. Even in remote rural Britain they didn't have that problem! Several beautiful young girls have been murdered in the Bayou over the last few years, and the macabre modus operandi leads to suspect there's a coven witches active in the area. The corpses are hung upside down from a tree and there are eerie symbols painted on their naked bodies. The murders are indeed the work of a dude named Luther the Berserk, a master of Sabbath, who needs the women's blood for his occult rituals. Alvy Moore plays paranormal detective Ralph Hayes who travels to the area to research the murders. One of the expedition members tagging along is the indescribably beautiful Thordis Brandt and her character is the granddaughter of an actual witch! Hayes dragged her aboard because she's more sensitive to paranormal activity, but Luther also notices her talents and promptly sets up a plan to recruit her as his own witch. Okay, we have a splendid setting, a plot with the utmost potential AND a number of disturbing moments (I swear, the sights of those naked and smeared girls' bodies are positively unnerving), so what's the problem? I'm really not sure, but fact is that "The Witchmaker" doesn't quite live up to its own potential. The suspense building is too often undercut by seemingly endless psychologist conversations and occult gibberish. The film is just too talkative and, like another reviewer stated already, the characters drink way too much coffee, which is probably the reason why they keep talking and talking and talking! The first twenty minutes (up until Brandt's semi-topless run through the swamp) as well the finale are pure fascinating horror stuff, but it's difficult to stay focused throughout the tedious and uneventful middle section. Nonetheless, "The Witchmaker" is a very interesting American witchcraft/Satanist movie and honestly deserves to be slightly more known among genre fanatics.

In THE WITCHMAKER, eight women have been killed in the same bizarre, ritualistic fashion. All in the same bayou. Psychic researcher, Dr. Hayes (Alvy Moore) and his team, along with a reporter, have arrived to investigate the phenomenon

This is a fantastic drive-in movie of the period, full of occult horror, suspense, and a general atmosphere of impending doom. Moore plays his role straight, without a hint of his TV persona from Green Acres. Nor does he smirk with ironic self-awareness. He's serious, and it works!

Thordis Brandt's character, Tasha, is what is known in the film as a "sensitive", what might be called an "empath" today. Tasha becomes the central character, mixed up with the wicked practitioners of the dark arts, including the insane, aptly named "Luther The Berserk" (John Lodge), and an ancient witch known as Jessie (Helene Winston).

Aside from the odd moment of clunkiness, this is a solid offering of paranoia and dread...

Dr Ralph Hayes (Alvy Moore) leads a group of psychic researchers into the wilds of a Louisiana swamp. A series of murders has Hayes thinking there might be a witch operating in the swamp. One of his team, Anastasia (Thordis Brandt), is a sensitive - someone tuned to picking up psychic impulses. Hayes hopes she will be able to lead them to the witch. But the local witch, Luther the Berserk (John Lodge), has his own plans. He wants Anastasia in his coven. He starts killing off Hayes' team one-by-one. Can Hayes and Co save Anastasia and the rest of their group?

The Witchmaker isn't what I'd call a good movie in the traditional sense, but it is reasonably effective and enjoyable if you're into this kind of thing. The biggest plus The Witchmaker has going for it is atmosphere. At times, the atmosphere is palatable. The isolation, the creepy swamp, the Satanic trappings, and the even the low budget look of the film - all worked on me and filled me with a real sense of unease. If there's one thing that really creeps me out, it's low-budget Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Also, I thought John Lodge was particularly effective as Luther. He uses his size to his advantage as he attacks the members of Hayes' group. It's a really frightening visage.



As my rating indicates, the movie isn't perfect to me. The biggest issue I have is Alvy Moore. The problem is that as long as I've been alive, Alvy Moore has always been Hank Kimble from Green Acres. You see, not only is Green Acres on of my two or three favorite television shows, but the stammering, forgetful Kimble is my favorite character. I can't look at the man and not think of Kimble. So when, as Dr Hayes, he's trying to give some sort of scientific explanation to what's happening, it doesn't work. It sounds so silly coming out of Alvy Moore's mouth. I complimented the film's atmosphere, but unfortunately, Alvy Moore ruins whatever atmosphere the film has built up at that point. He goes off-screen, things get creepy. He comes back, not so creepy. It's too bad for The Witchmaker that Alvy Moore was so good at playing light, zany comedy.

Alvy Moore leads a group of individuals into the deep swamplands to investigate paranormal activity. As luck would have it, this little neck of the bayou has been the locus of several ritual murders over the past couple of years, of which all the victims were pretty young girls. One of the crew of outsiders(the lovely and zaftig Thordis Brandt) is the descendant of a witch, and her presence piques the interest of an evil warlock determined to recruit her into his coven.

Despite its financial strife, The Witchmaker is an atmospheric, smartly made production with an effective curveball ending, and I suspect it may be a bit more lettered in illustrating the various wonts of occultism than many other films of its type. Surprisingly scary at points, and benefiting from a creepy score by Jaime Mendoza-Nava, this one's worth seeking out(if only for the scene of Ms. Brandt running slow-motion and topless through the swamp, cupping her hands over her gigantic bare breasts).

7/10.

After four local girls are found, murdered, hung up downside down in tree, and drained of blood in a Louisians swamp , an intrepid documentary team comes to investigate. They're actually a lot more intrepid than intelligent though because they decide to stay in an isolated cabin in the middle of the swamp with their only way in or out being a local yokel in a boat who promises to come back and get them in a week, but is incommunicado in the meantime. One of the female members of the team is a "sensitive" who is attuned to witches and who had a grandmother who was an actual witch. The perpetrators turn out to be a female witch, Jessie, and a male "berserker", Lucas, who maintain their youth by drinking human blood. They make short work of most of the team, but take special interest in the "sensitive" who they hope to add to their coven.

This has elements of a lot of future movies--not only "The Blair Witch Project", but also "The Legend of Hell House" as well as other Louisiana-filmed regional obscurities like "The Crypt of Dark Secrets". On the other hand, however, this film is really quite unique in a lot of ways and there never has really been another film like it. It kind of invents its own mythology what with the "berserker", the witches who stay young by drinking blood(which sounds more like vampires), and odd facts like garlic making one invisible to witches and pig's blood being very bad for black masses. The film is also strange in that it in many ways seems like a 50's film, but then it also contains some surprisingly graphic violence and not-so-graphic sex and nudity, and it has the kind of nihilistic ending much more common in 70's films. The most weird and memorable aspect though comes at the end when the villains hold a coven meeting/black sabbath and their coven turns out to include any number of witches, real and fictional, from throughout history, including "Goody Hale" (one of the few Salem residents NOT accused of witchcraft).

The cast is mostly unknowns. The male lead was in "Green Acres", I guess. Two of the coven members are Patricia Wymer (as the "Hag of Devon") and Sue Bernard (as "Felicity Johnson"). Wymer played the titular (and ass-ular) character in "The Babysitter" and also appeared in "The Young Graduates". Bernard, a former Playboy Playmate, had been the bikini-clad girl in Russ Meyers "Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill" and appeared in a number of 70's horror/exploitation films such as Bert Gordon's "The Witching" (also somewhat similar to this) and Curtis Harrington's "The Killing Kind". The pair have all of about two lines between them here, but this isn't really a film that depends much on actors (although the guy playing "Lucas" is pretty good). It gets plenty of mileage just out of its genuinely unique weirdness.