Pacte avec le diable

Joan Fontaine's final film is a horror flick for Hammer. She plays a teacher recovering from a nervous breakdown after surviving a terrifying experience with witch doctors in Africa. She takes a job in a small English village and seems happy there, despite the odd behavior of some of the locals. When weird things start happening, Joan investigates and discovers a plot to sacrifice a young girl in a pagan ritual.

Joan does a fine job in her final movie. She would do some more TV work but this is it for her long film career. The rest of the cast is made up of solid British actors. Cyril Frankel's direction is good. He manages to evoke a fair amount of atmosphere for a picture that takes place almost entirely in daylight. In some ways it's a precursor to The Wicker Man. It's nowhere near as good as that film but there are some similar plot elements. The screenplay is from Nigel Kneale, best known for being the creator of Professor Quatermass and for his screenplay for the excellent 1957 Abominable Snowman film. Reportedly Kneale was dissatisfied with this film because he intended it to be a dark comedy that poked fun at witchcraft but Hammer wanted a serious horror movie so all comedic touches were removed. Well they missed a few because some of the most memorable parts of the movie, such as Joan being overrun by a flock of sheep and every scene of Kay Walsh in her pagan ritual get-up, are very funny. It's a decent movie of its type. Not really scary but interesting, particularly for Fontaine fans.

1966's The Witches rates in the upper half of 1960's era horror. Its not outstanding but it is very interesting. I would certainly recommend it for viewing, just don't expect a classic.

Leading lady Joan Fontaine was still an impressive screen presence at this time and she portrays the courageous but vulnerable headmistress Gwen Mayfield very well.

But - a little bit about the story. Heroine Gwen suffered a nervous breakdown when in Africa, brought on by a traumatic experience with tribal witchcraft. Gwen recovers and takes a teaching job in a quiet, out of the way English village. Little did she know that even greater horror than what she experienced in Africa awaited her! It takes her awhile to realize that the town is home to a witch's coven, a coven that she will unwillingly be admitted into.

Before we get to this point, the story unfolds with some fairly decent character development. The too-jolly meat cutter Mr. Curd, the dour Granny Rigg and her overly-protected grand daughter Linda, Linda's boyfriend Ronnie and the brother sister team of Alan and Stephanie Bax, very capably portrayed by Kay Walsh and Alec McCowen as the village leaders, are the main characters which keep life interesting for Gwen. One gets a clear sense of life in a small English village, a place where fear and superstition become horrible reality.

The problem with reviewing The Witches is, if too much of the film is detailed, the ending is predictable and viewing ruined for those who have not seen it. Keep in mind this is a Hammer film and is similar to other films of the day, such as The Plague of the Zombies, (1966, also by Hammer), and 1960's City of The Dead, (AKA Horror Hotel), to name a couple.

If you are a fan of horror, and I suspect you are if you are reading this review, then you are probably already aware of this film and its exciting conclusion. This was one of Ms. Fontaine's last major screen roles so view it for this reason if for no other.

The Witches, which is much better known in America by its US release title The Devil's Own, is one of those legendary films made great because the supporting actress completely upstages the star. (Think Grayson Hall in Night of the Iguana, or Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy.) In her autobiography, Miss Joan Fontaine, who had acquired the film rights to the novel years before, complains at length about the "primitive" working conditions at Hammer studios, the small size of her dressing room, the awful food and the unprofessional British actors she had to lower herself in working with. We all know that the real bee in her bonnet was that a movie she had basically designed as a vehicle for HER talents ended up being taken over by Miss Kay Walsh, a superb dancer and talented actress who had had an extensive career in films and theatre (check out her IMDB listing--you'll be impressed). Luckily Fontaine was (to her credit) too much of a pro herself to let her dissatisfaction show on screen. She turns in a credible performance as a woman teacher attempting to recover from a traumatic encounter with witch doctors in Africa by taking a slow, quiet gig in an apparently sleepy, quaint olde English village. Well, guess who rules the roost in this town? As the title clues you in, it's none other than ... the Witches!!!

As boss witch supreme Stephanie Bax, a character one of the reviewers of the time described as a "lesbian-like writer," Kay Walsh dominates the action from the moment she appears. Of all the various witch films of the Sixties, this one probably has the most realistic atmosphere and the most plausible plot. The traditional opposition between village wise women (capably embodied here by Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Granny Riggs--be sure to keep an eye out for her stogie-chomping aristo witch in 1967's The Devil Rides Out) and the kind of ceremonial magician played by Miss Walsh is portrayed quite matter-of-factly in the script. The kind of witchcraft practiced both by the Walsh and the Ffrangcon-Davies characters is a pretty accurate portrayal of practices actually current in Sixties England, for instance in the circles around Robert Cochrane and other figures who were gaining a lot of media attention in those days. The campy elan of Miss Walsh's dances as High Priestess (one wonders how they dealt with all the hot wax that must have flown off the lit candles in that antler-crown of hers) is very London West End on one level, yet also seems a poetic evocation of a learned ceremonial magician taking over a traditional village circle for her own corrupt ends on another level. Excellent work by Miss Walsh and the choreographer.

Also worthy of mention is the appearance of Martin Stephens, who made memorable such earlier Sixties fantasy films as The Innocents and Village of the Damned (in which he had the unenviable task of acting opposite George Sanders--who hated children!). Martin retired from films shortly after appearing in the Witches. Among the others, Alec McCowen turns in a brilliant little gem of a performance as Kay Walsh's traumatized brother.

For all its excellence, Hammer historians give second place for this film to Don Sharp's 1964 outing, Witchcraft. Let's hope somebody hurries up and releases that one on home video soon!

After suffering a shock in Africa, young Gwen Mayfield starts working as a teacher in a small village somewhere in England. Two of her students behave rather strange, and some people in the village try to separate the two from each other. Gwen becomes curious but suffers another shock. When she returns to the village, she finally finds out why its inhabitants behave so strange: They are really witches and plan to sacrifice a girl from Gwen's class...

One of the lesser known horror movies from legendary British Hammer films, this was also Joan Fontaine's last role. It's a slow and surprisingly tame movie, but well-made and atmospheric. While it's nothing outstanding, it certainly is worth watching. The ending may be a bit of a letdown. I also liked the music score during the opening credits, and some bits of the soundtrack are really good.

No need to recap the plot.

Except for the hokey demon in the opening, the first part is nicely understated. Life at the English school seems normal enough even if the business with the dolls is a little unsettling. As a result, we can't be sure what's developing, which for me generates suspense since we know something sinister is afoot but can't be sure what. Frankly, I wish the movie's remainder had remained in this understated vein, with a creepy upshot instead of the wildly misguided finale.

With an actress of Fontaine's caliber, it would have been possible to develop this dark psychological aspect, which, for example, is nicely done at the rest home, but soon gives way to silly high-priestess antics (Bax). I guess Hammer figured audiences expected a big lurid payoff leaving nothing to the imagination, which is just what they provided. Anyway, the film's colorfully set in the English countryside, and smoothly directed by Frankel. But for those of us that believe the most effective horror lies in an aroused imagination, the movie proves an ultimate disappointment.