Grip Your Witch Deflector Tightly

'Witchcraft'  starts off with a bulldozer knocking down some ancient gravestones whilst Lon Chaney Junior bellows at the driver to stop, and ends with a resurrected 300 year old witch and some of her baby eating coven being incinerated. In between these two tasty slices, however, the sandwich filling is stodgy and generally bland, only sporadically seasoned by supernatural murder, miracle cures and a lot of bickering.

It isn't a bad film, especially considering how obviously cheap it is, but its problem is that after a quick burst of energy in the first fifteen minutes, nothing much happens very slowly, so the viewer makes their own amusement and, before you know it, everything seems funny, even the road signs.  

My favourite bit is when a wheelchair bound woman prays to Jesus for the ability to walk and, incredibly, is granted it. No sooner is she up on her feet than she has an unexpected visitor - no, not the DSS - but that bloody witch, who immediately pushes her down the stairs. I know Jesus is busy, but, you know, he could have hung around just a little bit longer.

Watch in the company of friends, with beer and cheese and onion Ringos. 

Witchcraft

The Devil At Longleat

‘Blue Blood’ is a bit like Pinter's ‘The Servant’ in its tale of a man overcoming his master, but with added sex, drugs and satanic ritual. Yes, it does sound good, doesn’t it?

Derek Jacobi plays Lord Gregory, an enormously rich nobleman living in a huge stately home in the country. The selfish and spoiled Lord does very little during the day apart from painting erotic murals but, in the evenings, he throws lavish parties and sleeps with as many women as he can. In true feudal style, he keeps a retinue of ladies onsite to provide him with sons although, rather dopily, as he is married, very few of the kids can count as legitimate heirs. He obviously  just likes having his peerage polished.

Behind every decadent Lord there is a psychotic, jealous servant with a big moustache, and here that role is played by force of nature Oliver Reed as head servant, Tom. Tom knows he is a better, stronger, more powerful and more deserving man than his master, and has decided to take the house, the possessions, the wife, the ‘wifelets’ and the life and freedom that Gregory takes for granted away from him, and Tom has no qualms whatsoever in achieving his goal.

I like Oliver Reed a lot, but he’s not at his best in this film. He has the dark, glowering physical presence required, of course, and he delivers some key speeches brilliantly, but he saddles himself with an exaggeratedly working class accent which makes his character sound ridiculous and comedic rather than manipulative and menacing and fatally damages what he’s trying to achieve. Director Andrew Sinclair should have told him but then he may very well have been scared to broach the subject lest Ollie go mental and start flashing his tattooed cock.   

An uneven, sometimes queasily psychedelic film, the production benefits enormously by being filmed at Longleat House, the ancestral seat of the Marquis of Bath, a place of opulence and isolation, a real place with the feel of a fantasy. The Marquis’ son and heir, Alexander Thynn, wrote the book the film is based on, and also serves as the model for the promiscuous but slightly pathetic Lord Gregory. Thynn inherited the title (and the house and safari park) in 1992, becoming known as ‘The Loins Of Longleat’ in the tabloids for his interesting love life and unconventional lifestyle - although, as far as I know, this did not include employing a mad, bullying butler. Oh well, his loss.

Blue Blood

 

The Power Of The Witch

'The Power Of The Witch' is a typically grown up, intellectual, non prurient documentary about the dark arts from the glory days of the BBC. Here's the whole thing, courtesy of something called 'YouTube'.

Secret Rituals

Nice advert for 'Legend Of The Witches' (1970). If you like exposed flesh and genitalia, you're into the occult and you have a limitless attention span, this could be your 'Star Wars'.

There Is No Escape!

Despite its sensational title and poster, 'Naked Evil' is a rather creaky affair, which is a real shame as its premise - Voodoo comes to London - has distinct possibilities. Despite the supernatural overtones and a few well done atmospherics, however, the film never rises above a fairly basic whodunnit, and although its setting (a hostel for commonwealth men attending college in the UK) is fairly unique, its portrayal of the 'coloured' students as a musical, superstitious, cowardly, slightly comical lot is very much 'of its time'.

On the other hand, the film also presents us with the facinating spectacle of future Dr. Who Master Anthony Ainley enjoying some Jamaican ska jazz. Even Basil Dignam approves.

Naked Evil

Jungle Terror!

Mark Stacey is a great white hunter in South Africa. He’s a heavy drinker, stubborn as hell, a bad husband and absent father and a terrible shot. When one of his clients wounds a lion, Mark takes the decision to track it down and finish it off, despite the fact that his hunt will take him into Simbazi country, a place ruled by a primitive tribe who worship lions and punish those who transgress against them. Mark kills the lion (eventually – he really is a terrible shot, and he gets quite badly injured in the process) and when the Simbazi find out they throw a voodoo bongo party, put on their crazy dancing pumps and curse him.

Back from safari, Mark realises his wife has left him, so he returns to London to try and effect a reconciliation. Racked with fever from his festering wound, he is plagued by visions – a stalking lion, a very tall and scary looking native with a pork pie hat on, plus the usual shadows under doors, rattling door knobs and faces at windows. Most notably, he is chased by two spear wielding Africans across a municipal park – a hazy and hugely atmospheric scene that may be the best part of the film. Close to death, Mark realises he has only one option left: to return to Africa and settle it the way the white man has always settled issues with Africans: with a gun, i.e. confronting the man who put the curse on him and killing him (in the end he actually runs him over. As I said, he’s a terrible shot.)

Lindsay Shonteff’s follow up to ‘Devil Doll’, ‘Curse Of Voodoo’ is less disturbing and nowhere near as weird as its predecessor, although the fantasy sequences (or are they?) occasionally evoke the slow, treacly terror of an inescapable nightmare. The African scenes suffer from obviously having been filmed in England (all the trees are wrong, for a start), but they do okay considering the obvious limitations of the budget.

Curse Of The Voodoo

They Can Only Shriek, Shriek

'Cry Of The Banshee' is effectively a cross between the better known 'Witchfinder General' and 'Blood On Satan's Claw' in theme and style but, sadly, doesn't come close to either film in terms of quality or interest.

The usually good value Vincent Price gives perhaps his most boring performance, seemingly rendered immobile by the dullness of the production, too stupefied to even arch an eyebrow. The story, which has nothing to do with Poe no matter what the posters say, is set in the sixteenth century and concerns an arrogant Lord (Price) and his boorish, spoilt brat children who piss off a local witch coven (by hacking most of them to death) and then feel their wrath, one by one, victims of a supernatural entity called Patrick Mower.

It pains me to say it, but this film is a waste of time. You don't even get to see the monster properly. A very poor show all round.   

A Thing That Never Learned To Die

More from 'Cry Of The Banshee'.

Cry of the Banshee

The rather Pythonesque titles (darting boggly eyes and all) are, perhaps not surprisingly, by the very Pythonesque Terry Gilliam.