The Witches

The Witches

Directed by: Cyril Frankel

UK, 1966

Horror/ Occult, 90min
Hammer Horror

Missionary schoolteacher Gwen Mayfield [Joan Fonatine] escapes from a terrifying and traumatizing attack during her time in Africa. Back from Africa, and following something of a breakdown, she moves to the small rural English village, Heddaby when Alan Bax [Alec McCowen] and his wife Stephanie [Kay Walsh] invite her to come take a position as head teacher in the village’s school. At first all is fine and Gwen quickly settles in, despite the fact that Bax wore a priests collar when they first met even though he’s not a man of the clergy, and the fact that the village still hasn’t rebuilt the burned down church ruin that stands on the hill above the village.

During her fist class she goes through the names of the pupils and reacts to the fact that young Linda Rigg [Ingrid Boulting] has her doll with her to school, something that she feels Linda is way to old for. The next day, Linda is absent and Gwen finds a note in one of the children’s textbooks claiming that Linda’s Granny treats her cruel. Here comes the first sign of odd behaviour in the village as Gwen learns about Linda’s Granny forcing her hand into the mangle! Not to worry says the chuckling old Granny Rigg [Gwen Ffrangcon Davies, who also starred in Terrence Fisher’s magnificent The Devil Rides Out two years later], she’s given Linda a nice brew of herbs to ease the pain.

Although Linda’s hand-in-mangle isn’t the thing that is worrying Granny Rigg the most, it’s her concern over young Ronnie Dowset [Martin Stephens] running after Linda, especially as they are at “That” age. If one was to be prejudice, Gran and her cat – who just happens to trail Gwen after Granny Rigg whispers into it’s ear to follow her and the talk of herbal medicine, home made sherry and chutneys – it would be easy to think that the old woman may just be a witch!

Ronnie suddenly falls into a coma, an effigy of him is found in a tree with pins stuck in it and the head missing, Gwen awakens from a sleeping pill slumber and screams in terror as she mistakes a feather duster for one of the Voodoo statues from her terrifying encounter in Africa. With the strange events occurring all around her, Gwen comes to the conclusion that Granny Rigg must be planning to use Linda as a virgin sacrifice in an occult ritual!

Slowly, slowly devilish things start happening to villagers, a man is found drowned, sheep attack Gwen and the African effigies start to turn up in dreams – or is it real? Guess the confusion and shock as Gwen awakens after fainting only to be in a nursing home and not Heddaby and under the supervision of the odd Dr. Wallis [Leonard Rossiter]. Is Gwen going insane or is there a conspiracy lead by Granny Rigg and the witches of Heddaby? Prepare yourself, because as the movie shifts into the third act, suspicions are overthrown, truths are exposed and the real constellation of the Heddaby coven is revealed!

This is classic Hammer occultism, gradually building the presence of the unnatural elements, letting paranoia grow, exposing our leading lady to the horrors of Heddaby, voodoo dolls, creepy cats, mystic happenings, Sabbaths and virgin sacrifices!

 

No stranger to the world of the weird, screenplay writer Nigel Kneale delivers the creeps and eeriness perfectly with his adaptation of Nora Lofts’ (under the pseudonym Peter Curtis)  The Devil’s Own, and Cyril Frankel dispenses it well. The Witches was the final big screen performance for Jean Fontaine, which she also co-produced as she’d bought the rights to the Loft story. Fantastic Hammer Horror creepiness and low key shocker filled with wonderful paganism and occult dabbling make this a movie I feel can be classed as something of a underestimated Hammer gem well worth seeking out!

The Lords of Salem

The Lords of Salem

Directed by: Rob Zombie

Horror, 101min

USA, 2013

Distributed by: Scanbox

Rob Zombie, a musician to divide the fans and a filmmaker to divide the fans, but always a man who pays his dues and respects to the artists and filmmakers that inspired him on his own ventures.

The Lords of Salem is a film that like all previous Rob Zombie pieces will divide the audiences, although this little gem will perhaps be the one that stands high above the previous ones. There’s a potent value in Zombie returning to his own universe and leaving remake city behind. The Lords of Salem will become a seminal work in this director’s catalogue.

Radio Dj Heidi Hawthorne [Sheri Moon Zombie]  both works and parties hard. Together with her colleagues Herman “Whitey” Salvador [Jeff Daniel Philips] and Herman Jackson [Ken Foree] she is part of Salem’s most popular radio show. One day a vinyl record addressed to Heidi containing raw primitive ambience of a band calling themselves The Lords of Salem, is delivered at the station. No press release or explanation is given with the record, just the record in a wooden box with a cryptic logo on the front. The sound of the record evokes strange visions and nightmares of ancient witch trials. Before the night is over there are ghosts lurking in the corridors of the house Heidi lives in, and the ritual is just about to begin once again.

Zombie knows how to tell a story. If you ask me, he’s matured into one of the greatest indie horror storytellers out of the US in a long time. He knows that taking time to present the unique universe, establishing characters, breathing mystery into the narrative and delivering realistic twists and shocks are key to making it work. Neither is he a stranger to flipping conventional roles on their heads and offering alternative angles to the classic protagonist/antagonist roles, which gives an interesting dimension to characters. As said, Rob Zombie plays for keeps and he’s building up quite a catalogue of work in the last few years.

Right off the bat, Zombie sticks it to us with two short but important presentations (well three if you count the initial shots of Heidi driving to work) as Reverend Jonathan Hawthorn [Andrew Prine] puts ink to paper swearing that he’ll spend the rest of eternity destroying all who pledge a legion to Satan. Cut to Margret Morgen [Meg Foster] and her coven of Six. They chant, hail the unholy father and prepare to desecrate their false bodies… slipping out of their tattered robes they dance round the fire, scream hysterically and rub the dry hot soil against their aged naked bodies. A tone is set that is almost hypnotic. Hypnotic and uncanny and I’d go as far as saying that this is the initial attack, because the movie can be seen as being about the several hundred year battle between Margret Morgen and reverend Jonathan Hawthorn more than it’s about Heidi, after all their arc is one that spans decades and only now is the time right for the witches to take their revenge…

The ordinary world is set up delicately. We learn of Heidi’s living conditions, life at work, local celebrity and all that jazz. The dog is a great way to bring realism to the presentation of Heidi. When she tells him to get down off the table it’s obvious that Zombie has a vision for this character, and she’s not just a sloppy slacker but also someone who has some integrity, and holds some rules about things. A few scenes later he adds some dimension to the character when she goes to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting  - Although if she really was trying to stay away from drugs, she’d probably want to stay away from the booze too…

But with this paradox there’s also an opening to interpret the film as nothing more than Heidi’s decent into madness… the horror may well just be imagined. For all we know the nightmares and visions may just as well be hallucinations from drugs, the witches’ figments of Heidi’s imagination and the finale a simple orgasmic death splutter.

The uncanny seeps in delicately in a great scene somewhat reminiscent of J-Horror storytelling… the threat of the piece is already in the room but as Heidi never reacts to it, it becomes more of a threat to the audience than the protagonist. It kind of plays along the line of Hitchcock’s classic “bomb under the table” trait where the audience knows of a threat that the victim is oblivious to – tensions builds! Room 5 is also important to establishing the threat. Strange noises, strange sights and odd events that we see and experience with Heidi, are dismissed when Landlady Lacy [Judy Geeson] tells her that there is nobody living in Room 5.  From that moment all it takes is a single shot of the corridor leading towards Room 5 to threaten the audience.

Subplots to be found come in the shape of co-worker Salvador who acts as something of a helper and a weak love interest, and historian Francis Matthias [Bruce Davison] who in contemporary times investigates the arc of Reverend Hawthorne and Margaret Morgan bringing important backstory to the story. His investigation brings a framework to the film from which the legacy of The Lords builds off. Ok so with all this in place we need an inciting incident. When the strange record of pagan ambience is delivered to Heidi, the real horror starts. AS the music taps into her subconscious, the decent starts – just as one can presume that the listening women also are snared up by the guttural sounds that the The Lords vinyl evokes. An enchantment hidden away in the audio and that’s what brings all the Witches into the final climactic reveal at the theatre.

It's great fun to see how Zombie uses and blends his influences to come up with some really effective tricks – and the Black Metal beat is awesome and who doesn't love a La maschera del demoino (Black Sunday) reference. Mixing stuff like The Shining, The Devils, Suspiria and a fair deal of Carpenter, Cronenberg and Michael Winner’s underestimated The Sentinel. You could add any number of alternative European psychotronic flicks could be added to the list of possible influences, as Zombie has, on record, stated that he finds European genre of the 60-80’s to be more open minded and freaky.

The subplot with the mystic audio that Heidi is given is great, if not genius. Not only a haunting chant, but also a gateway into the flashbacks portraying the Witches’ coven fronted by Morgan as they chant and meet their deaths at the hands of Hawthorne’s team of executioners. A fine detail that’s presented is also that the audio affects other women in the town. There’s a montage that show’s how other women are affected by the audio and in an extension of that I’d also imagine that they too start to have hallucinations and vision similar to that of Heidi. This due to the sound waves of the primitive chants that evoke something hidden away dormant within the women of Salem for decades. And when on the topic of audio, I don’t think anyone’s actually used the dynamics of audio in the same way since Dario Argento screamed his noise performance with Goblin at the images of Suspiria. Holy Crap does Zombie and his sound designers hammer this baby down hard, going from deep rumblings drones to high pitch screamed dialogue. It’s fantastic and I really love what Zombie and John 5 have done with the audio.

Let’s talk about cast. So many times do genre directors get great stars of the past to do a bit part where they just walk on and off. Just enough to wet the appetites of genre gourmands, giving them the opportunity to go, Oh look there’s so and so… Now Zombie does this too, and part of the hype built up beforehand was the massive list of former genre actors who where going to be part of this project. Some have gone missing completely (one can only hope for a special edition at some point so that we get to see Udo Kier - who starred in Michael Armstrong's seminal witch hunter movie The Mark of the Devil very early in his career, Clint Howard, Camille Keaton and the late Richard Lynch’s scenes). It is great to see Ken Foree work his magic, as it is the brief cameos of cult icons like Sid Haig and Michael Berryman. But the absolute delight - and possibly a huge part in why this film is sooo tainted with eighties horror atmosphere - is the coven of Witches. Judy Geeson, Patricia Quinn and Dee Wallace as you’d never expect to see them. Not forgetting Meg Foster. Holy screaming crap, that’s one creepy witch indeed and I’m totally sticking this performance as one of the greatest eerie antagonists in a long time.

It’s obvious that The Lords of Salem is a personal film. It’s also very obvious that this is a movie done in the precise way Rob Zombie wanted it to be made, and that can only be applauded – if nothing else it’s a rather delightful and somewhat unique little film he’s come up with. It has some great shocks, some awesome visuals a couple of delightful mind expanding moments and definitely tells a seductive and sinister story. The only bone I have to pick is the way Zombie tells stuff during the end credits that I’d have loved to see in a closing scene. I find that this would have taken the edge off the Psychedelic dreamy rock video montage that climaxes the movie and wrapped it up more in a conventional fashion. I dig the ending, but at the same time I find that spending so much time to establish the ordinary world, characters and the pending threat, I feel kind of snubbed when it finally comes – even if paint FX, nineties music video aesthetics and vector based CGI images may just become the next retro cool way to go!

The Lords of Salem is a rockin’ rollin’ flirt with witches, satanic cults and the fever dream genre moods of EuroGoth and classic old school horror! Rob Zombie has matured into a great filmmaker and a force to rely on.

The Lords of Salem is evoked on Swedish DVD ad Bluray release on the 17th of July!

Black Magic Rites

Black Magic Rites

Original title: Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel trecento...

Aka: The Reincarnation of Isabelle

Directed by: Renato Polselli

Italy, 1973

Horror, 98min

Distributed by: Kino Lorber/Redemption

Weird, trippy, freaky, almost incomprehensible… there’s a lot of ways to describe Renato Polselli’s Black Magic Rites, but personally I’d say that it’s something of a misplaced treasure of psychedelic fantasy forced into a grey zone between horror and sexploitation.

An extremely short pre credit sequence shows us a woman, Isabella [Rita Calderoni, a Polselli regular and star of Luigi Batzella’s stunning Nuda per Satan (Nude for Satan)1974], being traditionally burned at the stake. Cue credits and quickly get us into a strange sect holding a sacrificial ceremony with the hopes of resurrecting the dead Isabella who hangs from their dungeon wall.  Getting safely and predictably through the wonderfully ritualistic sacrifice with it’s almost Mario Bava style lighting. After her heart is torn out of her warm body, the wench is dead. But one more virgin’s heart is needed to resurrect their beloved Isabella. Establishing a mansion with a weird cult in its ruins only requests one more thing for a perfect set up, Black Magic Rites tosses two into the mix. Not only does he present us with a jet-set nouveau riche partying up at the rumoured haunted castle, but he also uses a reluctant occultist [Raul Lovecchio, who also starred in Polselli’s wonderfully trippy Giallo Delirio caldo (Delirium) the previous year) and his henchman who refuse to move out of the old place.

A good fifteen, twenty minutes are spent establishing characters, Jack Nelson [another Polselli regular, Mickey Hargitay] has bought the old castle, which we presume the cultists hang out at. The young women of the village who gossip about Raquel’s death (the cults latest female sacrifice) and ignite several theories of what goes on at the castle: a pagan cult, vampires, ghosts etc. Jack arrives at the castle with his niece Laureen [Calderoni again] – who you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out is the “chosen one”.  Laureen is engaged with village chap Richard Brenton [William Darni, the fourth actor in Black Magic Rites who also starred in Delirum). To celebrate the engagement and pending wedding, Nelson throws a huge party for friends of Laureen and Richard in the mysterious castle… With the main cast established and set, it’s time to let the horrors, sexy times and mind-expanding eeriness to start.

Female partygoers start to go missing, some are turned into Vampires, the cultists prepare their final sacrifice, the Occultist, who turns out to be Count Dracula, lingers in the shadows moping about the wrong doings of the past and characters who are one side of the spectrum slowly shift to show their true colours. I like it, and it keeps Polselli from falling into the passive pit of convention. This is where a somewhat complex web of present day and past times starts to twist and wind into each other. Before the film is over, there will be plenty of nudity, violent deaths, vibrant lighting, funky guitar riffs great reveals and major polarization of the leading characters.

Cinematographer Ugo Brunelli, who was a favoured DP of Luigi Batzella and Robero Mauri, also hot almost a dozen films for Polselli and really pulls out all the tricks of the book on this one. Sinister lighting with a strong use of reds/greens/blues and some superbly composed shots give several awesome looking moments in Black Magic Rites. Going back to this film after so many years – the last time I saw it was on one of the old Redemption tapes – it’s fair to say that this is one fine movie that tries some bold stuff for it’s time and really deserves to be seen again as it’s a intriguingly told piece of genre gold. 

Black Magic Rites is also an orgy of fast zooms that would put Bava or Franco to shame, and the beat of the editing is furious, at times some of the most forceful and violent that I’ve seen in an early seventies movie. When I do interviews and talk storytelling with filmmakers, there’s a theory that I constantly return to, a theory that talks about the three different movies that you make, the one you write, the one you shoot and the one you edit. Frequently filmmakers come to the conclusion that no matter what you write and shoot, the edit, despite any vision one has when writing and shooting, is where it all comes to life. Black Magic Rites is such a movie, and what frenetic life Polselli pounds into the film with his ferocious editing. This is fine art in the making my friends. If nothing else you should see this film just for the rabid pace that the first half steams on at. Unfortunately Black Magic Rites was only one of the two films Polselli edited (the other being a porn film in the eighties) and that’s a shame, as this is impressive editing indeed. It adds to the conviction that Renato Polselli almost disappears in the shadow of contemporary Italian filmmakers who gained international success. If you are into Euro horror and genre, please make sure to check out some of Polselli’s work, it is splendid stuff.

With that said, it’s also fair to point out that the main narrative flashback of Isabella’s execution does go on for way to long and gets kind of tiresome, despite presenting important backstory, exposition and character traits told though fast edits and emotional music. But it’s part of the plot and a decent trick for the twist of the last act. The rapid editing also disappears towards the end of the second act when the vampires start to walk the grounds, women fall out of their dresses and tables start to turn. Although the climactic last act reclaims the hard pace and rapid cuts and the movie comes neatly together style wise.

Whilst the movie may come off as a bewildered confusion, courtesy of Renato Polselli’s self written script, it’s actually a pretty intricate piece that unfortunately get’s somewhat lost in its own complexity. Where it’s fairly common praxis that leading lady Rita Calderoni play both modern age Laureen and past times witch Isabella, Polselli doesn’t stop there. Everyone in the cast plays dual roles. It’s a curious approach, and if not for the simple fact that Polselli in a stroke of genius polarizes all the characters in the two time frame setting, one would have looked upon it as a cheap way to save on extras and supporting cast costs.

There’s a good use of love themed subplots where the main cast all play parts, a lot of the movie’s story is sadness and yearning when it all comes around. For some strange reason though, where there’s a pretty decent emotional core story and a tense atmosphere, there’s also some rather uncalled for comedic relief where a sinister rape almost comes off as a farcical romp, and don’t get me started on what may just be the worst fake snake, bat and rat moment ever put on film!

Climaxing in something that reassembles a rush of insight and semi-explanation, it’s obvious that not even the characters can fully explain the odd series of events that have taken place. There’s several questions posed, what was true, what was lie, what was reality and what was fantasy. One leaves the film slightly confused and must self debate the possibly if all was all merely sinister plan concocted by the cult leader, or was it just hauntings of past love or merely all just an emotional fever dream.

Black Magic Rites is a delightful oddity; suave, feverishly weird, eclectically enigmatic and a well crafted must see movie. It’s time to rediscover the magic of Renato Polselli!

(Which you now can do in full HD through Redemption and Kino Lorbers series of Euro cinema releases.)

Here's a pretty spoilerish trailer if you feel like watching key scenes and story! 

Halloween III – Season of the Witch

Halloween III – Season of the Witch

Directed by: Tommy Lee Wallace

USA, 1982

Horror/sci-fi, 98min

Distributed by: Njutafilms.

Tommy Lee Wallace… what a damned fine first feature he kicked off his career with! Being second in line to follow up John Carpenter’s genre defining classic Halloween 1980, one would think the task impossible, and in many genre fans he failed miserably as Halloween III – Season of the Witch features no Michael Myers, no Laurie Strode, no Dr. Loomis what so ever – except a brilliant meta referent when Dan Challis see’s a promo for Carpenter’s original on the TV in a bar, and one later on in the budding climax of the film. But the lack of Myers is exactly what makes this movie such a brilliant part of the franchise.

An old man, Harry [Al Berry] is brought into the hospital during Dr. Daniel Challis [Tom Atkins] watch. He holds a pumpkin mask in a cramped grip in his hands and keeps muttering that “They are coming”… his ranting is discarded as the rambling of disillusion. So when a strange man walks right into the hospital and murders Harry, panic and confusion hits hard. The daughter of Harry, Ellie [Stacey Nelkin] tells Challis of the strange series of meeting her father had with the executives as Silver Shamrock– the same company that are responsible for the immensely aggressive marketing campaign for their spectacular Halloween masks. The same company that urge kids to watch their special prize raffle on Halloween night! The search for what drove Harry insane leads Challis and Ellie to Santa Mira and the heart of the Silver Shamrock factories where Shamrock CEO, Conal Cochran [Dan O’Herlihy] reveals a diabolical plan involving a stolen Stonehenge rock, Celtic magic and the diabolic Halloween masks.

Halloween III – Season of the Witch is a bloody good movie indeed. Lost to a generation of genre fans just getting their first taste for gore, this film is nothing else than lost masterpiece. It has everything we bitch and moan about contemporary horror missing. Atkins portrayal of a divorced father of two, with possible drinking problems and totally out of touch with his kids is the kind of stuff that generates believability. Dan Challis would rather hide at work instead of taking care of his children from whom he obviously feels alienated. So given the chance to play amateur detective with a young hot woman, Ellie, he jumps at the occasion. Their trip from the ordinary world into a one of nightmares, automatons and Celtic occultism is a terrifying one, and Wallace pulls it off with bravura. Despite us not knowing the sinister plan until the last act, the “London Bridge” based jingle and the countdown to Halloween night; generate something of a stress factor as we soon realize that the movie is a race against time.

There are some really magic moments in this film, some of the jump scares hit harder than most other genre fare do, and the effects, through simple, are as gruesome as it gets.  How bugs and snakes squeezing their way out of young childs head and the superb exploded face of Marge Guttman [Garn Stephens] didn’t hit home with horror fans is beyond me. Jon G. Belyeu may not be know for his genre work, but what he did for Wallace in Halloween III – Season of the Witch is top notch and get’s the job done perfectly now thirty years later.

Good Old Hammer sci-fi veteran Nigel Keale, legendary for his stories about Professor Bernard Quatermass, both in TV serial and film form, wrote the first script for the new tale to be told after the death of Michael Myers. Originally Keale’s script had not been as dark and intense as the one Tommy Lee Wallace re-wrote, so he demanded that his name be taken off the film after seeing how violent it was. Never the less, I find that it’s this violence that makes the movie stand out amongst other sci-fi horrors of the time. We all know all to well that sequels only tend to become more and more waterlogged and stagnant, which is not the case of Halloween III – Season of the Witch. Not may second installments still stand up to the test of time as well as this one does, and if a movie ever deserved a second renaissance, it is Halloween III – The Season of the Witch.

Ironically the movie was turned into a novelization by Dennis Etchinson (who I met at the World Horror Convention in Brighton, 2010) and in that form it managed to do what the movie had failed at, becoming a hit!

If you really want the full experience of Halloween III – The Season of the Witch, you can also pick up the fabulous John Carpenter/Alan Howarth soundtrack, which also predates anything in its contemporary sphere with it’s brooding synthesizers and futuristic minimalist approach to pending doom. The soundtrack is due to be released on vinyl by DeathWaltzRecordings on the 18th of October.

Do yourself a favor this Halloween and make at least one spot on your genre-viewing schedule to check out this forgotten shocker. Halloween III – Season of the Witch is like fine wine, the older it gets the better it is. Nothing short of a lost masterpiece, it’s time to rediscover the finer side of old-school horror.