Necromancy

I have a copy of "The Witching", but i'm not sure if it's the same as "Necromancy". The film is very strange itself. It has a bunch of mumbling in the film. When Orson Welles talks, his voice is all mumbly and really is terrible. It also has a lot of nudity, and I don't know how it had a PG rating. It also has a lot of Satanism in the film.

It has rituals and a bunch of strange, wicked things. For me, I think it's okay, but not the best horror film to see. Very odd with the story and really is messed up. It's about a woman and her husband go to a town called Lilith, and no children are allowed there. Because Mr. Cato(Orson Welles) wants it that way.

You better watch the film if it sounds interesting to you. But it contains a lot of nudity and satanism, witchcraft, bringing the dead to the living and the living to the dead, and just messed up.

When you're making a thriller about witchcraft, I believe you should do everything you can to help the audience suspend its disbelief in order for the movie to work. Some pictures ("Rosemary's Baby", for example) have accomplished this; others (like "Necromancy") haven't and the potentially scary material comes across as corny and goofy. This film does have some atmospheric moments, but about half the dialogue is hard to make out (sometimes it's poorly recorded, at other times just incomprehensible) and Orson Welles, who gets top billing, has a role that is so BENEATH him that you have to assume he was desperate for the work. Or maybe he was simply having fun.....(*1/2)

Writer/producer/director Bert I. Gordon, known best for his various '50's giant-monster-on-the-loose sci-fi epics, does his rendition of ROSEMARY'S BABY. The action takes place in a small, sinister village that specializes in the manufacturing of occult toys. Orson Welles is the madman at the center of the terror who is plotting to give his dead son life again. Pamela Franklin is the pert and pretty young woman gradually being lured into the dark and mysterious world of the supernatural. Despite prominent billing, Welles makes a fairly brief appearance. The cast handles the tiresome material well, and this is probably the closest Gordon has come to making a good film. But, keep in mind, it's not really a good film, but an absurdly entertaining diversion for those who think they can take it. A slightly longer version of the movie called THE WITCHING contains several minutes worth of frontal nudity, and contains an early appearance by scream queen Brinke Stevens.

Cheapjack shocker has Los Angeles couple pulling up stakes after the wife suffers a miscarriage; her husband has been offered a lucrative job in the rural town of Lilith, but her freaky premonitions foretell an unhappy experience, especially with fat cat Orson Welles overseeing the community and its devil-worshipping residents (all under 30). Pamela Franklin has the central role, and she's an interesting presence even if she's been directed to stare at the other actors (and into the camera) as if under a spell. Writer-producer-director Bert I. Gordon should have taken his cue from William Castle after Castle bought the rights to "Rosemary's Baby" but allowed outsiders to take the reins. Gordon's plot, despite its familiar occult trappings, does have some interest, but the presentation is inept. *1/2 from ****

The film "Necromancy" (1972) was considerably altered for a re-released version which I'm not sure was ever shown in theaters (it may have been a straight-to-video release). This altered version, re-titled "The Witching"(1981, if I'm not mistaken) is apparently only one of several such versions. Since they are under other titles ("A Life For A Life", "Rosemary's Disciples", etc.), I'm assuming (though I'm not certain) that these have been altered further. However, I have seen both "Necromancy" & "The Witching". While the original film (which is next to impossible to find anywhere-though I was able to track down a copy) is a suspenseful, gothic horror film, various key elements were removed for "The Witching", including: the final scene, which clears up some plot points while adding a final twist to the story; both the opening & closing titles, which were replaced with painfully ordinary sequences; & the original music score, which included a memorable song entitled "The Morning After" (not to be confused with the Oscar-winning song of the same title used in "The Poseidon Adventure", released the same year).The new (completely different) music score is horribly, embarassingly cheesy. The sequence of scenes, in some places, was also changed slightly & there was additional (& badly misplaced) footage added. I can only imagine what liberties have been taken with the more recent altered versions, since seeing for myself what else has been done to the original film would be much scarier than "Necromancy" itself.