Necromancy

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)

A curious low budget horror film, it has two very talented performers at the head of the cast: Pamela Franklin, of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' and Orson Welles, of many great films. The script does not give either of them the opportunity to maximise their acting potential though, and in fact, the whole story is fairly predictable, quite ordinary or worse. Still, there are a number of atmospheric segments in the film, with fitting music and camera-work setting the mood. It is excessively dark, the odd sound effects are jarring and the cheap special effects do it no good. However, there are some effective moments in the mix. It is not a very good film overall, but it does have some interesting elements. And, for what it is worth, Franklin's acting at times is quite natural.

A young marriage (Pamela Franklyn , Michael Ontkean) go to a little town when the husband has got a job at a toy enterprise . There Mr. Cato (Orson Welles) is the head of a community whose one enterprise is the the manufacture of occult toys. Cato runs a witches' coven in the town of Lilith, where he needs the powers of Lori Brandon to raise his son from the dead. Cato, as it turns out , takes his witchcraft seriously and attempts to use to bring his dead son back to life . To do so, he needs a willing sacrifice Life to the Dead and Death to the Living. Enter the Occult World of 'Necromancy"

Poorly made tale of the misadventures of a young marriage and man's continuity quest for supernatural power , as Welles as the high priest out to get victim Franklyn . It displays ordinary elements of the witchery subgenre : Devil worship, witchcraft , diabolic possession and adding some scenes of fully nude coven worship . The picture displays lots of creepy , eerie and nonsense moments. Bizarre, tense, controversial and with chilling scenes about practices of devil worship and satanism ritual . Production values and set design are highlighted by the usual cool scenarios, as exterior , as colorful interior. Make-up and visual effects provide some much needed jolts . Some of the effects are little dated now, but director Bert I Gordon builds intrigue and tension enough through a stately pace. Top-notch casting , in this otherwise average production , as Orson Welles stands out playing his showy role. Orson's acting , is one of his strongest in an unconventionally nasty role. Whenever he was making a movie just for money , Orson would disguise himself . In this piece of horror trash from filmmaker Bert I. Gordon , Welles wears both a fake nose and a false beard . While Pamela Franklyn -still haunted by debuting in the successful The Innocents- is cool a as the unfortunate victim . Main and support cast are acceptable , such as : Pamela Franklin , Orson Welles , Lee Purcell , Michael Ontkean , Sue Bernard and Harvey Jason who married Pamela Franklyn . Rare and frightening musical score Rob Walsh and Karger . As well as atmospheric cinematography by Winton C. Hoch , John Ford's regular cameraman , and shooting took place in Los Gatos, California.

The motion picture was regularly directed by Bert I Gordon. He is a good artisan working from the 50s to 2000s , making passable films in low budget. He's directed movies of all kinds of genres as children films : The Magic Sword, The boy and the pirates. About witchery and necromancy : The Witching, Burning at the stake, Satan's princess. Erotic : The Big Bet, Let's do it. And Bert has a penchant for fantasy with giant beings and huge animals : The Cyclops, King Dinosaur, Earth vs the Spider. Beginning of the end, War of the Colossal beast, Village of the giants, Attack of the Puppet people, Empire of the ants, The food of the goods, among others . Rating : 4,5/10, so-so , but acceptable and passable . The tale will appeal to horror pictures harcore enthusiasts and Orson Welles/Pamela Franklyn fans.

This drive-in schlockfest has Pamela Franklin starring as a Los Angeles woman who moves to a bizarre small town in Northern California with her husband (Michael Ontkean) where he is to be employed for a toy company. The longer she spends there, the more disconcerted she becomes over the influence his boss, Mr. Cato (Orson Welles), has on the townspeople, which consist exclusively of young, fresh-faced hippies with a taste for all things occult.

"Necromancy" had a troubled release history and was apparently re-edited to some degree in the early 1980s and re-released as a softcore film under the title "The Witching Hour"; the cut of the film I saw was apparently an early R-rated cut under the "Necromancy" title that is allegedly close to writer-director Burt Gordon's original vision, if you want to call it that. "Necromancy" as a whole feels like a "vision" of sorts-a hazy, drugged-out romp through Manson family-era California, with a supernatural twist. It suffers terribly from disjointed editing and a general lack of cohesion, which is disappointing given that the narrative is actually quite straightforward.

The film will remain an eternal curiosity for Welles's involvement, though his role is minimal and his presence generally underwhelming. The lovely Pamela Franklin (who many genre fans know and love from "The Innocents" and "Legend of Hell House") is a formidable lead and does what she can with the material; a strappingly handsome Michael Ontkean plays her husband and is less impressive but still has a likable screen presence; and Lee Purcell (later of Wes Craven's TV schlocker "Summer of Fear") is aptly doe-eyed and dead-faced as a distant member of the town/coven trying to revive Welles's dead son.

The film has a clever albeit rather standard twist that gives it a fun bite considering most of it is rather straightforward despite its acid-trip aesthetics. In the end, the film suffers greatly from serious disjointedness (presumably because it is so badly edited), but there are some ominous, utterly bizarre (and sometimes eerie) visuals throughout that are distinct to the era. Ultimately, what we have here is a drive-in-calibre occult flick, which, depending on who you are, may or may not be a complete delight. For visuals alone, I feel it's worth watching, though it does present itself as a serious case of "what might have been." 7/10.

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.