Hammer Studios' most memorable film, The Wicker Man,1 has its origins in at least two of the studio's earlier productions. In 1960, they took a young woman to a small New England village in The City of the Dead. Six years later, they moved a little closer to the notorious cult classic with The Witches, also released as The Devil's Own. Instead of cribbing Lovecraft, this time they directly adapt Norah Loft's 1960 novel, editions of which also received the titles The Little Wax Doll and Catch as Catch Can.
After surviving a "witch doctor-led" rebellion in the African village where she teaches, a British woman takes a post in a small English village, where nothing like that could possibly happen. After several twists, she begins to see the truth. The idea of ordinary folk as secret, deadly cultists remains a powerful one, and the gradual realization works fairly well.
Unfortunately, the cult and their rituals reach levels of cheesiness that the Monks of Bellelay would have envied. The costumes and trappings would have not been out of place in a third-season Star Trek TOS ep, while the rituals themselves recall late 60s experimental theatre or early 1970s group therapy.
The opening proves even more problematic. Yes, by all means, we must take care when applying the understanding of the present on the art of the past. Sure, the matte painting used to take us into darkest Africa looks so obvious and artificial it's almost an artistic statement in its own right. And okay, the African natives get portrayed as superstitious and fearful half-children (which, in this film, actually makes them more aware than the protagonist) or murderous savages. The intended audience, back in the day, was both visually naive and culturally unenlightened.
Except this film dates from 1966. The matte would have passed twenty years earlier, in black and white, but not in '66. And those racial attitudes cannot be contextualized as the ignorance typical of the day.
The movie adapts a novel with a premise used once before by Hammer, and already familiar to readers of horror. This version of the plot features some unexpected and intriguing twists, though at times these may challenge the viewer's willingness to suspend disbelief. As a bonus, we get Joan Fontaine in her final cinematic role-- she would act only on stage and television during her remaining thirty years. The Witches remains intriguing to fans of older horror, but most viewers will want to jump straight to The Wicker Man, which does a significantly better job with the basic premise.
Director: Cyril Frankel
Writers: Nigel Kneale, from the novel by Norah Lofts (Writing as Peter Curtis)
Joan Fontaine as Gwen Mayfield
Kay Walsh as Stephanie Bax
Alec McCowen as Alan Bax
Ann Bell as Sally Benson
Ingrid Boulting as Linda Rigg
John Collin as Dowsett
Michele Dotrice as Valerie Creek
Gwen Ffrangcon Davies as Granny Rigg
Duncan Lamont as Bob Curd
Leonard Rossiter as Dr. Wallis
Martin Stephens as Ronnie Dowsett
Carmel McSharry as Mrs. Dowsett
Viola Keats as Mrs. Curd
Shelagh Fraser as Mrs. Creek
1. With possibly the worst remake in cinematic history: few B-movies have ever been as bad as Neil LaBute and Nicholas Cage's 2006 disaster.
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