Italian Poster

Black Magic Rites (aka The Reincarnation of Isabel and Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel trecento…) is a 1973 Italian psychedelic occult horror film directed by Renato Polselli (Delirium). It stars Mickey Hargitay, Rita Calderoni (Nude for Satan), Tano Cimarosa, Christa Barrymore and Raul Lovecchio.

A British Channel Four TV documentary, Porn on the Brain, to be broadcast on September 30th 2013 at 10pm, includes brief clips from Black Magic Rites and Luigi Batzella’s Nude for Satan. The documentary has been widely covered in the press already as it claims that watching pornography triggers the same addictive areas of the brain as drugs and alcohol!

Hundreds of years ago, a Jack Nelson (Mickey Hargitay) was restrained while he watched his lover Isabella (Rita Calderoni) burned at the stake for witchery. His threat that she will live again overtakes his life and he spends the next several centuries refining the method to reincarnate his precious lover. His obsession turns him into a monster, walking the Earth in search of virgins to kidnap in his attempt to raise his lover from the grave. A party of people arrive and Jack closes in…

IMDb

Polselli is clearly working in the same area that often attracted the likes of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, Jean Rollin and Jesus Franco – not to mention a whole bunch of arthouse directors like Jacques Rivette, Sergei Paradjanov and Alain Renais – where the narrative takes second place to the visual and the atmospshere. Here, a coherent, conventional and linear narrative is abandoned in favour of cinematic delirium, resulting in a film that is one of the most hallucinogenic that I’ve ever seen. Everything is heightened beyond reality here – the dialogue, the acting, the characters, the music (which goes from moody to comical to furious progressive rock) and the visuals all reach a point of hysteria that is so far removed from reality that the suggestions that this is a ‘bad’ film that has ended up the way it is through incompetence are rendered laughable. This is a very deliberate trip into weirdness. The film’s editing (also by Polselli) is furious and often builds all the other elements to a point of absolute hysteria, as well as allowing little off-key touches that help make this a bizarre, dreamlike experience.

The film has more bare breasts than most softcore films (and again includes the nudity so randomly and incongruously that it feels more like a deliberate expansion of the surreal than a desire to titillate) and has gore that is both graphic and unrealistic – not just in terms of the effects, but the execution – when Isabel is staked through the heart, she remains alive and conscious. The lighting too is designed to startle – four years before Suspiria, this is a film awash with vivid reds and greens. And there is barely a moment when something interesting isn’t happening.

Black Magic Rites is one of the most deranged films you could ever hope to see, a high note of hysteria and hallucination that barely pauses for breath, and where excess is never enough.

David Flint – Strange Things Are Happening

“I still can’t work out what it’s meant to be about, despite the fact that one of the characters spends a good ten minutes totally unsuccessfully explaining the plot at the end. What I can say is that it’s set in a castle, that there’s an awful lot of female nudity, some very poor Satanic rituals executed by men in red baby romper suits, and that some of the fashions were probably designed by blind people who had been cruelly lied to about the materials with which they had been provided.” John Llewellyn Probert, House of Mortal Cinema

Buy on Redemption Blu-ray from Amazon.com

“I have seen some crazy movies. I have even seen some completely insane, inexplicable and just plain weird movies. But nothing I have been subjected to thus far has readied me for writer/director Renato Polselli‘s madness in Black Magic Rites. I reviewed his incredibly sordid and violent slasher Delirium not long ago but not even that could have prepared me for this sublimely artistic, sexy and satanic Euro-sleaze. The closest film I can think of that even comes close to the absurdity on parade here is Luigi Batzella’s Nude for Satan. But even that doesn’t hold a candle to this madness.” Greg Baty, Cinesploitation

“…if it’s a little too absurd to be rightly considered a masterpiece it is still a ridiculously entertaining and completely bizarre slice of Italian exploitation well worth revisiting on Blu-ray.” Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop!

Post by Will Holland

Daddy I’m a Zombie (Papa Soy una Zombi) is a 2011 Spanish animated children’s horror film directed by Joan Espinach and Ricardo Ramón. It stars the voices of Paula Ribó, Núria Trifol, and Ivan Labanda.

Dixie is a 13-year-old girl, unhappy with her life: five years ago her mother divorced from her father, a coroner, and in her college she is considered weird due to her gothic look. One night, Dixie suffers an accident when a tree crashes against her during a storm. Dixie wakes up later in the middle of a cemetery, turned into a zombie. With the help of Isis, an Egyptian mummy, and Gonner, a pirate zombie, Dixie tries to return to life, looking for Vitriol, a strange man who roams by the forest close to the cemetery. However, her search is followed by Negrida, an evil zombie witch who wants the Azoth, a mystical item which, according to the legend, will open the portal between the living world and the dead realm, giving Negrida the chance to accomplish her evil plans to invade the living world with her zombie armies…

IMDb | Watch or Buy on Amazon Instant Video | Buy on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Buy Daddy, I’m a Zombie on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“…for all its faults, it has a certain naive charm. I just wish that it had had the courage of its convictions, because at some point in its gestation it had the potential to be a much better – and more enjoyable – film.” The Skull Illusion

It isn’t funny, it isn’t frightening and every set-piece action scene is a dismal failure. On the plus side, it is quite atmospheric; the music is pretty much bang-on and the sets and cinematography look great. The stylised animations would be rather good too, if they didn’t all go wrong with the legs and make everyone walk funny.” John Knott, Starburst

Posted by Will Holland

In cinematic terms, it wasn’t a good time to be a witch in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Between 1968 and 1972, more witches were put to death on film than at any time before or since. It truly was the Dark Ages of horror.

Of course, there had been witch-hunts on film before: Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a cheerful romp through the world of the occult dating from 1922, and features plenty of inquisitorial torture by witch finders. This notorious Swedish film caused outrage on its original release, with salacious scenes of Satanic orgies and daring nudity, and even now packs a real punch. A heady mix of documentary, surrealism and sensationalism, the film remains one of cinema’s most unique moments.

1937 saw Maid of Salem, directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Claudette Colbert. The film used the Salem witch trials as the setting for a drama that reflected Arthur Miller’s famed play The Crucible to a large degree. The Witches of Salem (confusingly retitled The Crucible in America, despite not being based on Miller’s play) appeared in 1957 from France. Director Raymond Rouleau adapted a story by Jean-Paul Satre, and the cast was headed by Simone Signoret. But it was the appearance of Matthew Hopkins – Witchfinder General (to give the film its full title) in 1968 that was to open the floodgates to a mini-boom of witchfinder films over the next few years. Michael Reeves had previously directed the Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast and the British made The Sorcerers , starring Boris Karloff. Both films were effective shockers that marked Reeves as a talent to watch. With Witchfinder General, his talent peaked. Sadly, he took an overdose – whether by accident or design -a year after making this film.

Witchfinder General

The film is loosely based on the true-life story of Matthew Hopkins (the screenplay being adapted from the historical novel by Ronald Bassett), who terrorised East Anglia during the Seventeenth century. Together with assistant John Stearne, Hopkins moves from town to town, extracting “confessions” from those accused of witchcraft, before hanging them. Woven around this real life horror is the fictional story of Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), who is part of Cromwell’s army fighting the Royalists. He is soon to marry sweetheart Sara, the niece of Father John Lowes, but whilst he is away on duty, Hopkins arrives in town, summoned by villagers who distrust the priest because of his Protestant leanings. Lowes is tortured, but allowed to live for a while after Sara seduces Hopkins. However, when Hopkins is called away on business, Stearne rapes the girl, and once Hopkins discovers this, he orders the death of the priest.

Witchfinder General

Marshall arrives at the church to discover a distraught Sara, and vows vengeance. He sets off in pursuit of Hopkins, leading to the inevitable showdown. The ending of the film is one of the most powerful moments in horror film history: After being captured by Hopkins and seeing Sara tortured, Marshall escapes and attacks Hopkins with an axe, literally hacking him to death. A Roundhead colleague (Nicky Henson) stumbles onto the scene and, horrified, shoots the witchfinder. The film ends with Marshall’s screams: “You took him from me!” Ironically, this scene was the result of a continuity error. The original script had Henson shooting both Hopkins and Marshall, but Reeves realised that previous scenes had shown Henson to only have a single flintlock pistol. A hasty rewrite brought about one of the great moments in cinema! Witchfinder General is a stunning film. Utterly nihilistic in approach, it has all the power and inevitability of a Shakespeare tragedy. Reeves’ direction is confident and flawless, making a mockery of the low budget. He makes excellent use of the English countryside, contrasting the beauty with the horror that takes place.

Of course, a film like Witchfinder General was bound to run into problems. After all, British horror in 1968 meant The Devil Rides Out, not a brutal, realistic and shockingly angry film like this. Reeves had no time for traditional horror films, as evidenced by a legendary exchange between the director and his star, Vincent Price. Price, well known for hamming it up, was instructed to play the role straight. According to legend, bristling at being told how to act by this twenty four year old director, Price complained “I’ve made eighty-seven films, what have you done?”. Reeves looked at him and replied “I’ve made three good ones.” End of argument! The British censors felt that Witchfinder General was too much to take. The whole despairing atmosphere of the film worried them, as did the effect of Paul Ferris’ haunting score, which censor John Trevelyan felt heightened the violence even further. Major cuts were made, much to the consternation of Reeves, who had stated that “violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. It should be presented as such, and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts, the better.” Trevelyan accepted Reeves’ arguments, but most of his outraged BBFC staff felt the film was exploitative and needed cutting.

Despite these cuts, the film still caused critical outrage at the seemingly unprecedented violence. In America, the film was retitled The Conqueror Worm by AIP, as a desperate attempt to milk the Vincent Price/Poe connection for all it was worth. To justify the connection, a new prologue was shot with Price reading Poe’s poem. As its reputation grew over the years, many attempts were made to restore the missing footage to Witchfinder General, but to no avail. So it was a major surprise when Redemption announced the release of a restored version in 1995. And not only does this print contain all the cut scenes, but also has some additional nude scenes that were shot by Tigon head honcho Tony Tenser for export versions of the film. This longer version is now widely available.

The film also inspired Witchfinder General, a 1980s British heavy metal doom band, who named themselves after it and courted controversy with sleazy album covers. Sadly, their music did not match the imagery used to sell it!

The success of Witchfinder General inevitably led to imitations. The best known of these was Mark of the Devil, a West German production from 1969. Like its inspiration, Mark of the Devil was directed by a young British director, Michael Armstrong, who had previously made the violent psycho film The Haunted House of Horror. Mark of the Devil tells the story of Count Cumberland (Herbert Lom), who arrives in an Austrian village to become the official witchfinder. At first, his presence seems to bring a degree of justice after the excesses of Albino (played by Reggie Nalder); however, he soon proves to be just as cruel and corrupt. Whilst powerful and well crafted, Armstrong’s film is nowhere near as good as Witchfinder General, though it does share many of its elements. The film has a strong sense of indignation and anger at what it portrays, and is certainly unflinching in its approach: American distributors rated it “V for Violence” and offered vomit bags to patrons, while the BBFC refused a certificate outright (a ban which held until recently; even now the DVD release has around thirty seconds cut). It also makes use of haunting music to contrast with the extreme violence.

Mark of the Devil

Current prints of the film all end rather abruptly. For some reason, the original ending, which featured the dead returning to life, has vanished and cannot be found (although stills exist showing what it looks like). This might not be such a bad thing: a supernatural conclusion would have damaged the story considerably, and the brutal manner in which the film now finishes is strangely in keeping with the cold tone of the movie as a whole. Mark of the Devil started life as a project by ex-matinee idol Adrian Hoven, who had written a screenplay entitled The Witch-Hunter Dr Dracula, which featured the Count as a witchfinder, and which Armstrong describes as “almost hard porn.” Hoven’s producers, Gloria Film, refused to let him direct, and Armstrong was brought in. He immediately rewrote the script (using the pseudonym Sergio Cassner), much to the anger of Hoven, who ended up with a small part in the movie and directed his own scenes after a number of shouting matches with Armstrong.

Mark of the Devil

The success of the film led to a sequel, and this time Hoven did direct. Starring Erica Blanc and Anton Diffring, the film was little more that a lurid rehash of the profitable elements from the first film (i.e. the torture of scantily clad women), without any of the intelligence of power.

Following Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil, a number of other films would deal with the “witch hunt” theme. However, these differed from their predecessors by giving the witchfinders some justification for existing: in these films, the witches were real. Tigon Films followed Witchfinder General with an unofficial sequel, Satan’s Skin (better known as The Blood on Satan’s Claw) in 1970. Director Piers Haggard follows the visual style of Reeves quite well in this effective study of corruption and evil. Popular jailbait exploitation queen Linda Hayden played the leader of a teenage cult that spreads throughout a village after a demonic skull is unearthed in a field. With some graphic gore and frank sexuality (Hayden strips to seduce a priest in his own church), the film makes a more than adequate companion piece to its more illustrious predecessor.

Blood on Satan’s Claw

The same year saw Cry of the Banshee, with Vincent Price returning as a sadistic witch-finding magistrate. A mixed affair, the film is not without effective moments, but often descends into silliness, with rather contrived orgies and clumsy attempts at shock sequences. Nevertheless, the film remains interesting throughout. Witchfinder General star Hillary Dwyer appeared in the film, adding to the feeling that these movies were all somehow inter-connected (Patrick Wymark appeared in both Witchfinder General and Satan’s Skin).

Cry of the Banshee

Jess Franco, perhaps inevitably,  made a couple of witchfinder films. The more “respectable” of the two, The Bloody Judge (1969) starred Christopher Lee as Judge Jeffreys – like Matthew Hopkins, a notorious real life witch hunter of the Seventeenth century. The film is well shot, and dwells more on the historical elements of the story than the exploitational ones. That said, there were a number of gruesome torture scenes in the German version that didn’t appear in other cuts. Lee claims that the scenes were added without his knowledge. Perhaps he would prefer the American version, retitled Night of the Blood Monster, which removed all the nudity and violence to obtain a PG rating, leaving the film little more that a worthy but dull low budget historical drama. The current UK and US DVDs are restored versions with the extra sex and violence inserted into the longer, tamer edition.

The Bloody Judge

A couple of years later, Franco returned to the theme with The Demons (1972). Here, he again uses Judge Jeffreys, but there the similarity ends. The film was a sleazy, tacky and thoroughly ludicrous slice of sexploitation sleaze, with naked women undergoing various tortures and satanic rituals. Entertaining nonsense for the broad minded, one dreads to think what Christopher Lee would make of it!

Even Hammer dabbled with the witchfinder theme. Twins of Evil was the final film in the Karnstein trilogy, and featured Peter Cushing as a puritan witchfinder who rampages across the countryside burning innocent women at the stake. When one of his twin nieces becomes a vampire, life takes a “difficult” turn for him! One of the best films to emerge from the famed studio, Twins of Evil also starred Playboy centrefolds Mary and Madeline Collinson and David Warbeck.

The best known, and still the most controversial of the witchfinder films, was Ken Russell’s The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s historical novel The Devils of Loudon. There can be few of you that haven’t seen this film, which continues to split critical opinion to this day. Russell didn’t shy away from showing excessive scenes of torture and sexual mania, and the film suffered a number of cuts at the hands of the BBFC. Some of this footage has since emerged and appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, but amazingly, Warners still refuse to restore the film to its blasphemous glory, and the recent BFI release is the cut X-rated version that first played UK cinemas.

The Devils

By 1972, this mini genre had burnt itself out (no pun intended). Witch trials still crop up now and again in films, but usually only at the opening of some supernatural tale, setting the scene for the vengeance of the witch’s spirit years later. There have been cinema and TV productions of The Crucible, and the 1985 TV film Three Sovereigns for Sarah starred Vanessa Redgrave and Kim Hunter in the story of a woman who attempts to get a witchcraft verdict against her overturned. At three hours long, this worthy but dull tale often felt like torture itself.

Three Sovereigns for Sarah

Inevitably, the only place left for the witchfinder to go after this was into comedy. As early as 1974, Monty Python and the Holy Grail included arbitrary witch hunting amongst its comedy targets, with the revelation that a witch weighs the same as a duck, and the final significant appearance of the witchfinder came in the form of Frank Findlay, who cropped up during the first series of Black Adder, playing the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, falsely accusing Rowan Atkinson of black magic! A witty spoof, it managed to show the insanity and maliciousness of the witch trials as effectively as any serious exposé.

But after this satire, it seems unlikely that the witchfinder film will make a comeback.

In 2001, the BBC showed Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, a British comedy-horror anthology series created by Graham Duff, and co-written with its star, Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge). The episode ‘Scream Satan Scream!’ directly spoofs Witchfinder General (1968) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). Witch locator Captain Tobias Slater travels the north of England accusing beautiful young women of being witches and to avoid the pyre they must sleep with him, until he runs across a real coven and Slater is cursed.  After all this TV satire it seems unlikely that serious witch finding will ever be in vogue again in cinemas.

In many ways, these films were typical of the horror movies of the time: cynical, hard, cold and dark… a far cry from the glossy shockers of today. The closest we’ve had in recent years seems to be the critically mauled Season of the Witch, with Nicolas Cage as an unlikely medieval soldier transporting a woman who may or may not be a witch to trial. It’s not very good. But with the appearance of more and more of the classic titles on video, a new generation can at least appreciate one of horrors briefest, yet most interesting periods.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

PS. Since this article was posted, in October 2013, news emerged that newly-invigorated British production company Hammer has acquired film rights to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, a 2012 novella that is based on an English witch trial from the 17th century. Simon Oakes, Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media and President & CEO of Hammer, commented on bringing this novel to the big screen:

“The Hammer imprint has really delivered some fantastic new writing and shows the vibrancy and variety of the modern day horror genre. The books under our Arrow Books deal are in themselves a fantastic extension of the Hammer brand, and Jeanette’s novella ‘The Daylight Gate’ is a fresh, exciting and compelling fictional work.”

Here’s the official synopsis for The Daylight Gate: “Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I—the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft—The Daylight Gate is best-selling writer Jeanette Winterson’s re-creation of a dark history full of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power.

This is a world where to be Catholic is a treasonable offense. A world where England’s king vows to rid his country of “witchery popery popery witchery” and condemns the High Mass and Black Mass as heresies punishable by torture, hanging, and burning.

Winterson’s literary suspense tale takes us deep into a brutal period of English history, centered on the notorious 1612 Pendle witch trials—an infection of paranoia that crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and set the scene for the Salem witch hunt.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of thirteen is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Already two stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy, respected Alice Nutter tries to defend them, haunted by her own past entanglement with magick. She doesn’t believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.”

Source: Hammer press release

Alex de la Iglesia‘s Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi (Witching & Bitching) is due out in Spain late 2013.

More coverage soon but de la Iglesia promises a horror comedy with a large dose of surrealism and outrage as a curse is placed on an escaping band of thieves who fall into the clutches of the witches of the Navarrese town of Zugarramurdi…

Mario Casas, Hugo Silva and Carmen Maura star.

Spanish teaser trailer:

Although traditionally feared and despised, witches have also long provided the public with light-hearted entertainment – one only has to look at the stereotypical image of the witch, with the pointed hat, green face, black cat and flying broomstick, an image that is impossible to take seriously. Hollywood has long seen witches as comical characters, and it was perhaps inevitable that they would become the subject of a television sitcom in the Sixties.

Bewitched debuted in 1964, and told the story of Samantha Stevens, who – on her wedding night – reveals to husband Darrin that she is a witch, complete with magical powers. Darrin asks her not to use these powers, and so the scene is set for assorted comic mishaps. Each week, Sam’s magical powers, or those of her gaggle of witch and warlock relatives, would cause chaos and result in twenty five minutes or so of frantic attempt to restore normality and find plausible explanations to give to neighbours, friends and relatives for the strange things that have been happening.

Buy Bewitched Complete Season Box Set on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Bewitched was produced by William Asher (better known for I Love Lucy), and starred his wife Elizabeth Montgomery, who took the part in order to work with him. Asher also directed most of the all important first season, which established the show as a hit. The cast also included Dick York as Sam’s long-suffering husband, David White as his boss, and Agnes Moorehead as Sam’s constantly interfering mother Endora, who dissaproved of her daughter’s marriage to a mortal. The antogonism between Moorehead and Sargent formed the basis for much of the humour – Endora would constantly use her magic to put Darrin in difficult positions. Darrin’s boss, Larry Tate (played by David White) was usually on hand to get caught up in some hard-to-explain hocus-pocus, while Sam’s Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne) regularly popped up to bungle spells and then forget how to put things right. And to cause even greater headaches for Sam and Darrin, nosy neighbour Gladys Kravitz (played by both Alice Pearce and Sandra Gould) was usually snooping about – though things would always return to (relatively) normal before her husband Abner (George Tobias) turned up, to dismiss her claims as crazy.

The show was inspired by Rene Clair’s 1942 film I Married a Witch, and it’s interesting to compare Montgomery’s character to that of Veronica Lake in Clair’s movie (or even Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle, another important inspiration). Lake is a lively, mischivious and rather sexy hex in I Married a Witch (itself a rather toned down version of Thorne Smith’s risque novel The Passionate Witch), but Sam is the picture of motherly domesticity, even before she has kids. In fact, Bewitched is so wholesome, it seems incongrous that Darrin and Sam would eventually have two children, Tabitha and Adam (both of whom also had supernatural powers). The idea of them actually having sex seems hard to swallow – perhaps this was the ultimate magic trick from Sam?

Bewitched very much reflects the suburban American Dream of the Sixties. The family unit is as solid as a rock here – there’s no fear of Sam wanting to have a career beyond raising kids, cleaning the house or getting meals ready for Darrin and his various work clients – after all, this is a woman who happily gave up her witchy heritage for domestic tedium (an unlikely idea… but then, even more unlikely is the idea that any man married to a woman with magical powers wouldn’t want to make full use of them…).

In the post-feminist Nineties, it’s tempting to read much into this, but that would be a mistake. The simple fact is that Bewitched was very much of its time in style. Even the fantasy concept wasn’t unique. This was one of a number of 1960s US sitcoms which utilized fantastical themes. These tended to split into two strands: The Addams Family and The Munsters were concerned with oddball characters who didn’t realise that they were any different from the rest of society, and the humour came from the inevitable culture clash. Bewitched, like I Dream of Jeannie, Mr Ed and My favorite Martian had bizarre characters who needed to be kept secret from the rest of the world, and the humour came from the increasingly desperate attempts to cover up their activities.

Like most sit-coms, Bewitched rarely bothered with character development, although it did add new characters along the way. The most significant were the aforementioned children – the childhood lack of guile gave the scriptwriters plenty of opportunities to put Sam and Darrin on the spot, as Tabitha and then later Adam would cause chaos with the various spells that they conjured up to amuse themselves. Towards the end of its run, Bewitched also added housekeeper Esmerelda to the witches brew. This scatty sorceress would create problems with her miscast spells, much as Aunt Clara had done earlier. Of course, TV shows often introduce new characters after a long run in an effort to pep things up and revive flagging ratings, and this was no exception. The show eventually lasted until 1972 – a respectable eight year run.

A few actors (rather than their characters) fell along the way. Most notable was the loss of Dick York, who had suffered with back problems for years and eventually had to quit the show. His replacement, Dick Sargent, appeared without explanation in 1969 (given the nature of the show, Darrin’s sudden change of face might have been explained away). Two actresses played Gladys Kravitz, and two others played Larry Tate’s wife Louise. The kids were also portrayed by different actors, though this was due to regulations regarding working hours for minors. Most TV shows of the time which featured children in the cast used twins to get around this problem, and Bewitched was no exception. Tabitha was played by no less than three sets of twins during the show’s run, before one girl from the final set, Erin Murphy, became old enough to take on the role full time.

Although Bewitched came to an end in 1972, re-runs kept the show alive for many. In 1977, Tabitha was given her own show (cleverly titled Tabitha), with Lisa Hartman playing the grown up witch, working as a Los Angeles TV weather girl, and getting into the expected scrapes. It wasn’t a success, and is barely remembered today, the late Seventies flatness of its approach failing to match the retro appeal of Bewitched, which, with it’s classic theme tune and dated look, has found a fresh new following amongst would-be lounge lizards the world over.

If Bewitched had a a more successful later offspring, it was probably Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the kids show which Tabitha probably should’ve been. This was one of several shows in the Nineties that returned to the fantastical for sit-com fun, suggesting that what goes around, comes around. Meanwhile, Bewitched would spawn a 2005 movie starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell that tried to be too clever with a story based around a remake of the original show. It wasn’t a success.

Bewitched Theme Tune MP3

Wikipedia episode guide

Buy Bewitched Complete Season Box Set on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Posted by DF

Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (aka Female Plasma Suckers) is a 1972 US horror film written and directed by Ted V. Mikels.

A coven of devil-worshipping witches led by Mara, High-Priestess of Satan, torture and sacrifice captive males to satisfy their evil bloodlust, until Lorraine, her boyfriend and Dr Helsford attempt to break the spell.

IMDb

“Blood Orgy of the She-Devils is perhaps one of the most deliciously terrible films ever made, filled with demon worship, witchcraft, voodoo dolls, human sacrifice and super cheesy special effects. This is the fodder upon which Elvira and MST3K were founded!” IGN.com

“While it is true that Blood Orgy doesn’t have much internal logic or sensible plot progression (oh, alright, I’ll be honest, the film doesn’t have a plot at all!), there still is a lot of stuff happening on screen. When Mikels isn’t showing us a pop version of a dance-crazy black sabbath as choreographed by Bob Fosse’s acid-loving spiritual twin, he delights us with other occult cheese of the highest quality, with one moment more absurd than the one that came before.” Wtf-Film

“Like any Mikels experience, you’ll either be bored out of your mind or drunkenly spellbound. Due to a knack for delivering typical ideas in unconventional ways, I always end up falling for his horror films. The extraneous inserts, the randomly tripped out visuals, the charming super-imposed effects…Blood Orgy features all of these things, in addition to a neurotic synth score and living rooms that barely escaped from Year Of The Yahoo. It all makes for a harmless bit of off-center filmmaking…” Bleeding Skull

Image courtesy of VHS Wasteland

The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film written and directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick. It was produced by the Haxan Films production company and uses the narrative device of purporting to be ‘found footage’ filmed by it’s three main characters; although this was already a well-used technique, it has since become one of the most imitated techniques in the horror genre.

Before settling on the final title, it was also known as The Blair Witch Tapes and The Black Hills Project. It features Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams.

The plot follows three students as they relocate to the sleepy town of  Burkittsville, Maryland (a real place, with a population of 151, as of the 2010 census) to make a documentary about a local legend concerning the titular Blair Witch. We are informed at the beginning that the footage we are watching was discovered a year after the three students went missing and consists of everything recorded by the group.

Before the film shifts to the familiar wooded location, the students take time to interview some of the local residents for their stories about the witch. We hear that the legend stretches as far back as the 18th Century and the hanging of a witch called Elly Kedward. Successive stories tell of a hermit called Rustin Parr, who murdered five children in the 1940′s, later to claim insanity by virtue of being driven to the evil deeds by the old witch’s spirit. Parr had instructed each child to stand in the corner of the room whilst they listened to the other children being murdered, one-by-one.

On the second day, interviews wrapped up, they venture into the woods to look for actual evidence of the Blair Witch. Despite warnings from the locals that previous meddlings had resulted in catastrophe, the press ahead, setting up camp before investigating an old cemetery. After dislodging an oddly stacked stone effigy, they begin to hear noises at night and something is clearly not quite right. The following day, they realise their map is missing and that they are hopelessly lost, walking in circles, despite their best efforts to find safety. At night the noises become more horrific, the snapping of sticks and snapping of twigs now married with unearthly groans and children’s unintelligible voices. There is also the small matter of more cairns, missing possessions and ‘slime’ smothered on their belongings.

The following morning, one of their party is found to have gone missing during the night; they frantically search for him but despite hearing his distant screams and finding a nice parcel containing his tongue, teeth and sundry bodily furniture, he remains illusive. As the situation gets ever more desperate, they find more and more crudely-fashioned stick icons, until, at the very edge of madness they locate an old dilapidated house – desperate to find their missing friend, they enter the house, only to find the legends were rather more real than they had bargained for…

Rarely has a horror film divided fans and critics alike as much as The Blair Witch Project; sitting on the fence was not an option, either you loved it or hated it (or you hadn’t seen it). Much of the film’s success rested on the groundwork done before the film was even released. Working with the $22,000 budget (a pinch of salt may be required here, let’s just agree it wasn’t very much), the film-makers realised that their best chance of getting any coverage at all was to put a marketing strategy in place that would capture the public’s (and media’s) imagination. Lo, an online website was created alerting everyone to the ‘fact’ that 3 film students had genuinely gone missing whilst researching the story of the witch. Subsequently, every update was played with a completely straight bat, there was no blood, no guts, purely a concerned tone as to their well-being, all wrapped up nicely as, of course, the environs of their escapades were indeed a real place. By the time the film was actually released, it had become one of the most anticipated horror films for years, breaking out to a wider audience than many cinema releases in the genre.

Another factor affecting the film’s success is that to a large extent, the actors themselves were a victim of the marketing of the film, given only a brief outline of the witch(which they believed to be an actual local legend) and asked to improvise their lines with only prompts from the director. The things that went bump in the night were not planned and were designed to put the actors on edge; by the end of filming all three actors were emotionally and physically drained. Ultimately grossing a staggering $248,639,099 worldwide, the film led to the actors struggling to get work for some time afterwards, Heather’s performance in particular leading her to become so recognisable so even now she remains a victim of typecasting. With a largely diegetic soundtrack and, slight spoiler alert, no visible monster, the film leaned on age-old universal fears – being lost, ‘the thing under the bed’ and the unknown.

The lost-footage angle was used at least as far back as Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 landmark film Cannibal Holocaust but was the first to utilise it for such a mainstream release. As such, it has become much-imitated (and Heather’s snot-nosed panic, parodied) in films such as Cloverfield, REC, Paranormal Activity and The Bigfoot Tapes, to name but a few disparate examples (not to mention a pornographic version called The Bare Bitch Project). Very few of these have come anywhere near something as accomplished as Blair Witch – even basic elements like film students being able to hold a camera still for longer than ten seconds and why anyone would be filming the footage in the first place are now routinely ignored and have become a blight to the genre. The Blair Witch Project is an intense movie experience and despite the best efforts of a staggeringly incompetent sequel, remains a horror classic.

Daz Lawrence

Satan’s School for Girls (2000) is a made-for-television occult horror film, starring Shannen Doherty (Witchslayer Gtetl), Julie Benz (Saw V), Daniel Cosgrove (They Crawl), Victoria Sanchez (Eternal; Dorian) and Kate Jackson. It is producer Aaron Spelling’s remake of his 1973 ABC Movie of the Week. It was directed by Christopher Leitch from a screenplay by Jennifer Maisel.

A young woman – Beth Hammersmith (Shannon Doherty), who attends Fallbridge College for Girls under the name Karen Oxford, to find out why her sister, who attended the college, is believed to have committed suicide. Once she’s enrolled she soon discovers a Satanic cult of witches who call themselves “The Five”, who want Beth to join the cult. The Dean is played by Kate Jackson, who was a student in the original 1973 version.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

“Director Christopher Leitch (who also brought us Teen Wolf Too, bless him) keeps things moving along as well as he can, but this thing bogs down at the script level. The cultural references have been updated, with jokes about Bill Clinton and Judge Judy, but it allows for no suspense, no intelligence on the part of Beth (sure, the guy you just slept with accidentally says “You’re stronger than they think,” but do you really suspect him of being in on the plot? Do you even suspect that there IS a plot?), no more depth than your average puddle after a spring shower.” Adore Sixty Four

Transylvania 6-5000 (1963) is a short Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny. The title is a pun on “Pennsylvania 6-5000“, a song made famous by Glenn Miller, and referring to the old telephone number system of an “exchange”. Voiced by: Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny, Ben Frommer as Count Bloodcount, and Julie Bennett as Agatha and Emily, the two-headed vulture.

Bugs Bunny inadvertently ends up in “Pittsburghe Transylvania“. Initially he asks a two-headed female vulture for directions, but the beast is too busy talking about eating him. Bugs sees an old castle nearby, and calmly approaches it. He meets a vampire, who introduces himself as Count Blood Count and invites him in.

Unable to sleep, Bugs picks up a book titled “Magic Words and Phrases”. Later the Count sneaks up behind him and is just about to strike when Bugs says “abacadabra“, turning the Count into a bat. Bugs mistakes the bat/Count for a big mosquito and clobbers the bat with a fly swatter. As the bat dizzily flies out of the window, Bugs says “hocus pocus“, which turns the Count back into a vampire and fall into the moat surrounding his castle. Shortly afterward, while Bugs is searching for the house restaurant, the Count sneaks up from behind again, but Bugs is humming to the tune of “It’s Magic” and inadvertently turns the Count back into a bat. Once again mistaking the bat for a mosquito, Bugs sprays the bat with a fumigator.

Fed up with the situation, the Count reveals his true identity to Bugs, resulting in a duel of “magic phrases” in which Bugs transforms into a baseball umpire…

Wikipedia | IMDb | BCDb

Queens of Evil (aka Le Regine, Il Delitto del Diavolo) is a 1970 Italian erotic horror film directed by Tonino Cervi and starring Ray Lovelock (The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue), Haidee Politoff, Silvia Monti and Ewelyn Stuart.

A young hippie kills a man, and seeks refuge at the lakeside house of three beautiful sisters, who seem to be hiding a dark secret…

Buy Queens of Evil from Amazon.co.uk

“A fairy tale for grown ups Queens of Evil is like some kind of far out hybrid of Hansel and Gretel, Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man all shot with the unmistakable panache and style of the best of 70’s Italian cinema. With excellent period sets, a typically 70’s soundtrack, gorgeous women, a handsome leading man and weird supernatural shenanigans this is a gem of a movie.” Italian Film Review

Filmbar trailer:

IMDb

WH

Demon Witch Child is a 1975 Spanish horror film directed by Amando de Ossorio, best known for his Blind Dead series of films. Starring Marián Salgado, Julián Mateos, Fernando Sancho and Kali Hansa, the film is generally judged by one of two camps – those who see it simply as one of the slew of post-Exorcist cash-ins and those who see it something of a minor classic from one of the more overlooked of Europe’s genre directors.

In remotest Spain, a witch is ransacking a church in order to obtain relics for her coven’s Black Mass. The local police close in on the old crone and add child snatching to her list of crimes, prompting much cackling until the police threaten her with a truth serum injection, at which point, rather unexpectedly, she throws herself out of the police station window, killing herself. Decidedly more attractive witch (Hansa, also seen in de Ossorio’s own Night of the Sorcerers and Jess Franco’s Perverse Countess), vows to avenge her partner in crime by cursing the police inspector (Italian Western regular, Sancho) and giving his young daughter, Susan (Salgado, who also pops up in Who Can Kill a Child?), a cursed talisman, which she hides inside her teddy bear – just their little secret, you understand.

Though initially coming across as a rather innocuous bunch of loons in the woods, the witches soon reveal themselves as extremely evil-hearted and Susan’s curse soon takes effect, changing her from a sweet little girl (actually, the least convincing sweet little child since Peter Bark in Burial Ground) to a levitating, (mildly) swearing, baby-killing, castrating maniac, though in her defense, she does gift-wrap the severed penis to give to her mum as a present (keep that receipt!). A doubting priest (Mateos from Cold Eyes of Fear) enters the fray but will he have the faith and strength to lift the curse and stop the witches’ mayhem?

In fairness, Demon Witch Child would have sufficed as a three-word synopsis. However, what de Ossorio regularly lacks in narrative and the ability to harness acting talent, he again makes up for in genuine creepiness and an often startling gloom, right up until the final frame. The slender budget inevitably makes the effects look shakey, especially the levitation scene but also adds a strange otherworldliness to Salgado’s make-up and the scene in which the old hag’s soul inhabits Susan’s body. Though centered on witchcraft rather than the demonic possession of The Exorcist, there is a connection between the two films, with Salgado dubbing Linda Blair’s voice in the Spanish language edition of the more famous film. The film is, by turn, ridiculous and intriguing, some scenes seemingly having no bearing on plot and the priest’s moral and religious dilemmas being more Jeremy Kyle than a search for divine truth. Titled La Endemoniada (the cursed or the damned) in the original Spanish, the film has been released on dvd by Code Red as part of a double bill with Help Me…I’m Possessed!

Daz Lawrence

Witchcraft – Magic: An Adventure in Demonology is a 1969 spoken word album, featuring the florid tones of horror legend Vincent Price as he discusses the world of witchcraft and the occult in all forms across four sides of vinyl, clocking in at an impressive (and exhaustive) 105 minutes.

While Price would crop up as narrator on albums by Alice Cooper and Michael Jackson (Thriller) in later years, this is his magnum opus – a book length study of witchcraft, produced by Roger Karshner and released by Capitol Records. Terry d’Oberoff is credited as both composer and director, while the impressive stereo sound effects were supplied by Douglas Leedy, a pioneer of late Sixties electronic experimentalism. There is no credit for the text, though it seems likely that this too is d’Oberoff.

The LP consists of Price telling tales of witchcraft and devil worship – not fictional horror stories, but factual (well, factual-ish) accounts of historical events and aspects of the occult, helpfully split into various chapters on the sleeve – ‘Hitler and Witchcraft’, ‘Women as Witches’, ‘The World of Spirits and Demons’ and so on. Price seems to have fun with the more lurid descriptions, his voice and (most likely) tongue in cheek attitude giving a gleefully macabre and somewhat leering tone to lines like “fornication with the Devil, child sacrifice, feasts of rotting human flesh” and “the tearing of her flesh with pincers, her body broken on the wheel, her fingernails ripped off, her feet thrust into a fire, whatever horrors the twisted mind of the hangman could devise” in the two part section entitled ‘Witch Tortures’.

A surprising amount of the album actually seems to be a ‘how to’ guide to witchcraft, with handy chapters on ‘How to invoke spirits, demons, unseen forces’, ‘how to make a pact with the Devil’ and ”Curses, Spells, Charms’. “Of course you should never resort to this… except in the case of the most dire necessity” says Price of selling your soul to Satan, giving a little chuckle as he does so, before going on to give full and frank instructions nevertheless. Oh those Satanic Sixties!

Price’s narration is occasionally interspersed with Macbeth-like witches cackling away in heavily treated manner. These are possibly the most over the top moments of the album, but they work as dramatic interludes.

The music by d’Oberoff is impressively creepy and discordant, as are the sound effects, which float from speaker to speaker in the way that only records from the early days of stereo did – even Price’s voice moves from left to right and back, adding a sense of displacement to the narration.

This is not easy listening, and neither is it the most approachable of audio books. But fans of Price and anyone interested in the occult will probably enjoy it. If nothing else, it’s a curious artefact from a time when public fascination with witchcraft, Satanism and black magic was at its peak.

Originally released as a double album with accompanying booklet, the album has been issued on a CD of dubious legality and can also be found online if you look hard enough.

Review by David Flint

In cinematic terms, it wasn’t a good time to be a witch in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Between 1968 and 1972, more witches were put to death on film than at any time before or since. It truly was the Dark Ages of horror.

Of course, there had been witch-hunts on film before: Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a cheerful romp through the world of the occult dating from 1922, and features plenty of inquisitorial torture by witch finders. This notorious Swedish film caused outrage on its original release, with salacious scenes of Satanic orgies and daring nudity, and even now packs a real punch. A heady mix of documentary, surrealism and sensationalism, the film remains one of cinema’s most unique moments.

1937 saw Maid of Salem, directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Claudette Colbert. The film used the Salem witch trials as the setting for a drama that reflected Arthur Miller’s famed play The Crucible to a large degree. The Witches of Salem (confusingly retitled The Crucible in America, despite not being based on Miller’s play) appeared in 1957 from France. Director Raymond Rouleau adapted a story by Jean-Paul Satre, and the cast was headed by Simone Signoret. But it was the appearance of Matthew Hopkins – Witchfinder General (to give the film its full title) in 1968 that was to open the floodgates to a mini-boom of witchfinder films over the next few years. Michael Reeves had previously directed the Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast and the British made The Sorcerers , starring Boris Karloff. Both films were effective shockers that marked Reeves as a talent to watch. With Witchfinder General, his talent peaked. Sadly, he took an overdose – whether by accident or design -a year after making this film.

Witchfinder General

The film is loosely based on the true-life story of Matthew Hopkins (the screenplay being adapted from the historical novel by Ronald Bassett), who terrorised East Anglia during the Seventeenth century. Together with assistant John Stearne, Hopkins moves from town to town, extracting “confessions” from those accused of witchcraft, before hanging them. Woven around this real life horror is the fictional story of Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), who is part of Cromwell’s army fighting the Royalists. He is soon to marry sweetheart Sara, the niece of Father John Lowes, but whilst he is away on duty, Hopkins arrives in town, summoned by villagers who distrust the priest because of his Protestant leanings. Lowes is tortured, but allowed to live for a while after Sara seduces Hopkins. However, when Hopkins is called away on business, Stearne rapes the girl, and once Hopkins discovers this, he orders the death of the priest.

Witchfinder General

Marshall arrives at the church to discover a distraught Sara, and vows vengeance. He sets off in pursuit of Hopkins, leading to the inevitable showdown. The ending of the film is one of the most powerful moments in horror film history: After being captured by Hopkins and seeing Sara tortured, Marshall escapes and attacks Hopkins with an axe, literally hacking him to death. A Roundhead colleague (Nicky Henson) stumbles onto the scene and, horrified, shoots the witchfinder. The film ends with Marshall’s screams: “You took him from me!” Ironically, this scene was the result of a continuity error. The original script had Henson shooting both Hopkins and Marshall, but Reeves realised that previous scenes had shown Henson to only have a single flintlock pistol. A hasty rewrite brought about one of the great moments in cinema! Witchfinder General is a stunning film. Utterly nihilistic in approach, it has all the power and inevitability of a Shakespeare tragedy. Reeves’ direction is confident and flawless, making a mockery of the low budget. He makes excellent use of the English countryside, contrasting the beauty with the horror that takes place.

Of course, a film like Witchfinder General was bound to run into problems. After all, British horror in 1968 meant The Devil Rides Out, not a brutal, realistic and shockingly angry film like this. Reeves had no time for traditional horror films, as evidenced by a legendary exchange between the director and his star, Vincent Price. Price, well known for hamming it up, was instructed to play the role straight. According to legend, bristling at being told how to act by this twenty four year old director, Price complained “I’ve made eighty-seven films, what have you done?”. Reeves looked at him and replied “I’ve made three good ones.” End of argument! The British censors felt that Witchfinder General was too much to take. The whole despairing atmosphere of the film worried them, as did the effect of Paul Ferris’ haunting score, which censor John Trevelyan felt heightened the violence even further. Major cuts were made, much to the consternation of Reeves, who had stated that “violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. It should be presented as such, and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts, the better.” Trevelyan accepted Reeves’ arguments, but most of his outraged BBFC staff felt the film was exploitative and needed cutting.

Despite these cuts, the film still caused critical outrage at the seemingly unprecedented violence. In America, the film was retitled The Conqueror Worm by AIP, as a desperate attempt to milk the Vincent Price/Poe connection for all it was worth. To justify the connection, a new prologue was shot with Price reading Poe’s poem. As its reputation grew over the years, many attempts were made to restore the missing footage to Witchfinder General, but to no avail. So it was a major surprise when Redemption announced the release of a restored version in 1995. And not only does this print contain all the cut scenes, but also has some additional nude scenes that were shot by Tigon head honcho Tony Tenser for export versions of the film. This longer version is now widely available.

The film also inspired Witchfinder General, a 1980s British heavy metal doom band, who named themselves after it and courted controversy with sleazy album covers. Sadly, their music did not match the imagery used to sell it!

The success of Witchfinder General inevitably led to imitations. The best known of these was Mark of the Devil, a West German production from 1969. Like its inspiration, Mark of the Devil was directed by a young British director, Michael Armstrong, who had previously made the violent psycho film The Haunted House of Horror. Mark of the Devil tells the story of Count Cumberland (Herbert Lom), who arrives in an Austrian village to become the official witchfinder. At first, his presence seems to bring a degree of justice after the excesses of Albino (played by Reggie Nalder); however, he soon proves to be just as cruel and corrupt. Whilst powerful and well crafted, Armstrong’s film is nowhere near as good as Witchfinder General, though it does share many of its elements. The film has a strong sense of indignation and anger at what it portrays, and is certainly unflinching in its approach: American distributors rated it “V for Violence” and offered vomit bags to patrons, while the BBFC refused a certificate outright (a ban which held until recently; even now the DVD release has around thirty seconds cut). It also makes use of haunting music to contrast with the extreme violence.

Mark of the Devil

Current prints of the film all end rather abruptly. For some reason, the original ending, which featured the dead returning to life, has vanished and cannot be found (although stills exist showing what it looks like). This might not be such a bad thing: a supernatural conclusion would have damaged the story considerably, and the brutal manner in which the film now finishes is strangely in keeping with the cold tone of the movie as a whole. Mark of the Devil started life as a project by ex-matinee idol Adrian Hoven, who had written a screenplay entitled The Witch-Hunter Dr Dracula, which featured the Count as a witchfinder, and which Armstrong describes as “almost hard porn.” Hoven’s producers, Gloria Film, refused to let him direct, and Armstrong was brought in. He immediately rewrote the script (using the pseudonym Sergio Cassner), much to the anger of Hoven, who ended up with a small part in the movie and directed his own scenes after a number of shouting matches with Armstrong.

Mark of the Devil

The success of the film led to a sequel, and this time Hoven did direct. Starring Erica Blanc and Anton Diffring, the film was little more that a lurid rehash of the profitable elements from the first film (i.e. the torture of scantily clad women), without any of the intelligence of power.

Following Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil, a number of other films would deal with the “witch hunt” theme. However, these differed from their predecessors by giving the witchfinders some justification for existing: in these films, the witches were real. Tigon Films followed Witchfinder General with an unofficial sequel, Satan’s Skin (better known as The Blood on Satan’s Claw) in 1970. Director Piers Haggard follows the visual style of Reeves quite well in this effective study of corruption and evil. Popular jailbait exploitation queen Linda Hayden played the leader of a teenage cult that spreads throughout a village after a demonic skull is unearthed in a field. With some graphic gore and frank sexuality (Hayden strips to seduce a priest in his own church), the film makes a more than adequate companion piece to its more illustrious predecessor.

Blood on Satan’s Claw

The same year saw Cry of the Banshee, with Vincent Price returning as a sadistic witch-finding magistrate. A mixed affair, the film is not without effective moments, but often descends into silliness, with rather contrived orgies and clumsy attempts at shock sequences. Nevertheless, the film remains interesting throughout. Witchfinder General star Hillary Dwyer appeared in the film, adding to the feeling that these movies were all somehow inter-connected (Patrick Wymark appeared in both Witchfinder General and Satan’s Skin).

Cry of the Banshee

Jess Franco, perhaps inevitably,  made a couple of witchfinder films. The more “respectable” of the two, The Bloody Judge (1969) starred Christopher Lee as Judge Jeffreys – like Matthew Hopkins, a notorious real life witch hunter of the Seventeenth century. The film is well shot, and dwells more on the historical elements of the story than the exploitational ones. That said, there were a number of gruesome torture scenes in the German version that didn’t appear in other cuts. Lee claims that the scenes were added without his knowledge. Perhaps he would prefer the American version, retitled Night of the Blood Monster, which removed all the nudity and violence to obtain a PG rating, leaving the film little more that a worthy but dull low budget historical drama. The current UK and US DVDs are restored versions with the extra sex and violence inserted into the longer, tamer edition.

The Bloody Judge

A couple of years later, Franco returned to the theme with The Demons (1972). Here, he again uses Judge Jeffreys, but there the similarity ends. The film was a sleazy, tacky and thoroughly ludicrous slice of sexploitation sleaze, with naked women undergoing various tortures and satanic rituals. Entertaining nonsense for the broad minded, one dreads to think what Christopher Lee would make of it!

Even Hammer dabbled with the witchfinder theme. Twins of Evil was the final film in the Karnstein trilogy, and featured Peter Cushing as a puritan witchfinder who rampages across the countryside burning innocent women at the stake. When one of his twin nieces becomes a vampire, life takes a “difficult” turn for him! One of the best films to emerge from the famed studio, Twins of Evil also starred Playboy centrefolds Mary and Madeline Collinson and David Warbeck.

The best known, and still the most controversial of the witchfinder films, was Ken Russell’s The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s historical novel The Devils of Loudon. There can be few of you that haven’t seen this film, which continues to split critical opinion to this day. Russell didn’t shy away from showing excessive scenes of torture and sexual mania, and the film suffered a number of cuts at the hands of the BBFC. Some of this footage has since emerged and appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, but amazingly, Warners still refuse to restore the film to its blasphemous glory, and the recent BFI release is the cut X-rated version that first played UK cinemas.

The Devils

By 1972, this mini genre had burnt itself out (no pun intended). Witch trials still crop up now and again in films, but usually only at the opening of some supernatural tale, setting the scene for the vengeance of the witch’s spirit years later. There have been cinema and TV productions of The Crucible, and the 1985 TV film Three Sovereigns for Sarah starred Vanessa Redgrave and Kim Hunter in the story of a woman who attempts to get a witchcraft verdict against her overturned. At three hours long, this worthy but dull tale often felt like torture itself.

Three Sovereigns for Sarah

Inevitably, the only place left for the witchfinder to go after this was into comedy. As early as 1974, Monty Python and the Holy Grail included arbitrary witch hunting amongst its comedy targets, with the revelation that a witch weighs the same as a duck, and the final significant appearance of the witchfinder came in the form of Frank Findlay, who cropped up during the first series of Black Adder, playing the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, falsely accusing Rowan Atkinson of black magic! A witty spoof, it managed to show the insanity and maliciousness of the witch trials as effectively as any serious exposé.

But after this satire, it seems unlikely that the witchfinder film will make a comeback.

In 2001, the BBC showed Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, a British comedy-horror anthology series created by Graham Duff, and co-written with its star, Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge). The episode ‘Scream Satan Scream!’ directly spoofs Witchfinder General (1968) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). Witch locator Captain Tobias Slater travels the north of England accusing beautiful young women of being witches and to avoid the pyre they must sleep with him, until he runs across a real coven and Slater is cursed.  After all this TV satire it seems unlikely that serious witch finding will ever be in vogue again in cinemas.

In many ways, these films were typical of the horror movies of the time: cynical, hard, cold and dark… a far cry from the glossy shockers of today. The closest we’ve had in recent years seems to be the critically mauled Season of the Witch, with Nicolas Cage as an unlikely medieval soldier transporting a woman who may or may not be a witch to trial. It’s not very good. But with the appearance of more and more of the classic titles on video, a new generation can at least appreciate one of horrors briefest, yet most interesting periods.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

PS. Since this article was posted, in October 2013, news emerged that newly-invigorated British production company Hammer has acquired film rights to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, a 2012 novella that is based on an English witch trial from the 17th century. Simon Oakes, Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media and President & CEO of Hammer, commented on bringing this novel to the big screen:

“The Hammer imprint has really delivered some fantastic new writing and shows the vibrancy and variety of the modern day horror genre. The books under our Arrow Books deal are in themselves a fantastic extension of the Hammer brand, and Jeanette’s novella ‘The Daylight Gate’ is a fresh, exciting and compelling fictional work.”

Here’s the official synopsis for The Daylight Gate: “Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I—the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft—The Daylight Gate is best-selling writer Jeanette Winterson’s re-creation of a dark history full of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power.

This is a world where to be Catholic is a treasonable offense. A world where England’s king vows to rid his country of “witchery popery popery witchery” and condemns the High Mass and Black Mass as heresies punishable by torture, hanging, and burning.

Winterson’s literary suspense tale takes us deep into a brutal period of English history, centered on the notorious 1612 Pendle witch trials—an infection of paranoia that crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and set the scene for the Salem witch hunt.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of thirteen is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Already two stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy, respected Alice Nutter tries to defend them, haunted by her own past entanglement with magick. She doesn’t believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.”

Source: Hammer press release

Sphere horror paperbacks were published in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s. They were hugely popular and many – such as Lust for a Vampire, Blind Terror, The Ghoul, Squirm and Dawn of the Dead – were movie tie-ins and novelisations. The initial novels chosen for publication focused on the occult. Sphere published pulp fiction novels by famous authors, such as Richard Matheson, Ray Russell, Colin Wilson, Graham Masterson, Clive Barker and Robert Bloch whilst also providing a vehicle for British career writers such as Guy N. Smith and Peter Tremayne, plus many lesser known writers whose work received a boost by being part of the Sphere publishing machine. Occasionally, they also published compilations of short stories and “non-fiction” titles such as What Witches Do. In the early years, like many other opportunistic publishers, they reprinted the vintage work of writers – such as Sheridan Le Fanu – with lurid cover art.

The listing below provides a celebration of the photography and artwork used to sell horror books by one particular British publishing company. For more information about each book visit the excellent Sordid Spheres web blog.

1970

John Blackburn – Bury Him Darkly

Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury – Fever Dream

Robert Bloch – The Living Demons

Robert Bloch – Tales in a Jugular Vein

Angus Hall – Madhouse

Sheridan Le Fanu – The Best Horror Stories

Michel Parry - Countess Dracula
Sarban – The Sound of his Horn

Ray Russell – The Case Against Satan
William Seabrook – Witchcraft (non-fiction)
Kurt Singer (ed.) – The Oblong Box

Kurt Singer (ed.) – Plague of the Living Dead

Kurt Singer – (ed.) The House in the Valley
Robert Somerlott – The Inquisitor’s House

1971

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 1
Peter Haining (ed.) – The Wild Night Company
Angus Hall – The Scars of Dracula

Angus Hall – To Play the Devil – Buy on Amazon.co.uk
William Hughes – Blind Terror (Blind Terror film on Horrorpedia)

William Hughes – Lust for a Vampire (Lust for a Vampire film on Horrorpedia)
Ray Russell – Unholy Trinity
E. Spencer Shew – Hands Of The Ripper

Kurt Singer (ed) – The Day of the Dragon

David Sutton (ed.) – New Writings in the Horror and Supernatural 1

Alan Scott – Project Dracula

1972

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 2

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Clans of Darkness

Laurence Moody – What Became Of Jack And Jill?
Ronald Pearsall – The Exorcism

David Sutton (ed.) – New Writings in the Horror and Supernatural 2
Richard Tate – The Dead Travel Fast

Sam Moskowitz (ed.) – A Man Called Poe

1973

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 3
Stewart Farrar – What Witches Do: The Modern Coven Revealed (Non-Fiction)

Brian J. Frost (ed.) – Book of the Werewolf

Melissa Napier – The Haunted Woman
Daniel Farson – Jack The Ripper [non-fiction]
Raymond Rurdoff – The Dracula Archives

1974

Theodore Sturgeon – Caviar

1976

C L Moore – Shambleau
Guy N. Smith – The Ghoul

Robert Black – Legend of the Werewolf

Richard Curtis – Squirm

Ron Goulart – Vampirella 1:Bloodstalk

1977

August Derleth (ed.) – When Evil Wakes
Ron Goulart – Vampirella 2: On Alien Wings

Ron Goulart – Vampirella 3: Deadwalk

Vampirella on Horrorpedia

Ken Johnson – Blue Sunshine

Fritz Leiber - Night’s Black Agents
Robert J Myers – The Slave of Frankenstein

Robert J Myers – The Cross of Frankenstein
Jack Ramsey – The Rage

Ray Russell – Incubus
Andrew Sinclair – Cat

Colin Wilson – Black Room

1978

Ethel Blackledge – The Fire
John Christopher – The Possessors
John Christopher – The Little People
Basil Copper – Here Be Daemons

Basil Copper – The Great White Space
Giles Gordon (ed.) – A Book of Contemporary Nightmares

Peter Haining – Terror! A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines

Peter Haining (ed) – Weird Tales

Peter Haining (ed) – More Weird Tales
Peter Haining (ed) – Ancient Mysteries Reader 1
Peter Haining (ed) – Ancient Mysteries Reader 2
Richard Matheson – Shock!

Richard Matheson – Shock 2

Richard Matheson – Shock 3

Stephen Marlowe – Translation
Michael Robson – Holocaust 2000
Peter Tremayne – The Ants

Peter Tremayne – The Vengeance Of She

1979

John Clark and Robin Evans – The Experiment
William Hope Hodgson – The Night Land
Robert R. McCammon – Baal

Kirby McCauley – Frights

Kirby McCauley – Frights 2
Jack Finney – Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Graham Masterton – Charnel House

Graham Masterton – Devils of D-Day
Susan Sparrow – Dawn of the Dead

Gerald Suster – The Devil’s Maze
Peter Tremayne – The Curse of Loch Ness

1980

Les Daniels – The Black Castle
Gerald Suster – The Elect
Jere Cunningham – The Legacy
William Hope Hodgson – The House On The Borderland
Robin Squire – A Portrait Of Barbara

John Cameron – The Astrologer
Robert McCammon – Bethany’s Sin
William H. Hallahan – Keeper Of The Children

Ray Russell – The Devil’s Mirror

Roy Russell – Prince Of Darkness

1981

Basil Copper – Necropolis

M. Jay Livingstone – The Prodigy
Andrew Coburn – The Babysitter
Peter Tremayne – Zombie!

Graham Masterton – The Heirloom
Owen West [Dean R. Koontz] – The Funhouse
William Hope Hodgson – The Ghost Pirates

Graham Masterton - The Wells Of Hell
Graham Masterton – Famine
Marc Alexander – The Devil Hunter [non-fiction]
Guy Lyon Playfair – This House Is Haunted [non-fiction]
Robert R. McCammon – They Thirst

1982

Ronald Patrick – Beyond The Threshold

Peter Tremayne – The Morgow Rises

William Hope Hodgson – The Boats Of The Glen Carrig

Stephen Gallagher – Chimera
Marc Alexander – Haunted Houses You May Visit [non-fiction]
Michelle Smith & Lawrence Pazder – Michelle Remembers [non-fiction]
Dillibe Onyearma – Night Demon
Robert R. McCammon – The Night Boat

Ray Russell – Incubus

1983

James Darke – The Witches 1. The Prisoner

James Darke – The Witches 2. The Trial
James Darke – The Witches 3. The Torture

Basil Copper – Into The Silence
Les Daniels – The Silver Skull

1984

Peter Tremayne – Kiss Of The Cobra

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 1
Clive Barker - Books Of Blood 2

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 3
Graham Masterton – Tengu

George R. R. Martin – Fevre Dream
James Darke – Witches 4. The Escape

1985

Peter Tremayne – Swamp!

Peter Tremayne – Angelus!
Stephen Laws – The Ghost Train

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 4
Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 5
Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 6
Rosalind Ashe – Dark Runner
James Darke – Witches 5. The Meeting
James Darke – Witches 6. The Killing

1986

Christopher Fowler - City Jitters

James Darke – Witches 7. The Feud
James Darke – Witches 8. The Plague

Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
Graham Masterton – Night Warriors
Lisa Tuttle – A Nest Of Nightmares

1987

Peter Tremayne – Nicor!
Peter Tremayne – Trollnight

Lisa Tuttle – Gabriel

1988

Alan Ryan (ed.) – Halloween Horrors

Guy N. Smith – Fiend

Stephen Laws – Spectre
Graham Masterton – Mirror
Eric Sauter – Predators
Robert McCammon – Swan Song

1989

Stephen Laws – Wyrm
Guy N. Smith – The Camp
Guy N. Smith – Mania

Graham Masterton – The Walkers
Graham Masterton – Ritual
Bernard King – Witch Beast

The listing above and many of the cover images are reproduced from the Sordid Spheres web blog. Bar the odd addition and amendment, the list first appeared in Paperback Fanatic 3 (August 2007). For more information about each title, its author and links to reviews, visit Sordid Spheres

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The Craft is a 1996 American supernatural teen film directed by Andrew Fleming from a screenplay by himself and Peter Filardi. It stars Robin Tunney (End of Days), Fairuza Balk (The Worst Witch, The Island of Dr. Moreau), Neve Campbell (Scream and sequels), Rachel True (Embrace of the Vampire), and Skeet Ulrich (Scream). The film’s plot focuses on four teenage girls who pursue witchcraft and use it for their own gain. It was released on May 3, 1996, by Columbia Pictures.

The film, which features an alt. rock soundtrack (that includes Love Spit Love’s grunge cover of The Smiths’ “How Soon is Now”) and a score by horror regular Graeme Revell (Freddy vs. Jason, Grindhouse: Planet Terror, Riddick), became a $55 million sleeper hit at the box office. It has since gained a cult following, especially amongst goth teenage girls who identify with the lead characters.

Plot:

Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney), a troubled teenager, has just moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles with her father and stepmother. At her new Catholic school, she forms a friendship with a group of girls rumored to be witches, Bonnie (Neve Campbell), Nancy (Fairuza Balk) and Rochelle (Rachel True). At the same time, Sarah becomes attracted to the popular Chris (Skeet Ulrich). Bonnie, Nancy and Rochelle worship a powerful deity named “Manon“. Sarah exhibits supernatural powers from the onset of the film, and her new friends believe that she will complete their coven, making them all powerful. When Sarah is harassed by a vagrant with a snake (whom she had encountered before in her new house), he is immediately hit by a car to die and the girls believe that together they willed it to happen…

Reviews:

“Fleming’s film begins promisingly as a black comedy a la Heathers, but then quickly succumbs to its machinery of special effects; this is yet another bad picture in a long list of Hollywood flops about witchcraft. Still, young audiences, particularly women, are likely to connect with this energetic high-school tale about the vengeful empowerment of rebellious misfits…” Emanuel Levy, Variety

“Not only does The Craft rise to the top of the slew of teen movies made over the years, it also stands up as a queer classic. Feelings of being an outsider and defected, searching for an identity whilst trying to fit in, overcoming all the struggles along the way and establishing yourself in your own terms is something every gay person can identify with. This is not just another teen movie.” Andrew Darley, Polari Magazine

“The Craft might sound like a teenage movie, but it has a very dark, intense undertone, and a banging soundtrack … The actors are great, especially Fairuza Balk, I mean, can it get any creepier? And even though the actors were much older than the characters they were playing, it seems realistic … amazing camera work, the interesting storyline, the facts about witchcraft, and if you look at it, it basically shows you the consequences of bullying.” Simon Says… Watch This!

“From being semi-interesting about four girls who play with powers you can realise from the get-go are going to be a very bad idea, it turns into a generic mid-90s teen horror flick. As films go, it’s predictable – hanging out with the wrong crowd, the bad girls … not like you can’t see how that’s going to end, or who is going to let the power go to her head the most. Still, I was actually quite entertained.” Traxy Thornfield, The Squeee

Wikipedia | IMDb

Witches’ Tales - not to be confused with the 1950s comics of the same name – was a black-and-white horror-anthology comics magazines published by Eerie Publications, a New York-based company run by comic-book artist and 1970s magazine entrepreneur Myron Fass, between July 1969 and February 1975. New material was mixed with reprints from 1950s pre-Comics Code horror comics. Writer and artist credits seldom appeared, but included Marvel Comics penciler/inkers Dick Ayers and Chic Stone, as well as Fass himself, with brother Irving Fass and Ezra Jackson serving as art directors.

As with other Eerie Publications, such as Weird, Horror Tales, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb and Tales of Voodoo, Witches’ Tales featured grisly, lurid colour covers.

Buy The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read! book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Buy Witches’ Tales Volume 1 book from Amazon.com

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Midnight Mutants is a computer game for the Atari 7800 ProSystem, developed by Radioactive Software and published by Atari Corporation in 1990. It features a likeness of Al Lewis, dressed as Grandpa Munster, playing the role of “Grampa.” The game was one of the last releases for the Atari 7800. As with similar games of that era, Midnight Mutants features a large in-game environment with many locations, a background musical soundtrack, battles against boss enemies and an animated introduction. Despite its limited distribution, the game remains popular among Atari 7800 fans. Critical reaction has been fairly positive with praise being paid to the game’s graphics, gameplay and quirky sense of humour.

Game plot:

On Halloween night in 1992 young Jimmy Harkman’s grandfather (known as “Grampa”) has been imprisoned inside of a pumpkin by a resurrected villain named Dr. Evil, who is taking revenge for being burned at the stake as a witch by their ancestor Johnathon Harkman on Halloween night in 1747.

Jimmy then heads on a Halloween quest to free his grandfather. With Doctor Evil on the loose, Jimmy finds the countryside has become inhabited by scary creatures such as zombies and werewolves that can injure him physically and also make his blood impure. Fortunately, even though Grampa is trapped in pumpkin form, he is available to give Jimmy advice on occasion with the push of a button. Along the way, Jimmy can collect weapons and items that will help him in his quest to defeat evil creatures, giant bosses and ultimately Dr. Evil himself…

Review:

It’s a wonderful isometric adventure game that harks back to the days of the ZX Spectrum and Ultimate Play The Game. You are on a mission to rescue Grandpa himself who has been captured and trapped in a haunted mansion … The graphics throughout Midnight Mutants are fantastic and the cut scenes where Grandpa actually talks to you and gives you tips are particularly nice. The game is massive and the gameplay is very deep too, you will be wishing at times that it had a save option!” Retro Video Gamer

Wikipedia | Image sources: Moby Games

Related: Burn, Witch, Burn! (article) | The Munsters

Death Spa (aka Witch Bitch) is a 1989 American horror film directed by Michael Fischa and starring William Bumiller, Brenda Bakke, Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) and Merritt Butrick.

Death Spa was Merritt Butrick’s final film. He died of AIDS-related toxoplasmosis in March 1989. He also starred in Fright Night 2.

Plot teaser:

The new fitness club in town has everything a health nut could ever want: a variety of workout machines, classes taught by friendly (and frisky) instructors, and a state-of-the-art computer control system for maximum client comfort. Unfortunately it s also possessed by the evil spirit of the owner s dead wife, and before long every dumbbell, leg press, and rowing machine becomes a deadly weapon for her to enact bloody vengeance on the club’s beautiful members…

Buy Death Spa on Blu-ray + DVD combo from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Is the movie any good? Not really, although as an hour and a half time waster you could do much worse. I give the filmmakers high marks for trying to do something different with the horror genre even if they don’t always succeed. Then again, there’s only so much you can do with a movie about man-eating treadmills.” DVD Verdict

“You have some good kills, gratuitous nudity including a great shower scene, and that special kind of cheesy goodness that only seems to come from 80’s movies.  And even when the movie completely shifted gears on me I still had fun with it.  This is one of those wacky movies that works well as a serious slasher movie and still works when it becomes more like a Night of the Demons cheesy gore fest.” Gutmunchers

“Delivering a generous helping of both gore and female nudity (lots of beauties in this one) is only half of the battle. The other half is defeated by an overly complicated plot, poor lighting, terrible acting and ridiculously awful dialogue, which turn this into a laughable mess in no short time. ” The Bloody Pit of Horror

IMDb

WH

Witchhammer (Czech: Kladivo na čarodějnice) is a 1970 Czechoslovakian drama film directed by Otakar Vávra. It is considered Vávra’s magnum opus. The original title, Malleus Maleficarum, is also translated as Witches’ Hammer or Witchhammer.

The story of the film is based on Václav Kaplický’s book Kladivo na čarodějnice (1963), a novel about witch trials in Northern Moravia during the 1670s. The black-and-white allegorical film, full of symbols, follows the events from the beginning until the trial and execution of the priest Kryštof Lautner. Unwillingness to stop the evil in the beginning only encourages the inquisitor to graduate his accusations and use torture. The vicious circle scares everyone from resistance.

These trials started when an altar boy observed an old woman hiding the bread given out during communion. He alerted the priest who confronted the old woman. She admitted that she took the bread with the intent to give it to a cow to reenable its milk production. The priest reported the incident to the owner of the local estate who, in turn, called in an inquisitor, a judge specializing in witchcraft trials. Boblig von Edelstadt, the inquisitor, commenced an ever-escalating series of trials, eventually involving hundreds of people. In the end, 112 people were burned at the stake.

Broadly speaking, this is the filmed European version of Arthur’s Miller’s political side-swipe at McCarthyism , The Crucible, similarly all wrapped up in 17th Century witchfinder’s clothing. Derivative or not, this is powerful, often shocking stuff, so much so that the Czech authorities did not want the film to be shown in Prague because of its political connotations. It was restricted to the cinemas in small towns just outside of the capital.

A brief prologue sets the scene nicely, if not particularly subtly: “A woman’s womb is the gateway to Hell”. In a society where morality is judged by class, appearance and intelligence by those who feast so extravagantly they employ face-wipers, the lowly women of a European town are being tormented for sport. So desperate are the lowers classes for food that they re offering up their milk-free cows to the Dark One in return for a bag of peas to avoid starvation. This is cause enough for Chief Inquisitor Boblig of Edelstadt (Vladimír Šmeral), a replacement for the ex-Witchfinder, Hutter of Sumperk (if nothing else, this is a superb film for names), to come charging into the town to fight for justice, Godliness and reason. Unfortunately for the locals, this includes not a little torture.

A cut-away to a face cast in shadow informs us throughout of the moral situation, necessarily a heady mix of religious fervour and violence. The flight of witches into the town (a rare mental image provoked of a very basic idea of witchly behaviour) is not enough to provoke disgust and fear – they are “smeared in the marrow and fat of babies”. The posturing of Boblig and his ultra-religious rhetoric is surprisingly at odds with many, interestingly the Church who become concerned after initial complicity that their own are in the firing line as soon as a homeless wretch. Such is the Inquisitor’s power, no-one dare stand up to challenge his decrees.

The social divisions become yet clearly as we repeatedly see the upper classes feasting and boozing, often to the point of apparent boredom whilst the suspected witches are forced to give bizarre confessionals to acts that they are frantically making up on the spot to avoid torture.

This is sadly not the best way out of their predicament and they are forced to suffer the rack, thumbscrews and the boot, all displayed in surprisingly graphic  shots. These lead to even further horrors at completely believable trails where they are required to thank their tormentors for their judgement before being burned alive. At another courtroom exchange, one of the accused can hold back no longer: “I was made to acknowledge my guilt! I was tortured for nine days.” The Inquisitor fearing he’s rumbled responds, “That’s a lie. She was interrogated with the usual application of thumb-screws and boot”.

Ultimately it is revealed that both Boblig and the Church are as bad as each other, Boblig jealous that he can achieve happiness only by force, the bishop and the nearly respectable Deacon Lautner (Elo Romanc) alarmed that their long stranglehold on the town and their own judgements are being questioned and usurped. Clearly there is only going to be one winner.

Unsurprisingly, there are no breakout stars from the film and although it is one of the few of the celebrated director to find its way onto an American DVD, there has not really been any groundswell of reappraisal in recent years. However, this can sit comfortably alongside the likes of Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil as a disturbing account of real events, rivalling them even in the shock stakes, surprisingly graphic in its depiction of torture and also an eye-opening amount of full-frontal female nudity.

Of course, on a very serious level, the film appeared just a couple of years after the Prague Spring, a freeing of the Czech citizens from the dominant rule of the Soviet Union, a clear allegory, warning against an unchecked society. The realism of the film puts it in the upper league of witch-hunting barbarism flicks and, alas, still has a message for society today.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia