Review: Night of the Eagle/Burn, Witch, Burn

Peter Wyngarde plays a psychology professor who lectures on superstition and belief, which is jolly convenient since he discovers his American wife Janet Blair believes in and practices witchcraft. He thinks it’s all superstitious nonsense, and asks her to burn all of her witchcraft-y nick-nacks. And that’s when shit starts to go wrong for him. Could black magic forces be trying to destroy this non-believer? Norman Bird plays Wyngarde’s superior, while Kathleen Byron and Margaret Johnston plays the wives of faculty members.

Cult item from 1961 directed by Sidney Hayers (the not-bad “Circus of Horrors”) seemed all very much ado about nothing to me. Based on a Fritz Leiber novel and scripted by the normally reliable vets Charles Beaumont (“Masque of the Red Death”, “7 Faces of Dr. Lao”) and Richard Matheson (“The Incredible Shrinking Man”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”), the Brit black magic flick is all so incredibly stuffy and…very, very uncool.

Since the film is so incredibly boring and silly, the director has to go overboard with wind, rain, storms, and bombastic music by William Alwyn (“The Magic Box”, “Swiss Family Robinson”), the latter of which at least keeps one awake. For a horror film of the 60s, it sure plays like a hammy-yet-stuffy melodrama from the 40s to me, and all of the close-ups of eyeballs don’t do a damn thing either. The cast are sadly given no help here. American actress Janet Blair in particular, is given no choice but to be hysterical at all times. She’s completely hopeless in the role, and her constant bug-eyed mugging is rather embarrassing. In fact, as much as some of the men are rather hysterical too, there’s something particularly foul about the depiction of women in this film. They’re either hardened and suspicious or completely hysterical…and suspicious. Clearly not wanting Blair to earn top scenery-chewing honours, Aussie-born Margaret Johnston has a squinty-eyed, constipated look on her face in every of her few scenes that is impossible to take seriously. Peter Wyngarde has a helluva hypnotic voice, but is so dreadfully uncool in that stuffy English way that he can’t save the film for the life of him.

Outdated, stuffy yet seriously overpitched witchcraft flick is so ridiculously overdone as to be completely eye-rolling. A lot of people seem to find it quite terrifying, but I found it kinda lousy, almost embarrassingly silly really.

Rating: C