Review: The Witches (1966)

Still troubled by a nervous breakdown suffered in Africa, teacher Joan Fontaine accepts an English country village teaching position at a private school. Before long she notices strange things occurring and starts to suspect witchcraft being involved. Alec McCowen plays a priest-of-a-kind, who hires Fontaine, with Kay Walsh as his sister who helps run the school with McCowen. Leonard Rossiter plays a doctor, Duncan Lamont is a cheerful local butcher, and Michelle Dotrice one of the kids.

 

Unless Angela Lansbury or Anjelica Huston are involved, witches and witchcraft don’t tend to be my kind of thing. This 1966 effort from Hammer Studios is nonetheless well-done, though the more mysterious first half engaged me more than the unravelling in the second half. Directed by Cyril Frankel (who directed Hammer’s terrific “Never Take Sweets From a Stranger”), it’s really creepy stuff and overall quite solid though the editing is a bit crude at times. Scripted by Nigel Kneale (“Quatermass and the Pit”), you can see where it’s going and the all-too happy ending isn’t entirely to my taste, but the story is still a really interesting one. The final stages sure do get quite barmy in the best sense, and the opening scene is also a strange mixture of silly and creepy as hell that somehow works. Throughout the film there is an unnerving, creepy undercurrent, like a more low-key version of “The Wicker Man”. You certainly won’t look at a flock of sheep the same way after seeing this film. I particularly liked that the film plays mostly as a mystery and doesn’t put the witch-y stuff to the front until towards the end. The production values are typically first-rate from Hammer – production design, costuming, cinematography, props etc. All great stuff.

 

I wasn’t overly sold on Joan Fontaine here I must say. I’ve always preferred her sister Olivia De Havilland, and particularly early on I found her histrionic to the hilt. She gets a bit better after a while, but is still the weak link here. Oddly enough it was she who brought the project (an adaptation of a novel called The Devil’s Own) to Hammer as a vehicle for herself. Thankfully other members of the cast around her work, especially veterans Kay Walsh, Duncan Lamont, and a baby-voiced Michelle Dotrice. All three steal their every scene. An interesting and mostly creepily effective witchcraft horror-mystery from Hammer.

 

Rating: B-