Magic mirror on the wall, who is the most terrifying one of all?: The Witch’s Mirror

Now Playing: The Witch's Mirror (El espejo de la bruja; 1962)

Pros: Very spooky atmosphere; Effective visuals and great production value for a low budget film
Cons: The mash-up of old school witchcraft and mad science (which takes over the 2nd half of the film) may not be everyone’s cup of witch’s brew

This post is part of the 3rd Annual Spooky Classic Movies Blogathon, hosted by Kristen at Hoofers and Honeys. If you need any more last minute recommendations for your Halloween viewing, be sure to check out the blogathon entries at Kristen’s place.

In my last post (“In Praise of MMA, Part Two: Masked Mexican Athletes vs. the Monsters”), I wrote about how, in the late 1950s, actor/producer Abel Salazar started a Gothic horror trend in Mexico with his hit, The Vampire (El vampiro, 1957), which may in turn have influenced Hammer to try its luck with the genre.

While Hammer went all in on reinterpreting Universal’s classic monsters after their breakout hits The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), Salazar kept busy stocking his monster movie-verse with more vampires (The Vampire’s Coffin/El ataúd del vampiro, 1958 and The World of Vampires/El mundo de los vampiros, 1961), a cursed pianist who is turned into a monster after trading his soul for otherworldly musical talent (The Man and the Monster/El hombre y el monstruo, 1959), a 300-year-old warlock who returns as a brain-eating monster (The Brainiac/El barón del terror, 1962), and an ultra-creepy variation of the vengeful, ghostly La Llorna from Mexican folklore (The Curse of the Crying Woman/La maldición de la Llorona, 1963).

To this Mexican monster mix, The Witch’s Mirror (also produced by Salazar) adds an eclectic mix of its own, including a vengeful witch, demons (who are mostly unseen, adding to their eeriness), and a classic mad doctor hell-bent on restoring the ruined looks of his new wife, no matter the cost.

But make no mistake, the witch of The Witch’s Mirror is no garden-variety B movie sorceress. She isn't burned at the stake, and she doesn’t do anything drearily mundane like returning from the dead to inflict horrible retribution on her executioners and their descendents. Rather, she is Sara (Isabela Corona), the seemingly prim and proper housekeeper for the estate of Dr. Eduardo Ramos (Armando Calvo), and godmother to Ramos’ beautiful young wife Elena (Dina de Marco).

Sara looks to a higher, diabolical power to keep things running smoothly at the casa.

Sara takes her godmothering responsibilities very seriously, and at the beginning of the film, she is worried for Elena’s well-being. With Elena in tow, Sara turns to the main witchy tool she has at her disposal -- a magic full-length mirror through which she can communicate with the spirit world.

The mirror reveals that Elena has a rival for her husband’s affections, and that her life is in mortal danger. That evening, Eduardo poisons Elena’s bedtime glass of milk, which the troubled woman dutifully drinks. In another part of the house, Sara begs the spirits to protect her goddaughter, but she is told that nothing can be done, Elena’s fate is sealed.

With Elena conveniently dispatched, Eduardo brazenly brings his new wife Deborah (Rosita Arenas) to the manor, where Sara is playing it diabolically cool, pretending nothing is amiss. Unbeknownst to the happy couple, she is also communicating with Elena’s spirit, promising to avenge her.

As Sara looks grimly on, Eduardo and Deborah find out there’s Hell to pay (although poor Deborah seems blissfully unaware of the crime that elevated her to mistress of the house). The new bride suddenly finds herself playing a piece on the piano that she has never heard before -- to Eduardo’s great discomfort, since it was a favorite of Elena’s.

Deborah and Eduardo react to a special spirit-powered piano that plays itself.

The first half of the film is all high Gothic spookiness full of disturbing, fog-shrouded images in the occult mirror, sepulchral spirit voices (or are they demons?) talking to Sara, statues in deep shadows that seem to move, almost imperceptibly, flowers that unaccountably wilt in seconds, and pianos that play by themselves.

Just at the point where we’re wondering what other tricks the spirits have up their sleeves for the unhappy couple, The Witch’s Mirror takes a hard turn, leaving Spooky Town for the bright, garish lights of Mad Doctor-ville.

The precipitating scene is as shocking as it is surprising. Deborah, seeing Elena’s ghost in the haunted mirror, promptly faints. Eduardo, rushing into the room, also sees Elena in the mirror, and throws the oil lamp he’s carrying at the specter. The lamp smashes the mirror, but then caroms onto Deborah, setting her on fire. All the stunned Eduardo can do is bolt after his wife as she runs screaming from the room, completely ablaze. For her part, Sara impassively watches the grisly scene play out.

Elena practices being spooky in front of the mirror.

A blurb on the back of my CasaNegra Entertainment DVD copy penned by David Wilt of the Mexican Film Bulletin reads:

“Chano Urueta’s The Witch’s Mirror is an exercise in pure cinema, in which countless allusions to previous movies and a virtual catalog of special effects techniques are used to illustrate a delirious tale of witchcraft vs. mad science.”

One obvious allusion is to the French horror film Eyes Without a Face, released a couple of years earlier, which jump-started the Eurohorror trend of guilt-ridden mad surgeons trying to restore the disfigured faces of wives, girlfriends and daughters with the help of unwilling live donors. (1962 was a banner year for the theme, with Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and another Spanish horror film, Face of Terror, joining Witch’s Mirror in the face grafting frenzy. Later entries include Corruption, 1968, with Peter Cushing; The Blood Rose, 1970, from France; and Faceless, 1988, with Jess Franco returning to the theme.)

While Eduardo’s profession is only hinted at in the first part of the movie, in his extreme guilt he goes full blown mad doctor in the latter. An assistant, Gustavo (Carlos Nieto) suddenly shows up, who helps him steal bodies from the town morgue and a funeral parlor for the er, um, raw material that he needs to restore Deborah’s looks. Meanwhile, Deborah, swathed in bandages like a mummy, wanders zombie-like around the mansion, as Sara hovers.

Poor Deborah is caught in middle between her crazy husband and the malevolent housekeeper.

Before it’s all over, a prematurely buried body will be dug up (shades of Edgar Allan Poe!), the police will become involved, Eduardo will attempt to transplant new hands onto Deborah (shades of The Hands of Orlac!), and witchcraft will ultimately frustrate the designs of mad science.

The sudden thematic shift midway through not only contributes to cognitive whiplash, it reinforces the film’s surreal qualities.Viewing The Witch’s Mirror is like sleeping through one nightmare, waking up briefly, then plunging into a new nightmare, while your unconscious mind keeps the same cast of characters for economy’s sake.

The one character that you can rely on, so to speak, is Sara. She seems as old as the manor itself, and her loyalty to her goddaughter Elena is total, even after death. Eduardo is the completely amoral newcomer to the household, willing to do anything (including murdering his wife) to get his way. He is arrogant when things are going his way, superstitious and desperate when they’re not. His “science” is no match for Sara’s occult arts.

Deborah is a pitiful figure. There’s nothing to suggest that she was in on the murder plot -- instead, she appears to be an innocent tragically caught in the mortal struggle between the new world (mad science) and the old (witchcraft). After being horribly burned, Deborah is outfitted with head bandages so thick, they almost look like a paper mache fright mask. She has become a sacrificial lamb and a grotesque reminder of Eduardo’s criminality and hubris. We feel for her, but she never stood a chance.

Rosita Arenas (Deborah), was the daughter of noted Spanish actor Miguel Arenas, who helped her break into the movies. During her lengthy career, she appeared in a lot of varied movies and TV, but of most interest to readers of this blog are the horror films she was cast in starting in the late 1950s, including three Aztec mummy movies (The Aztec Mummy, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy), and The Witch’s Mirror and The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963) in association with Abel Salazar (whom she would eventually marry).

-"Tell me Rosita, how many Aztec Mummy movies did you make?"
-"Well let's see, there was The Aztec Mummy, then Curse of the Aztec Mummy, and then..."

Armando Calvo (Eduardo) was also a second generation Spanish actor who broke into the theater business at a very early age. From the mid-40s through the early ‘60s he worked steadily in the Mexican film industry, primarily in Westerns (although he did appear in The Hell of Frankenstein in 1960). Shortly after The Witch’s Mirror he returned to Spain to work in the theater, but ended up back in Mexico for good in the 1970s. The CasaNegra DVD bio states that he often portrayed characters with “a certain edge” -- as in ruthless, crooked, ethically compromised and obsessive. As Eduardo, he’s all that and more.

The Witch’s Mirror appears to be the only horror film on Isabela Corona’s (Sara) lengthy resume, consisting primarily of romances and costume dramas. At first glance, Corona doesn’t appear to have much to do in the role -- Sara is mostly a hovering, malignant presence. But she makes this singular role her own with subtle facial expressions that reflect vengeful triumph as the lives of Eduardo and Deborah come crashing down.

Perhaps the real stars of the show were the people behind the camera, who, whether it involved the supernatural or crazy mad science, created an exceedingly creepy atmosphere on a very low budget. All the action takes place on one set used many times before by other productions, but so much is going on that you don’t notice (or care about) all the little economies.

By this point in his career, director Chano Ureta knew how to get the most out of limited resources. Rear projection is employed in some of the mirror scenes, but mostly it’s live actors performing within the mirror frame that provide an effective illusion. Sara’s transformations into various creatures of the night -- an owl and a black cat -- consist of simple camera dissolves. A scene in a funeral parlor is accomplished by redressing one of the mansion corridor sets. (CasaNegra DVD commentary by Frank Coleman).

Never fear dear reader, that is not a real severed head on the table.

Jorge Stahl Jr.’s cinematography, emphasizing deep shadows and otherworldly light sources, adds an eerie gloss to the production. Gustavo César Carrión’s music hits the right somber notes without intruding. And the production design and set decoration (by Javier Torres Torija and Dario Cabañas, respectively) lend an air of mystery to the proceedings, especially in scenes where Sara, surrounded by witchy paraphernalia, is communicating with the spirits. The various statues, icons and other obscure, ominous-looking items that dress-up the witch's environs seem to have their own dark tales to tell. 

Finally, mention should be made of the film’s elaborate pre-titles sequence, in which a narrator solemnly intones on the history of witches and their evil doings against the backdrop of a series of surreal, witchcraft-themed drawings by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The sequence, which sets a morbid tone for what is to follow, was excised from the dubbed U.S. version of the film.

“To use their diabolical powers, witches resort to special potions, brooms, skeletons of children and animals, every kind of untanned hide, flasks and vessels of every shape, secret powders and dreadful poisons, and an infinite variety of lethal herbs. All this is used by an average witch. But only a superlative witch, endowed with a genuinely profound knowledge of the occult, can make use of a magical object of infinite powers and properties… the mirror!” [from the pre-titles sequence]

Fortunately, those interested in staring into The Witch’s Mirror have access to a diabolical tool: video streaming (not to mention DVD for old school occultists).

Where to find it: Streaming | DVD/Blu-ray  

Dark Shadows over Loon Lake

Now Playing: Loon Lake (2019)

Pros: Cleverly presents the legend of the Loon Lake witch in a layered way with multiple perspectives; Wisely avoids tired old jump scares for the most part.
Cons: Focuses a little too much on the witch’s 19th century backstory at the expense of present day scares.

Contemporary horror films are a bit like TV reality shows. From the comfort of your couch or theater seat, you can sit in contemptuous judgement of the boneheaded choices the characters/contestants make, secure in the knowledge that you would never be so clueless.

Over the years, the checklist of things horror movie victims should never do is almost as long as the roster of zombies, serial killers, and assorted monsters that cause such poor decision-making in the first place: Don’t go in the woods, don’t go in the basement, don’t go in the attic, etc., etc.

In a refreshing switch, the protagonist of Loon Lake, 30-something widower Louis Olsen (Nathan Wilson), breaks several horror movie commandments and still manages to make it to the final reel (I use the term “reel” metaphorically of course).

But Louis’ clumsy choices pale in comparison to the whopper that gets the whole big ball of terror rolling: his decision to get away from it all by renting a nice, quiet place in the country. As horror fans well know, this is the mother of all mistakes.

Back in 1968, Rosemary’s Baby located the Devil in a trendy mid-Manhattan condo. But since then, the “peaceful” countryside has steadily gained ground as the preferred location for all kinds of horrors. The examples are too many to list here, but you know the drill: a man/woman/couple chucks the craziness of the big city and rents/buys/camps-out-in a place in the remote countryside in order to heal from the loss of a child or spouse or try to save a floundering marriage. (And that doesn’t even include the legions of teens-who-go-in-the-woods-and-get-picked-off-one-by-one flicks, which were so cleverly lampooned by The Cabin in the Woods.)

Louis’ reason for trying to find solace in the countryside is doubly tragic -- he lost his beautiful pregnant wife in a fatal car accident. He retreats to a farmhouse located in the middle of Minnesota’s bucolic lake country, but little does he know that the place harbors its own dark secret -- one that is primed to ensnare clueless city slickers who go blundering around where they don’t belong.

The origin of the evil hanging over the area is revealed in an effective pre-titles sequence in which a group of late-nineteenth century villagers, led by a gaunt, grim pastor (David Selby), drag a screaming young woman (Kelly Erin Decker, billed as Kelly Kitko) out to an old tree stump and force her to kneel over. In a final act of defiance, she spits out a curse (and her own epitaph) at the pastor:

“Kind friend, beware as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so ye must be. Prepare yourself to follow me!”

With the pastor’s commandment “Let the Devil take his own!”, a hooded executioner brings his axe down on the poor girl’s neck, but -- in the film’s only concession to real gruesomeness -- has to take three tries before the deed is properly done.

Mary Jane loses her head after refusing to wear
Viking purple on game day.

Cut to the present, where Louis is arriving at his refuge. As he looks around the farmhouse that he’s rented, he sees a cross on the wall, which, in a bit of poignant foreshadowing, he promptly takes down and stuffs in a drawer. He doesn’t seem to have completely lost his faith, however -- later that night as he prepares for bed, he places his wife’s photo on the nightstand and gently places a necklace with a silver cross over the frame.

The next morning nosy neighbor Emery (Selby) -- the spitting image of the witch-hunting pastor (and his great-grandson, as we find out later) -- comes knocking at the door, telling Louis that he lives in the farmhouse across the field, and is always there if he needs anything. Emery tries hard to get himself invited in, but Louis is not feeling friendly and doesn’t take the bait.

Later, Louis, fishing gear in hand, climbs in his truck to go exploring the lakes in the area. He arrives at peaceful, tranquil Loon Lake, where he inadvertently makes his next big mistake. Forsaking his fishing pole for a camera, he stumbles upon a lonely old cemetery, its weathered headstones poking up amidst the tall grass. Still not realizing he’s in a horror movie, he goes in the cemetery (granted, it’s still daylight, but that turns out to be meaningless to the evil suffusing the place).

One headstone in particular catches his attention: Mary Jane Terlinden’s, whose final words before losing her head are engraved there. Ominous music swells as Louis moves back and forth over the grave, looking for a good camera shot. Suddenly, a huge loon falls out of the sky, dead as a doornail. Uh-oh.

Day 1 of Louis’ cemetery-trespassing ordeal begins. On his way back from the lake, Louis stops at a bar and strikes up a conversation with two locals. When the men hear that the newcomer was walking around the cemetery, they exchange sidelong glances.

The bar owner recounts the legend of the young witch who had been beheaded for cursing the village and causing its crops to fail. “They say she stole a baby too, killed it in some kind of ritual,” his friend sitting at the counter chimes in. “They say if you walk across her grave three times, she comes for you in the middle of the night and you die an accidental death.” You can see the wheels turning in Louis’ head as the men chatter on about locals who visited the grave and then died suddenly. “I hope you weren’t too careless when you were out there,” one of the good ol’ boys says nonchalantly as he hoists his beer. Double uh-oh!

"Witches are still out of season, but I hear the walleye fishing is great!"

With these preliminaries out of the way, the curse starts to slowly take hold of Louis’ life. When Gracie (Brittany Benjamin), a waitress at the bar, seems to take an interest in him, they ditch the bar and the good ol’ boys for dinner and drinks at another place. Gracie notices Louis’ wedding ring, and he tells her that his wife died.

Louis gets hammered, and Gracie kindly offers to drive him back to his place. On the way, she tells him she hopes the boys at the tavern didn’t spook him too much. Then she proceeds to double-down on the spookiness by relating the story of how the witch came back from the dead to confront the pastor in his own church.

Evidence that Louis is indeed cursed accumulates slowly, then builds to a crescendo as the days are marked out. At first it’s a strange rustling sound in the cornfield late at night. Then it’s a shadowy figure that flits by a window. Soon, he’s having disturbing dreams of his dead wife holding a baby and walking through rows of corn.

Weirder still, the witch herself begins to invade his dreams. The first dream is of Mary Jane’s initial confrontation with pastor. As she’s cleaning up around the church, the randy old hypocrite tries to assault her. When she rebuffs him, he gathers up his flunkies, and they string her up in an old barn to “find the Devil’s mark” on her body. It’s an interesting sequence, as if Mary Jane was trying to plead her innocence in dreamland court.

"Hey Louis, Stephen King says not to go in the corn!
Oh hell, there he goes!"

As the curse’s noose gets tighter, a rattled Louis stumbles around, violating every horror movie commandment in the book: when he sees a shadowy figure slipping into the cornfield, he goes in the cornfield; when the lights go out at the farmhouse, he goes in the basement. In a particularly effective night scene, he hears noises outside the house, and thinking it’s the teenage pranksters that his neighbor Emery warned him about, he charges outside in his bathrobe to scare them off. As he slowly backs up toward the door, the focus shifts to the background, where we see a shadowy figure watching from a second floor window.

Loon Lake wisely forsakes cheap jump scares (for the most part -- there’s one toward the end, but it comes at a point where the film needed a good old-fashioned heart-skip). It methodically rolls out a succession of uncanny events that add up to an atmosphere of simmering dread.

But Loon Lake takes detours from its own suspenseful course by having Mary Jane’s tragic backstory pop up at various points -- first through the tales told by the superstitious locals, and then, as the film progresses, in Louis’ curse-fueled fever dreams.

It’s an interesting choice. We get to know Mary Jane and Pastor Janson up close and personal and are witnesses to the birth of a spooky legend, but each sidetrack to fill in the history of the two characters subtracts some from the present-day suspense.

On the plus side, rather than being ho-hum exposition, the origin-story visions become a crazy quilt of differing perceptions. Just when we’ve decided that Mary Jane was a sweet, innocent, nature-loving victim of a tyrannical, lustful bible-thumper, we see the inverted Mary Jane as a scary witch in full possession of dark powers. And in another inverted scene, we see a much more vulnerable version of pastor Janson as he pours out his heart in an exchange with his wife (Kathyrn Leigh Scott) about the death of their son.

"I'm telling you, the walleye that got away was this long!"

The visions reflect the disordered state of Louis’ mind as he’s in danger of breaking down in the throes of guilt and dread. Opposing worlds are brought together at the climax, begging the question, just what is the truth? Is it all in Louis’ mixed-up head, or is there something more to it? In a clever plot device, Louis’ wife’s cross necklace and Mary Jane’s primitive, Druid-like necklace figure prominently.

Loon Lake is the product of a dedicated band of independent actors and filmmakers working on a next-to-nothing budget. Just five individuals -- director Ansel Faraj, cinematographer Christopher Lange, sound person David Karon, and lead actors Nathan Wilson and Kelly Erin Decker -- handled all the production duties, from location scouting to props to costumes, in addition to their primary roles. (Decker even made the dead loon models featured in a couple of scenes.)

Pastor Janson uses a bit too much lighter fluid
at the church barbecue.

The end result is far more impressive than what would normally be expected of such a bare-bones production. The digital cinematography is rich and atmospheric. According to the film’s IMDb page, director Faraj had Lange study the work of John Coquillon, who shot such cult favorites as Witchfinder General (1968), Straw Dogs (1971), and The Changeling (1980). (Faraj’s other early influences include Germany’s Dr. Mabuse films and the Dark Shadows TV show, which he watched on the Sci-Fi channel.)

Lead actor Nathan Wilson, who grew up in the Round Lake, Minnesota area where the film is set, also co-wrote and co-produced with Faraj (Decker is the third credited co-producer). In the first half of the film, his affect is so flat as the depressed widower that the character verges on being unlikable. But as the curse takes hold of Louis’ mind and he must fight for his sanity, he becomes more animated and vigorous.

Many readers of this blog will recognize David Selby as Quentin Collins, a black sheep of the Collins family and dabbler in the occult in the long-running Dark Shadows series. As pastor Janson, Selby bellows out his self-righteousness as if he’s trying to wake the dead, but then has an opportunity to portray a much more vulnerable and human side of the character opposite another Dark Shadows alum, Kathryn Leigh Scott. The downside of that scene is that it goes on a little too long, interrupting the flow of the film for the sake of fleshing out the characters.

He’s most natural and believable as the present-day great-grandson Emery, who is earnest and friendly and a bit nosy, but is there to serve as a commiserating lifesaver for Louis.

"What do you think? It's endorsed by Elizabeth Bathory
and it's supposed to do wonders for your complexion!"

Like Selby, Kelly Erin Decker walks right up to the edge of broad-brush theatricality in her performance as Mary Jane. But she is a formidable presence in her hooded period costume, and she has a great scene in the last of Louis’ nightmare visions. As he stands rooted to the spot in fear, she smears her face with blood, and then, leaning close to him, whispers in a half seductive, half sinister voice, “I can make your pain all go away…”

Also of note are the two colorful locals at the bar (Kevin Kunkel and Daryl Hrdlicka) and the waitress Gracie (Brittany Benjamin). When I was growing up, I spent many a summer in Midwest lake country very much like Round Lake, and met countless characters just like these.

With digital technology that makes the cost of shooting and editing a respectable feature film very affordable, and with ever-expanding streaming options, small-budget labors-of-love like Loon Lake have a fighting chance to find an audience. While there are more independent, low-budget streaming movies out there than you can shake a dead loon at, Loon Lake deserves a look for its atmospheric photography, subtle music score, good use of veteran and neophyte actors, and its quirky take on witchy folklore.

Where to find it: Loon Lake is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

In Memoriam: Sadly, another veteran of Dark Shadows, John Karlen, passed away on January 22, 2020 at the age of 86. John's signature role on the series was as Willie Loomis, the irascible and unscrupulous con artist who was always a pain in the side of the residents of Collinsport.

John appeared in the two feature-length Dark Shadows movies, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), and then became a reliable guest star on almost every TV show you can think of through the 1990s. Outside of Dark Shadows, his biggest recurring role was as Tyne Daley's husband on the 1980s hit show Cagney & Lacey.

Horror fans will also remember him for his appearances in two cult classics, Daughters of Darkness (1971) and the Dan Curtis-produced TV movie Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Haunted Halloween Nights, Part 2: Reason vs. Ritual

Now Playing: Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn; 1962)

Pros: Establishes a very spooky atmosphere of escalating menace.
Cons: Wraps the story up too abruptly and neatly.

Amidst all the sound and fury and scandal of American public life these days, a quiet revolution is brewing. Millennials are becoming increasingly skeptical of established institutions, especially organized religion, and are turning to alternative lifestyles and philosophies in droves.

One huge beneficiary of this sea change is the Wicca religion (or if you prefer, Pagan Witchcraft). Surveys indicate that Wicca membership has exploded from around 8,000 in 1990 to over a million today.

One of the aims of Wicca is to dispel the negative connotations that surround the word “witchcraft.” Another is to promote a better balance between humanity and nature that has been lost with the cult of technology. According to Wicca.com,

“Witchcraft in ancient history was known as ‘The Craft of the Wise’ because most who followed the path were in tune with the forces of nature, had a knowledge of Herbs and medicines, gave council and were valuable parts of the village and community as Shamanic healers and leaders. They understood that mankind is not superior to nature, the earth and its creatures but instead we are simply one of the many parts, both seen and unseen that combine to make the whole.”

I don't think this is the kind of image
the Wiccans are going for...

I think part of the appeal is that Wicca is proactive, asserting that adherents have the power to change things for the better here-and-now, as opposed to waiting for their reward in an afterlife.

Assuming the surveys are accurate, a million believers is nothing to sneeze at. If there’s anything at all to the new white witchcraft, then I say more power to them -- a better balance between soulless technocracy and life-affirming spirituality is just what the witch doctor ordered. On the other hand, people being what they are, you can be damned sure that not all practitioners are of the positive, tree-hugging type.

A long time ago in the forgotten America of the mid-twentieth century, author Fritz Leiber anticipated the rise of Wicca with his story Conjure Wife. First published in 1943 in the pulp magazine Unknown Worlds, Conjure Wife conjures up a world in which women are secret witches, manipulating daily life with spells and incantations while the clueless men putter about, thinking that they are somehow masters of their own fate.

Over the years, Conjure Wife has gained a reputation as one of the better pieces of 20th century fantasy fiction. Its theme of secret, behind-the-scenes witchcraft in contemporary society has been taken up many times, most recently in the third and current seasons of the anthology TV series American Horror Story, featuring powerful witches.

The first film adaptation, Weird Woman (1944), was part of Universal’s Inner Sanctum series, and starred Lon Chaney Jr., Anne Gwynne and perennial Universal scream queen Evelyn Ankers. Witches Brew (1980), featuring Richard Benjamin, Terri Garr and Lana Turner, apparently took the material and made it much more whimsical and light-hearted. By all accounts, Night of the Eagle is the best adaptation of the lot. Filmed in the UK, Night combines scenes of comfortable, prosaic middle-class life with a creeping atmosphere of dark, unseen menace.

Night of the Eagle features yet another champion of science and reason, psychology professor Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde). The film opens with Taylor lecturing his class on the roots of superstition. On the blackboard he has written “I do not believe” -- words that he asserts can vanquish such forces as the supernatural, witchcraft, superstition, and psychic phenomena. Taylor sees such beliefs as futile attempts to “control one’s environment and the forces of nature.”

"Excuse me professor, is this going to be on the test?"

Taylor is secure in his pompous rationality -- so much so, that even though he hasn’t been at the college long, rumor has it that he is the favorite to nab a coveted department chair position. He is young, dynamic, and life is clearly going very well for him. However, Taylor’s beautiful wife Tansy (Janet Blair) hasn’t gotten the memo, especially the part about witchcraft being “futile.”

It seems that while the couple were on sabbatical in Jamaica, Tansy had learned all about the powers of “conjure magic” from a local shaman. She senses that behind the humdrum facade of college life evil lurks, waiting to strike. She has placed all kinds of charms and talismans around the house in order to protect her oblivious husband.

When the good professor accidentally discovers the extent to which Tansy has larded the house with magical items, in a fit of self-righteous rationality he forces her to destroy them. Which is a big mistake. Suddenly, his once charmed life takes a big turn for the worse. A female student accuses him of sexual assault. Her boyfriend pulls a gun on him at his office. Worse yet, he’s no longer on the fast track to the department chair gig.

"Omigod, I forgot the bats' wings and eyes
of newt in my grocery order!"

Tansy is beside herself with dread at what her husband has inadvertently unleashed. Things go from bad to worse as elemental forces besiege their humble home with sudden windstorms and raging fire. It seems someone who also has intimate knowledge of witchcraft is willing to go to any length to prevent the couple from settling into a comfortable, successful life. And before the night is out, Tansy will offer herself as a sacrifice to stem the evil tide, and Taylor will be dragged kicking and screaming into unmitigated belief in the supernatural.

Night of the Eagle very effectively takes the primeval/gothic horror elements of witchcraft, curses and talismans and relocates them to the most pedestrian of settings, a sleepy 20th century college community. The atmosphere of menace builds slowly at first. At a bridge party that Taylor and Tansy hold for their fellow faculty members and spouses, the conversation turns to campus politics and the open department chair position. Jealousies are revealed that, rather than petty, may be quite serious.

After Taylor pigheadedly strips himself and Tansy of their protections, the dark magic assaults begin in earnest. Fittingly, the secret malefactor uses the devices of the rational, technological age -- Taylor’s phone and tape recorder, and at the climax, the college’s PA system -- to try to destroy the haughty professor.

In one very effective night scene at the Taylor house, the professor is listening to a tape recording of one of his lectures when a curious eerie trilling sound issues from the machine. Tansy realizes that it is something unnatural and evil, and switches off the recorder to Taylor’s consternation. No sooner has she dealt with recorder, than the phone rings. Panicked, she yells at her husband not to pick it up. He brushes her away and then frowns in confusion as the sound emanates even more loudly from the receiver.

"Whatever you do, DON'T ANSWER IT! It's AT&T trying
to sell us their internet and home security bundle!"

The lights go out, and at the same time something very large, making frightful sounds, seems to be right outside the front door. She just manages to pull the plug on the phone before her clueless husband can open the door onto the horror that is waiting outside. With the cessation of the eerie trilling, all the manifestations disappear.

The eldritch assault using the technology of supposed science and reason crescendos at the climax, as the auditory black magic summoning is piped over the college’s PA system. This (apparently) animates the very medieval-looking stone eagles that are placed around the grounds and the buildings. One chases the now-terrified Taylor into his classroom, where, ironically, “I do not believe” is still seen on the blackboard.

Night of the Eagle is a very well-constructed, spooky ride up to this point, but there are a couple of knocks on it. First, the shadowy evil-doer is pretty obvious from the get-go. Secondly, the villain’s comeuppance is very abrupt, and the way it comes about is too blatantly ironic. (Another possible objection, if you won’t make allowances for the era in which the film was made, is the absurdity of women with magic powers deciding to use them exclusively for the benefit of their blundering men.)

Still, it’s a very decent entry in the familiar science vs. superstition meme. Film historian William K. Everson, in his enjoyable horror film survey Classics of the Horror Film (Citadel Press, 1974), called out some of the film’s weaknesses, but also praised it for “several chilling sequences,” and especially for Janet Blair’s acting. He also hilariously used the film as a cautionary case study in reading too much into directorial decisions:

"The occasionally somewhat erratic editing was at least partially attributable to the hero’s [Peter Wyngarde’s] insistence on wearing indelicately tight trousers, forcing the director to shoot him in extreme long shot or extreme closeup much of the time! (This trivia information is recorded only to prevent future auteurists from discovering a definite pattern to the photographic style, and determining that medium shots for the wife and none for the hero are metaphors symbolizing a lack of communication between the two!)" (p. 239)

Peter Wyngarde threatens to bust out of his skinny jeans
as he runs in terror from a stone eagle.

Oh the horror, the horror!

Where to find it: If you have Amazon Prime, you can stream Night of the Eagle right now, for free.

Haunted Halloween Nights, Part 1: Science vs. Sorcery

After a lengthy hiatus, I thought it would be appropriate to revive Films From Beyond for the Halloween season. Leading up to All Hallow’s Eve, I will post on some of my favorite horror films to stream or pop into the DVD player on these cold October nights. See also the FFB Facebook page and Twitter feed for additional content.

Now Playing: Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon; 1957)

Pros: Great cinematography by Edward Scaife establishes an eerie night world; Niall MacGinnis plays the part of an urbane warlock with understated perfection.
Cons: Shots of the monster-demon inserted at the producer's insistence spoil director Jacques Tourneur’s carefully crafted atmosphere of unseen menace.

A good horror film, like a Trump tweet, subverts our sense of what’s normal, turns everyday things upside down, and takes us well out of our comfort zones. Night predominates, people and objects take on sinister aspects, and paranoia breeds in the shadows. Science and reason retreat against the powerful forces of darkness.

Scientists and intellectuals have never been treated particularly well in popular culture, but the horror genre in particular specializes in laying them low. At worst, they’re done in by their own hubris or madness. At best, they hang on by a thread, stubbornly unable to apprehend the unnatural forces that beset them.

The protagonist in Night of the Demon, psychologist John Holden (played by stolid American actor Dana Andrews) is a veritable poster boy for the hapless horror movie egghead. For all his education and knowledge, he is particularly ill-equipped for his encounters with the dark side. He keeps trying to apply reason to things that are aggressively unreasonable. In the end, he will have to learn a whole new set of rules in order to survive.

Dr. Holden has traveled to London to attend an international conference on paranormal psychology. Upon arriving, he’s distressed to learn that a colleague, Prof. Harrington (Maurice Denham), has died in a horrible accident, his body mangled beyond recognition.

Harrington had been set to expose Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), the notorious leader of a local devil-worshipping cult, at the conference. At Harrington’s funeral, Holden runs into a young woman who had ridden over on the plane with him, and learns that she is Joanna Harrington (Peggy Cummins), the professor’s niece. Joanna shares her uncle’s diary with Holden, which chronicles Prof. Harrington’s growing dread as he realizes that Karswell has cursed him, and that the cult leader’s powers seem to be very real.

Holden is troubled that Joanna and several of his academic colleagues seem to think that there is something to this supernatural business. After he discovers that Karswell has secretly passed a piece of parchment with strange writing onto him, his skepticism wavers as disturbing things start happening. The parchment seems to have a mind of its own, tearing itself out of his hands in a gust of wind to throw itself on the fireplace (the fireplace screen prevents it from being incinerated).

"It's just an old piece of paper with odd writing on it. How important could it be?"

After a surreptitious night time visit to Karswell’s estate in search of an occult book that might shed light on the mystery, Holden is pursued through the darkened woods by an uncanny, luminous cloud seemingly bent on his destruction.

Holden finally appreciates the gravity of his situation when he hypnotizes a former Karswell cult member, Rand Hobart (Brian Wilde), bringing him out of his catatonic state (interestingly, he does this before an audience of fellow psychologists). The terror-stricken man reveals that he had been marked for death by his own brother who passed him the parchment, but he had managed to pass it back -- and condemn the man to a horrible death. After finishing his bizarre tale, Hobart leaps up, runs madly about, and then kills himself by crashing through a window.

A thoroughly humbled Holden now knows what he has to do -- but can he pull it off?

On the basis of the final product, which has gained a reputation as a minor classic over the years, the choice of no-nonsense, all-American actor Dana Andrews as Dr. Holden was a good one. His sheer American-ness further establishes Holden as a stranger in a strange land, one that seems eternally shrouded in gloom and night, and where the supernatural is very much at home.

However, according to some members of the production crew, Andrews was almost as difficult to work with as Karswell’s demon. Over a decade earlier, Andrews’ career peaked with appearances in such hugely popular films as Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946; winner of 7 Oscars including Best Picture). By the mid-fifties, Andrews was struggling with alcoholism, and the A picture offers had dried up.

According to Andrews biographer Carl Rollyson, the actor's arrival in England to do the film was less than auspicious when, disembarking from the plane, he took a header down some steps. Producer Hal Chester wasn’t all that keen on Andrews in the first place, and Andrews seemed to go out of his way to confirm the lack of faith. At one point, the boozy actor punched out a performer at a local nightclub, forcing Chester to bribe the local authorities so his leading man could continue filming. (Rollyson, Carl E. Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012, pp. 252-253.)

By some accounts, producer Hal E. Chester didn’t acquit himself very well either. Rollyson quotes another cast member as saying the producer “was a nasty little bit of work… he was a very bumptious little bugger, rather full of himself.” (Ibid.)

The smoky ball of light that pursues Holden through the woods
was part of Tourneur's original vision.

Chester’s insistence that an actual monster be shown in the film has been written about many times, and is a classic example of the pragmatic, money-minded executive clashing with the cultured filmmaker wishing to protect his/her artistic vision. Without the participation of the director, Jacques Tourneur, Chester had additional shots of a puppet demon done and inserted them into the beginning and end of the film, presumably to effect a more eye-catching marketing campaign and goose ticket sales.

Tourneur and screenwriter Charles Bennett were angry with Chester over the changes, which compromised the subtler atmosphere they were trying to achieve. In Tourneur’s earlier work with producer Val Lewton (Cat People, 1942; I Walked with a Zombie, 1942; The Leopard Man, 1943), the director had masterfully translated Lewton’s less-is-more, what-you-don’t-see-can-be-scarier-than-what-you-do-see philosophy into classic screen chills. (To his credit, Andrews came to the defense of Tourneur, lambasting Chester during the production for his cheapness and later on deriding the inserted monster shots that took the finished film down a notch or two.)

The film’s saving grace turns out to be the character of the crafty and cultivated devil cult leader Julian Karswell, played by Niall MacGinnis. MacGinnis’ Karswell is the perfect complement to Andrew’s down-to-earth American skeptic. He is calm, measured and sophisticated -- and very much a believer.

In a lesser film, such a character might be played with arched eyebrows and sinister scowls. Karswell, on the other hand, is self-contained and scrupulously polite. He even seems a bit delicate and nerdish, living with his somewhat befuddled mother on a palatial country estate.

But just beneath the surface is simmering menace. At the beginning of the film, Harrington, panicked by what he has seen, begs Karswell to call off the entity that has been sicced on him. Karswell asks the professor if he still has the parchment. When Harrington responds that it was destroyed, Karswell calmly tells him that he will “do everything I can,” -- which is exactly nothing -- and sends the man back out into the night to his doom.

Karswell demonstrates his devilish playfulness yet again when Holden and Joanna visit him at his estate. They find him in clown makeup hosting a lavish Halloween party for the local children, playing the part of magnanimous country squire to the hilt. When Joanna goes off to help Karswell’s mother with the festivities and Karswell has Holden alone, he drops his pretense.

Determined to put the fear of the Devil in Holden, Karswell holds his head in his hands momentarily and then announces simply, “it’s done.” A furious windstorm suddenly swells up, sending the partygoers scrambling for cover while Holden nervously looks around in disbelief. The shot of the self-satisfied Karswell in clown-face grinning while elemental chaos swirls around him is a high point of the film.

Karswell takes the creepy clown act to the next demonic level.

MacGinnis was an extremely versatile character actor who started out doing Shakespeare at London’s Old Vic theater, then over the course of the next five decades appeared in over 75 films and TV shows. He appeared in almost every genre, from historical dramas to war films to spy thrillers to horror and science fiction. In addition to Night of the Demon, his horror/sci-fi credits include Jason and the Argonauts (1963; playing Zeus); Island of Terror (1966; with Peter Cushing), and the anthology horror film Torture Garden (1967).

Typical of most meaty villain roles, MacGinnis/Karswell gets most of Night’s good lines. In response to Holden’s dismissal of the supernatural as the product of gullible imagination, Karswell responds:

"But where does imagination end and reality begin? What is this twilight, this half world of the mind that you profess to know so much about? How can we differentiate between the powers of darkness and the powers of the mind?"

Something to think about on a cold, dark night, when your imagination is most susceptible to playing tricks on you.

Where to find it: The Sony Pictures DVD includes both the original UK 95 minute Night of the Demon, and the 82 minute U.S. release, retitled Curse of the Demon.

Night of the Living Dead Housewife

Now Playing: Season of the Witch (aka Hungry Wives; 1972)

Pros: An original “indie” psychological horror film with a different spin on the discontents of suburban middle-class life; Imaginative, disturbing dream sequences
Cons: Too talky; The hip, amoral college instructor character is too contrived; Difficult to get past the dated, god-awful ‘70s clothes, make-up and slang

Spring is finally here. Time to shake off the heavy coat of ice and snow that Old Man Winter blasted at us this year. It’s the season for renewal, and for an explosion of Mother Nature’s favorite colors. It’s the season of the birds and the bees and… witches.

These days, witches are popularly associated with the dark arts, Devil worship and Halloween, but the Vernal Equinox is a very important date on their calendar for celebrating Ostara, the Goddess of Fertility and new beginnings. (And let's face it, Christianity and its Easter celebration is a johnny-come-lately to this rebirth-renewal thing -- kind of like a loud, obnoxious guest who comes late to the party, shoves all the Pagans aside, cranks up his own playlist, drinks all the good stuff, and then takes credit for saving the party.)

"Hey, have you heard this one? A goat, a witch,
a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar..."

Darkness and evil is in the eye of the beholder. As any self-respecting witch will tell you, they’re not about casting malicious spells over bubbling cauldrons of eye of newt and bats’ wings, but rather about celebrating and tapping into the ubiquitous, renewing powers of Nature.

While the 2,000 year-old ascendent paradigm has contributed much good to the world, it has also contributed crusades, pogroms, inquisitions and burnings at the stake. In the wrong hands, it seeks to separate humanity from the bosom of nature, and pretends that Man can dominate the natural world with no consequences. And in spite of the founder’s preference for the meek, the poor and the dispossessed, modern day adherents are often hard on those groups. So it’s no wonder that the dispossessed sometimes find alternatives that give them a greater sense of control and meaning in their lives. In some areas of the world it’s Voodoo. In others, it’s Santería. In still others, including George Romero’s late 20th century suburbia of discontent, it’s witchcraft. (Yes, that George Romero -- you didn’t think he just made zombie movies did you?)

The protagonist of Romero’s Season of the Witch, Joan Mitchell (Jan White) is herself dispossessed, in spite of living the early ‘70s dream of a nice house in the suburbs complete with a hard working husband and a smart, attractive teenage daughter.

She is dispossessed of any meaningful adult existence, spending her waking hours listening to her bored housewife friends complaining about their husbands at endless bridge games and cocktail parties. At night, her subconscious lays out the bland horror of her vacuous existence in surreal dreams.

Joan and creepy lamp-boy listen as the dream guide runs
through the inventory of her vacuous existence.

In one sequence, her husband gets ready for a business trip by attaching a leash to the choke collar on her neck and coaxing her into a boarding cage like the family dog. In another, a dream guide in the form of a glib, leisure-suited friend takes her on a tour of her own house and her own middling, middle class life:

“[Checking his clipboard] Okay, Mitchell, Joan. Oh, you’ve been here before, but just for the record-- [gesturing around] dining room, kitchen… and through here the garage, sewing corner and books, all the latest… And televisions, 3 sets, in the den, in here and upstairs, with, uh, special programming designed to give you ideas… in case you should run out of ideas. And the ladies of course... [distorted, fish-eye closeups of her bridge friends dressed in hideous clothes and makeup] they’re available for luncheons, teas and bridge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…”

News of a woman in the neighborhood, Marion Hamilton (Virginia Greenwald) who is a witch and gives tarot readings piques Joan’s interest. She and friend Shirley (an older, even more disenchanted woman played by Ann Muffly) decide to get readings. In spite of (or perhaps because of) Marion’s spot-on, yet bleak assessment of her friend’s cards, “Romantic love has failed you,” Joan seems all the more intrigued.

Joan rehearses for the local community theater production
of Bell, Book and Candle.

As Joan’s own life gets bleaker (her daughter runs away and hubby starts slapping her around in frustration), and her regular visits to the mild-mannered, pipe-smoking psychiatrist don’t seem to be helping, she turns to an alternate self-help book that she discovered at Marion's place, To Be a Witch: A Primer.

Being a witch is apparently just what the (witch) doctor ordered. As she practices her incantations, she seems infused with new life. She even uses her new-found powers to compel her daughter’s insouciant hipster boyfriend Gregg (Raymond Laine), an instructor at the local college, to come to her (what the heck, daughter’s run away and hubby is gone on another extended business trip!)

But there’s a price to pay. As she gets deeper into the witchy arts with the help of mentor Marion, her surreal dreams turn even more menacing. A shadowy intruder in a grotesque over-the-head mask (an entity she’s inadvertently summoned? her own subconscious in disguise?) is stalking her nightmares. In her waking life, her newfound sense of freedom and power is taking her to the edge as she continues her affair with the amoral Gregg, whom she despises yet can’t seem to get enough of.

"Hey lady, that'll be $22.50 for the pizza. Lady?..."

It would seem that a quick-tempered husband, an immature college boy lover and dangerous supernatural powers are the prime ingredients in an infernal witch’s brew that’s bound to bubble over into a real mess, and sure enough, it does. Depending on your view, the denouement is either a tragedy or a moment of liberation (but one that comes at great cost). In a nice touch, Romero uses voice-overs of the investigating police as a kind of lamenting Greek chorus.

And the very last scene suggests that Joan won’t be the last suburban witch -- there are many more witches-in-the-making out there dying to break free of their stifling, middle-class suburban prisons.

Shot in and around Pittsburgh, PA with a cast of unknowns, Season of the Witch (originally released as Hungry Wives), was Romero’s third feature film. While superficially it’s a huge departure from his surprise hit Night of the Living Dead, the two films share an acerbic outlook on humanity and doses of black humor. Sadly, Season was plagued with production and money problems, and quickly sank into obscurity. According to Wikipedia, it’s the only film on his resume that he would like to remake.

Weaselly Gregg doesn't believe in witchcraft.

Jan White as Joan goes through much of the film with almost a blank expression on her face. But then, given the dreary monotony of her life, that seems to be the point-- you’d be a robot too under the circumstances. When she’s called upon to Act with a capital A, as in the dream intruder sequences, she’s very effective.

Effectively irritating is Raymond Laine as Gregg, the weaselly college instructor who goes from romancing the teenage daughter to the mother without the slightest twinge of conscience. He’s arrogant and self-righteous, and more than a little cliched with his ‘70s hippie “do whatever feels good” philosophy. In a scene that goes on a little too long, he plays a cruel prank on Joan’s insecure friend Shirley, passing off a homemade “doobie” of regular tobacco as the the real thing.

If there’s a real star of Season, it’s Ann Muffly as Shirley Randolph. Shirley is vain, bored, anxious, depressed, and a borderline alcoholic -- in other words, a stereotypical ‘70s housewife. But Muffly brings surprising depth to what might have been a cardboard character. Her giddiness at taking a drag on what she thinks is her first joint, then her anxiety as she convinces herself she’s getting high is so authentic it’s difficult to watch. In another scene, she cries out to Joan that she’s “not done!” -- as in not done with life, no matter what her bridge friends or her slob of a husband say. In the hands of a contemporary filmmaker, Shirley would be a one-dimensional foil for the audience to laugh at. In Romero’s and Muffly’s hands, Shirley elicits a strong there-but-for-the-grace empathy.

Shirley is a two-fisted drinker.

All this is well and good -- if you can get past the monstrously hideous early ‘70s fashions that date the film like a guy wearing horned rim glasses and a porkpie hat to a college frat party (oh wait, I forgot, the seventies are actually back in style, Earth Mother help us!) From time to time I found myself thinking, “surely people really didn’t dress like that in 1972,” ... until I remembered that I myself owned a rainbow clown shirt eerily similar to one that Gregg wears in a later scene. I had tried to forget. Oh well.

Don’t let the dated aspects deter you. The average contemporary horror fan will hate this -- it’s talky and murky and there’s no gore. But I know you my friend. You’re mature, intelligent and discriminating, and will appreciate this lost George Romero near-classic for what it is-- a solid film of psychological suspense, with some memorable moments of biting satire, black humor, and surprisingly good performances from unknown actors.

---

Where to find it:

Amazon Instant Video


"They are all hungry wives with an appetite for diversion... gambling with life and death!"