It was quite enjoyable to see THE WITCHES again after almost 40 years. The widescreen print used for the DVD was in much better shape than the one I saw at the drive-in. I had forgotten most of it but the prologue and the delirious finale came back almost at once. I hadn’t realized that Nigel Kneale of QUATERMASS fame had written the screenplay which explains the intelligence and the subtlety on display here which I can appreciate much more now than I did in the early 1970s.
This has to be one of the most beautiful films that Hammer ever made from the beautiful location shooting to the art direction and a very effective score from Richard Rodney Bennett. A teacher (Joan Fontaine) at an African mission suffers a nervous breakdown and tries to restart her life at a quiet country school in England. Slowly she begins to believe that there are sinister goings on beneath the village’s picture postcard facade. This ultimately leads to another breakdown and the loss of her memory. There are strong overtones of Hitchcock here as well as earlier Hammer psychological thrillers like SCREAM OF FEAR. There’s even an interesting parallel to the much more famous THE WICKER MAN and ROSEMARY’S BABY, both of which came later.
Fontaine reportedly hated THE WITCHES also known as THE DEVIL’S OWN (it was her last feature film) and working for Hammer although you could never guess that by watching it. She is low key but extremely intelligent and vulnerable which is a hard combination to put across. Her clothes and hairstyle look like the Hitchcock films of the 1960s as does some of the editing. Director Cyril Frankel had already made a superior Hammer thriller (NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER) and he brings that same sense of low key tension to this film which is very effective. One of Hammer’s best unsung efforts.
The Capsule Critic 