"The VVitch" (2015) d/ Robert Eggers

Ignore the tentative online reception of this whopper of wanton witchery spelled with a pair of capital V's,  as doled out by those obese oracles of ordinary genre film,  as streamed live from the backseat of mother's Prius in the parking lot of Ollie's Bargain Outlet, it would seem. Not enough arterial splatter or brain dead boobs for the retro-Freddy crowd, methinks. The authentic 17th century settler-speak as encountered in tonight's review also seems to have put a damper on the Puritanical proceedings for those with no ear for such language, a side effect of the hundred forty-four character Twitter minds who refuse to put down their smart phones and pick up a smart book, instead. No matter,  chums,  for what we have before us tonight is a hauntingly shot, brilliant horror cauldron with an intelligent script, an excellent original score provided by Mark Korven, and enough atmospheric chills and implied grue for any connoisseur of genre cinema to wrap his or her mind around. I think I'm in the market for a goat...


"We can live to the ripe old age of thirty-four here in this paradise, if God so willeth!"
After departing the Puritan colony for greener pastures, William and Catherine (Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie) laboriously struggle to plant roots with their family, nearly a day's ride away in a pasture surrounded by suspicious, dark forest. Their simple Christian homestead is instantly beset with unpleasantness when baby Samuel inexplicably disappears under Thomasin's (Anya Taylor-Joy) watchful eye during a spirited round of peekaboo. Inside a foul witch's twisted tree hovel deep in the woods, the infant boy is gleefully utilized as bloody bath and body wash for the Satanic spellcaster (Bathsheba Garnett). When William's crops fail miserably, he's forced to sell his wife's silver heirloom goblet to buy food for the impending winter months, his stubborn refusal to cop to the act only leads to further religious bickering and in-fighting between the family. Outside, young Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) insouciantly romp about with the family goat, a personable, handsome fellow named Black Phillip.


"I haven't seen a white buffalo yet, Uncle Ted!",  notes Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw).
Not content with his current list of broken promises, William takes young Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) into the woods to hunt down some dinner for the folks, only to be outsmarted by a particularly sinister-looking jackrabbit. Equipped with the layout of the forest and knowledge that the family plans to trim its number to lessen the economic strain through eavesdropped late night whispers, Caleb and Thomasin enter the ominous woods themselves, but only Thomasin returns, after a groggy Caleb,  having been split from his sibling, stumbles upon the witch's secluded flat to find a sultry seductress (Sarah Stephens) within. The young children begin relating secrets to their older sister, after having been entrusted with them, from...you guessed it, the pet goat. Accusations of Satanism begin to fly from every direction, and no family member is exempt from the weeding out process. I'll cut the synopsis short here, as the final reel is something you'll really have to see for yourselves to truly appreciate. Brilliant.


Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) uncovers a secret succulent stash of strawberry preserves.
So yeah, ignore anybody that tells you this one is anything other than a modern masterpiece... or you can just as easily take their word for it and retreat into your horror spaz/hipster comfort zone of forty dollar Andy Milligan blu-rays and  glow variant super deformed urban vinyls of Cute-thulhu, waiting eagerly for the next cookie cutter slasher reboot that Hollywood squeezes into the cinematic toilet. The choice is yours. Call me an idealist, but I'd like to think none of my tastefully cerebral Wopsploitation readers out there fall into the latter category. Five, at the most. If you subscribe to the former camp, on the other hand, congratulations, you've just seen one of the best movies of the year, and arguably one of the best of the last decade. Naturally, a perfect score of Four Wops and my highest recommendation are bestowed upon it. I can hardly wait to sit down and watch the infernal beast again. Obviously, loved it!


"Pssst, youse guys heard of mah cuzzin...Black Francis?"

"Il gatto nero" (1989) d/ Luigi Cozzi

While we Italian genre maniacs were all waiting patiently for the final installment of Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy at the tail end of the eighties, director Luigi Cozzi,  of Starcrash (1978) and Contamination (1980) fame,  went ahead and delivered his own take on the witchy goings on,  in the form of tonight's review, with splashes of colored light, a pinch of gore, and obligatory rubbery sorceress action courtesy of Rosario Prestopino. The film, alternately known as Demons 6: De Profundis, showcases the familiar genre faces of Urbano Barberini, Florence Guerin, director Michele Soavi in a brief cameo, and of course, Caroline Munro. Wouldn't be a proper Cozzi film without her, and in this particular case, lots of her.


"Stress lines, cover wear, staining...and you call this copy VG/FN??"
We meet a rising actress and new mother named Anne (Florence Guerin) as she's working on a formulaic horror film based on Poe's The Black Cat for a hack director named Carl (Michele Soavi...yeah, right!) while her husband Marc (Urbano Barberini) jockeys to get his next project funded. With the upcoming film's subject matter concerning the third, and most horrible of the Mothers of Sorrow, as imagined by author Thomas De Quincey, and Marc even name dropping Dario Argento along the way, is it any wonder that such a blasphemous production would awaken a witch named Levana, with copyright infringement, possession, and bloody witchcraft-based death in mind. The rubbery resurrected spellcaster takes her would be cinematic namesake's role research personally, infiltrating her dreams with space footage borrowed from Cozzi's Hercules movies,  repeatedly visiting from inside her mirror, Exorcist-style projectile vomiting, and even haunting the poor girl's refrigerator and creating refrigerator repairmen mirages, along the way. Just stay outta the veggie crisper, Levana, come on now.


She's Lump, she's Lump, she's Lump. She's got a rubbery head.
Of course, the film's producer, is an invalid named Leonard Levin (Brett Halsey) who may or may not be in secret cahoots with Levana,  having that cleverly homonymous last name and all, and Anne's actress/gal pal and girlfriend to Marc's scriptwriter,  the ever-mugging Nora (Caroline Munro)'s sun-scorched leathery skin is too similar in texture to Levana's latex black magic acne problem for her own good, methinks. Oh yeah, people get murdered along the way, there's a close up neck ventilation, a slow motion exploding midsection that will more than remind some of you of Cozzi's earlier Alien (1979) rip-off, Contamination (1980), and a television screen that vomits entrails and soupy goop in a similar fashion to that famous Cronenberg 1981 floor model. Levana kidnaps Anna's newborn, with designs on sacrificing her, naturally, but Anna allies herself with the spirit of a fairy, and that can only mean one thing: it's time for a lackluster, low budgeted, laser effect-packed "what the fuck just happened?" finale. Roll credits.


When Celiac sufferers eat pizza made with high gluten flour, this is often the tragic result.
Whether you consider this one Demons 6, Suspiria 3, or The Black Cat (I don't really consider it a true sequel to anything, really, more of an ultra cheap spin off), depends on what characteristic rises to the surface from Cozzi's cloudy soup of genre elements for you, I guess. If it's poxy eighties hair metal, nonsensical gore, and Urbano Barberini, then you'd roll with Demons 6. If the colored filters, cues lifted from Goblin's Suspiria score, and direct references to the Argento film stand out, you'd probably call it Suspiria 3. There's barely anything Black Cat-ish to speak of, here, though Fulci allegedly expressed some desire in taking the chair on the movie, despite having already covered all things ebony feline himself, some eight years earlier. You see where I'm going with this, don't you? On the scale, Il gatto's much too incoherent and balls up to merit anything more than a single Wop, though you completists and trash lovers might want to hunt down the Japanese VHS, which may very well still be the only legitimate release of the film to date, just the same.
 

Cheap laser visual effects. Nothing embodies the powers of eighties-style witchery like them.

"Craze" (1974) d/Freddie Francis

Hearing  Jack Palance repeatedly say "Chuku", the name of the African idol he worships and murders for in tonight's review, in his inimitable breathy Anthracite coal country whisper through nicotine-stained teeth, is probably reason enough to give this, director Freddie Francis' second 1974 effort (the other being a comedy called Son of Dracula, with Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr), a viddy, for any fans of the late actor's work. For those that do seek out this groovy British tale of witchery and human sacrifice, there's a mixed bag of actresses/victims that ranges from Miss Nroway 1962, Julie Ege and Italian genre favorite, Suzy Kendall, to former British sex symbol and femme fatale, Diana Dors, as well as cameos from Trevor Howard and Hugh Griffith. There's also a wooden fork-holdin' bruh in the basement you're gonna wanna check out for yourselves...


"After you finish your zany interpretive nude dance for Chuku, we could go out...for pierogies..."
Neal Mottram (Jack Palance) runs a quaint little curio shop in London, with the help of his young protege', a former rent boy,  named Ronnie (Martin Potter). He's also the head of a groovy coven of witches who worship a wooden statue of an African god named Chuku in the shop's basement. When an ousted spellcaster shows up claiming ownership of the idol, Neal goes loud and aggro, shoving her onto the large sharpened fork the yellow-eyed statue holds. After dumping the corpse in a nearby river, he finds a hidden drawer full of gold coins in an old desk he's about to sell off, and naturally attributes the sudden good fortune to Chuku and his impromptu sacrifice to the wooden brother. He burns a bit of sacrificial crumpet (Julie Ege) that he picks up in a club,  in the furnace downstairs,  after she refuses to dance for Chuku, and sells a pair of Ming vases he previously couldn't give away, prompting more weird alone time in front of the statue. Empowered with the belief that the god is protecting him and making him wealthy, he concocts an elaborate alibi involving broken down vehicles, drugging an old flame named Dolly (Diana Dors), throwing on tennis sneakers, and tube hopping, all to provide his idol with another sacrifice, this time, his elderly aunt, who he stakes in the neck in her front lawn after scaring the shit out of her with a rubber Halloween mask.


"Nevahmind dese boolshit-ass sacrifices...put some honey barbecued pig ribs on dis fork heah!"
With the Bill convinced that the antiques dealer is the main suspect in the growing list of ritualistic murders, but unable to make the collar, due to Neal's attention to intricate detail, the detectives lean on Dolly and Ronnie for information, resorting to gay bashing the young associate, who descends into a mire of double scotches at the pub while being tailed. Meanwhile, Neal's set up another sacrifice to Chuku (take a dramatic pause...then whisper along...Chuku) in the form of a call girl named Sally (Suzy Kendall), who he pays twenty quid to choke the fuck out. With the cops closing in, Ronnie tries to take an axe to the idol, earning himself a bloody grill from a furious Neal, who promptly lifts him over his head and chucks him out the shop window in broad daylight (!). If you thought Palance was unhinged before, wait 'til you catch him in the film's finale, spinning around like an axe-wielding top, screaming at the top of his lungs at oncoming policemen, before finally offering Chuku (...Chuku...) one last sacrifice. Roll 'em...


Off to Bedfordshire wiv 'yer: "I choke you for Chuku...he's cuckoo for cheeky muff..."
Francis would follow this one up with things like 1975's Legend of the Werewolf and The Ghoul, while Kendall appeared in such genre fare of the day as Psycho-Circus (1966), The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), Torso (1973),  and Spasmo (1974), among others. Venicia Day was an actress whose roles ascended from "2nd African girl", to "2nd Black girl", to "African Girl", to "Dancer",  here. Former Bond girl Ege would also appear in Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and The Mutations,  the same year. Diana Dors had to be one of the most beautiful blondes of the 40's and early 50's in my estimation, but she'd come a long way from that era by the time of this movie. Still always great to see. Craze is packed with Palance, pretty girls, painful seventies gear, and bright red stage blood and makes for a pretty good time if you're into it. Three wops.


"I couldn't find your... ribs... a slab of Ukranian ham, seasoned in Lattimer Mines...will have to do..."

"Los Ritos Sexuales del Diablo" (1982) d/ José Ramón Larraz

Next, we'll look at Los Ritos Sexuales del Diablo, a 1982 offering to the dark lord and master from Spanish sleazemeister Jose Ramon Larraz, the director responsible for famous fiend fodder like Vampyres (1974) and Symptoms (1974),  and later, things like 1987's Rest in Pieces and Edge of the Axe (1988), under his favorite pseudonym, Joseph Braunstein. Like much of his body of work, tonight's review, also known as Black Candles, is packed to the gills with deviate sex and nudity, and though this is a relatively bloodless effort for him, save for one wince-worthy on screen demise that we'll touch upon later,  the sex is degenerate and vulgar enough to make your skin crawl at certain points, if that's the type of thing you groove on, and this is coming from a guy who's nothing to sneeze at,  himself, in the sackmaster sweepstakes. Let's get on with the review while I get the ol' ego under control (with a whip and chair) over here...


"Pins and needles, needles and pins, have yourself a heart attack while you're hitting the skins (you bastard.)!"
After seeing a poor balding bastard's ticker conk out during a mid-day romp with a sexy young finger licking witch, due to a mysterious pair of hands wielding a sizable pin and voodoo doll over some titular black candles elsewhere, we're introduced to the dead fuck's sensuous sister, Carol (Vanessa Hidalgo), who's smoking body and attention to detail of the garter belts and silk stockings variety bring me great pleasure, and who's husband Robert (Mauro Rivera) looks like the result of gene splicing experiments involving Greg Brady and 70's porn dick Jamie Gillis, as they arrive at her brother's cottage in a secluded corner of England as guests of her mysterious sister-in-law Fiona (Helga Line), who happens to dig black candles and framed prints with sinister subject matter, and also,  peep tomming their constant fuck sessions through a concealed hole in the wall behind a painting, and also, Satan. The other locals all seem to think ol' Scratch is swell, too, as evidenced during a black rite in a barn involving the aforementioned finger licker and a goat. Scratch that one off of my bucket list of things to see. Oh, and before I forget, Carol and her late brother were ankles behind the ears kinda close, to add to the "Did I just see what I just saw?" vibe going on at this pad.


"Just give me another minute in here, I'm pinching off another Phish album!"
It doesn't take long for middle-aged Fiona to sock it to Robert, who's only too happy to spread it around in the family, and he's soon participating in her coven's black magic orgies, where you'll see a tubby out-of-favor Satanist receive punishment in the form of a sword up the ol' wah-zoo. One of the hired help/Satanists/goat wranglers heists a gaudy necklace out of Carol's effects and she's soon the subject of the circle's sex magicks herself, as conducted by a creepy guy with a cocaine pinky claw and a priest suit. The new Satanic Robert fancies some fartbox action from his unwilling wife, who pairs up with several of the witches for lesbian loving in the name of Lucifer, who, though he never shows up here, has to be impressed with the effort. In the end, we see the couple arriving at Fiona's under the exact same circumstances. All merely a dream...or was it? Only Larraz (and Lenzi, perhaps) knows for sure.


"I'm gonna stay over here tonight, baby, if it's all the same to you, your busy wallpaper has spoiled my boner."
You'll remember Helga Line from her genre work in titles like Horror Express (1972), My Dear Killer (1972), and Exorcism's Daughter (1971) opposite Paul Naschy. Hidalgo appeared with Lilli Carati in Italian comedy,  C'e' un fantasma nel mio letto (1981). Though the effective, throbbing soundtrack is credited to Cam,  I swear I can hear elements of Marcello Giombini's work in Gariazzo's L'ossessa (1974) throughout the damned thing. I swear I can. This one's heavy on filth and flesh, and though I wasn't always entertained by Larraz's disturbing images, the outrageous dialog and lovely actresses assets on display kept me engaged right up until the end credits. If you're as twisted as I am, you'll enjoy it, too, though I wouldn't advise those sensitive or easily offended readers/viewers to seek out a copy, because you probably wont enjoy it in the least. Two wops. Approach with caution.


"Oh Billy, when it comes to Satanic hay rolls, you're simply the G.O.A.T.!"

"Death Shock" (1981) d/ Steve Perry, Frank Thring

A quick glance at the VHS box for tonight's review might lead one to believe they're getting vintage 80's zero budget S.O.V. slasher fare, and though, they wouldn't be entirely wrong to entertain such a notion, as there is a bit of that going on here (roughly ten minutes worth against the hasty forty-seven minute running time),  the vast majority consists of floppy British bangers of all sizes, arses, hairy fannies, and simulated sex scenes that come pretty close to hardcore in certain instances.


"It's nine'een-bloody-eighty-one, darlin'. Let me trim down that bush for yer."
So this bicycling bird hears some piped in chanting as she pauses her ride for some cheeky upskirt shot opportunities whilst climbing over a wooden fence, and when she investigates further, she stumbles upon some nude blokes in the woods 'aving one of those sacrificial ceremonies of sorts. Escape plans are for naught, as she's fetched and sacrificed in the nude herself, leading us into a freeze-frame title shot, like we've come to expect out of things like this. We're then introduced to three couples, one of which is a pair of topless lesbo-sunbathers, the other two of the traditional guy-girl variety, as they enjoy some midday balls-out sinning, completely nude, mind you, and inside and up against their motor, under a shady tree in the meadow. Just loverly.


Lovely weather for a naked group shag up against the motor,  out in the open,  in broad daylight, innit?
When their petrol pump quits, they're rescued by a vicar (one of the film's directors) who drives them to the nearby home of  the aptly-named Mr. Blackley, who likes to oil up his housekeeper's tits while she's tied nude to a support,  in the name of Satan, and squeeze them, continually. Meanwhile, the couples are off having a shag, though the lesbians' tryst is interrupted when the virge of the pair is scared off by a sizable dildo that her partner keeps trying to shove up her against her wishes. The jilted lover joins one of the hetero couples for a three-way, and then the housekeeper joins in on a foursome, while the virgin is forcibly strapped to an altar, as her tits are oiled up, naturally, and then she's sacrificed to Satan, while all of her friends get it on, oblivious to her fate. The next morning, they all leave together, after breakfast, unaware that their former virginal travelling partner is now the Devil. Pt two is promised during the equally minimalist end titles.


" 'Ere you are, Luv...chalice full of ceremonial banger-oil. Satan likes a bit of crumpet now and again, he does."
Linzi Drew shows up here, in her first go at acting (insert snickers here) as the busty housekeeper. You'll remember her (or not) as the busty porn star in the "See You Next Wednesday" sequence in An American Werewolf in London (1981). Her pillowy boobs would score her roles in everything from Aria (1987), to Ken Russell's Lair of the White Worm (1988), and even Jodorowsky's Rainbow Thief (1990). Bet you never imagined Russell and Jodorowsky getting mentioned in a review like this, eh? Overall, there's not enough gore or sex to please fans of either here, really, and why else would anyone have ever rented or bought something like this in the first place? Mostly a drag. One wop.


Witchcraft-hooligan chant: Get yer tits out, get yer tits out, get yer tits out for the dark lord n' mastah!(clap-clap-clap)

"Blueblood" (1973) d/ Andrew Sinclair

The first time I saw Ollie Reed, in Ken Russell's Tommy (1975), I didn't like him. Looking back, it was probably his greasy Teddy Boy haircut combined with his awful singing in the movie that put me off, but over time, I earned great respect for the man's approach to acting, partying, and life, in general. Tonight's review, a gothic tale of witchcraft and horror set in extravagant Longleat House, country seat of the Marquis of Bath (who co-wrote the often clever script),  is a great example of Reed, from frivolous to sinister in record time and back again, all the while affecting an accent that is as hilarious as it is unintelligible. Sharing the lens with Ollie are the likes of Emperor Cl-Cl-Claudius himself, Sir Derek Jacobi, the ever-scrumptious Fiona Lewis, and Anna Gael (who's also the wife of the aforementioned Marquis).


"Aristocrat or not, I've a lot of balls for wearing a coat like this."
Beate (Meg Wynn Owen) is a frumpy, traditional German nanny, the latest to be employed by foppishly decadent aristocrat, Gregory (Derek Jacobi), whose predatory wife, Lily (Fiona Lewis), is often elsewhere on singing gigs, and whose looming butler, Tom (Oliver Reed), is a subject of growing unease and mistrust for the new nanny. Her two young charges being the result of Gregory's efforts to provide a male heir to inherit the sprawling estate, with a private section cordoned off for the family, and a public one that includes a drive thru wildlife park(!) for the constant influx of gawking tourists, Beate soon finds her dreams have gone all witchy with a red tint, and Tom as centerpiece, decked out in red cloth, dramatically palming a sacrificial dagger, and so on.


"Lighten up, Ilsa. 'Ave a bang of this Moony Kush."
The nanny finds that her cautionary chat with her employer is for naught, as he's no more concerned with his children's welfare than he is with his own deviant perversions or growing dependence upon his equally deviant manservant, who has taken control of the estate and all within it through his late night, red-colored voodoo. While Gregory carelessly parties away upstairs with a gaggle of upper-class twits, Tom follows suit with the staff, drinking booze and blowing jibbers, doing pretty much whatever (and whoever) he bloody well pleases, even slapping a stifling headlock on his fey boss in front of his mistress (Anna Gael) with no repercussions to fear. It all ends badly for the spineless aristocrats, as the male heir eats a sacrificial shiv and Gregory is no less deceased himself, and all with Tom gloating over the spoils, with an obedient Lily by his side.


'Cor, Fioner. You're giving me a...great deal of pleasure while admiring this screen cap.
The film sat for two years before opening to few theaters and fewer positive reviews in 1975, but that's not a deserving epitaph for such a movie, I think. If you're a fan of Reed and Jacobi, both of whom are excellent here, or just enjoy well-crafted British horror, and you haven't caught this one yet, do so immediately. Novelist/Director Sinclair, who also wrote an episode of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, aptly blends elements of anxiety and comedy into an entertaining visual romp full of sex, blood, drugs, and magic; all the necessary ingredients to earn this particular witches brew an impressive score of three Wops on the rating scale. Recommended.


"I'll only take a ceremonial dagger-stirred Bloody Mary, y'know..."

"Stranger in Our House"(1978) d/ Wes Craven

On Halloween night back in 1978, a nine year old you-know-who was faced with two seasonal telly options after having exhausted his trick or treat/ neighborhood vandalism options for the evening. CBS offered up Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, and a Satanic puppy in Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, while over at NBC came the debut of tonight's feature; a made-for-tv adaption of a Lois Duncan novel called Summer of Fear directed by Wes Craven {fresh off the cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes (1977)}, that stars a curvalicious Linda Blair (who looks to have tried to balance out her bountiful bobblers with some seriously Brobdingnagian hair for this one), fresh off of some serious coke charges, and the lovely Lee Purcell, who you might recall from things like Mr. Majestyk (1974) and Valley Girl (1983). In the end, it's Purcell who'll stick with you here...


"Only Deep Purple understands me!" pouts Rachael (Linda Blair).
Life is awkward-looking horse rides, boyfriends, and clothes shopping for teenage Rachael Bryant (Blair), until her distant cousin, Julia (Purcell) comes to stay with her family, after a mysterious car crash at the outset leaves her sans folks. Soon, Rachael's roses are all showing their thorns, as her father, brother (Jeff East), and even boyfriend all instantly turn pheromone-induced sycophant at the sight of Julia, who's been leaving matches on her cousin's nightstand, spilling red paint on her bikini shots, and keeping graven wax images of her horse, Buttercup, who doesn't happen to like Julia one bit, Wilbur. No siree. After Rach breaks out in hives just before the big dance, she's forced to send Mike (Jeff McCracken) with Julia, decked in the pink number she'd crafted for herself and looking better in it, instead.


"Whattaya mean, my face is super freakiiiiiing out, Rick?"
By the time Rachael's grill clears up, it's already too late. Mike and Jules are an item, and Pop(Jeremy Slate) is also enchanted by the young woman's ample charms, himself, too much so, in fact, to do much about his daughter's equestrian accident that sees Buttercup prepped for an Alpo can with a bullet. And when resident witchcraft expert, Professor Jarvis (Macdonald Carey) is suddenly struck gravely ill, Rach's suspicions grow into a full-scale Nancy Drew-with-34C's style investigation, after spirited pouty whining for half the film's run time doesn't seem to get her anywhere. It soon becomes apparent that the Ozark Jezebel has set her homicidal sights on Rachael's mom (Carol Lawrence), which leads to the inevitable cat fight we'd all been waiting for, followed by a typical seventies made-for-tv twist ending that you probably could have laid money on, five minutes in.


"Me? Oh, I was just burning some Exorcist II: The Heretic reviews for you, honey..."
In those dark pre-technological days before video cassette recorders and Tivo, when a guy couldn't have his cake and bite at it, too, I remember choosing Crenna and his Devil Dog over tonight's witchery, as did most others, according to the Nielsen's, though if I could step through some portal into the past and do it all over again, I'd probably go with Stranger, instead. Ms. Blair's always been one of my favorites, and she's appropriately cute-as-a-button, as usual,  but she's so over-the-top whiny about it all here, you'd have to be certifiable to not be plugging for Purcell's comely witch to prevail. On the scale, this Stranger earns a pair of Wops, an average score that director Craven is no stranger to, his fourth thus far here. Obviously, still worth a look or two.


Have you been spleefing off the Hippie Crippler again, Julia (Lee Purcell)?

"Virgin Witch" (1971) d/ Ray Austin

Tonight we examine another genre pic from Tigon Studios, a dated little witchcraft-fueled number that stars Ann and Vicki Michelle, and whose title promises all sorts of sordidly fleshy goodness in the name of the supernatural arts, but mostly ineffectual as anything but a showcase for the sisters' bodies, whether packed tightly into ultra-mini skirts or traipsing around, Air Supply-style, in absolutely nothing at all. Needless to say, this is a pretty light viewing experience; the only tension present here being the upper middle class prudish aversion to lesbianism ( "She fancies BIRDS!!"), which plays pretty strangely against the permissive seventies backdrop and the sexually open paganism within.
  

"Oh I dunno, somefink 'bout sprawlin' atop a Citroen gets me randy..."
After much maniacal cackling and flames, ominous loungey-sounding jazz, and bare bobblers, we see Betty and Christine (Vicki and Ann Michelle) catching a lift in Johnny's (Keith Buckley) Mustang to London, where they squabble over men, window shop, and get goosed in the street while trying to score decent modeling gigs, until Christine picks up the latest ish of Nova (the haute couture fashion mag, not the highbrow Carl Sagan scientificky business on PBS, you donkeys) and sets up an interview with Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines), a haughty lesbian who takes her nude measurements, personally. Sybil drives the sisters to a country estate for what looks like a weekend photo shoot on the surface, then gives Christine a tour of the place, pointing out several historic witchy sites, in the process. I'm sure it's just quaint local history, and not virginal sacrifices or indoctrination into a coven of modern witches, or anything like that, darlin'. She assures her new sour-pussed employer that she's a career girl, and that there isn't a man living who could divert her focus, also finding the supernatural to be a fascinating subject. Peter (James Chase), the photographer who's allergic to shirt buttons, snaps some phoned-in nudes of Christine around the estate, while Betty discovers a curiously decorated chamber with devil masks and daggers in the basement, is spooked by an upper-class twit with a rifle, and spied upon in the tub by Dr. Amberley (Neil Hallett).
.

"Maybe you left your rubber johnnies with your shirt buttons..."
Amberley comes clean over a splendidly marvelous dinner with candles and wine(just like Christmas!), that he is, indeed, a witch, but of the good, suburban seventies white swinger variety, using his powers of witchery for friendship and giving pleasure, and other such rot. He tells a receptive Ann she was born to be a witch, and warns Sybil to keep her black magic out of his coven. Meanwhile back in London, Johnny investigates Betty's whereabouts while the aptly named lounge singer that he's been linked to, Abby Darke (Helen Downing), belts out a melancholy tune. Then there's a groovy oiled-up naked bit where everybody strips out of their ceremonial terrycloth numbers and sways back and forth while the old warlock ferrets up in the witch-to-be's privates, all ceremonial-like, innit? Sybil pitches a sapphic alliance with the new spellcaster while Amberley volunteers himself as her tutor-in-hocus pocus, but Christine's more interested in the power of the black arts. Johnny makes the scene and outs Sybil as a "bird fancier" to Betty, while Christine sets fire to an 8" x 10" of the current high priestess out in the woods with her mind, giving her quite a migraine, indeed. The action climaxes in Betty's witch initiation, with orgiastic cultists reduced to animals writhing in the grass, while Christine influences Sybil to a sayonara swan dive from the roof. Who's coven? Christiiiiine's coven, bitches...


"This new Englebert Humperdinck long player really sends me!"
Ann Michelle would go on to appear in things like The Death Wheelers(1973) and House of Whipcord(1974), while Vicki, who doesn't seem to have taken very many positives away from her experience on the set of tonight's review, would appear in Queen Kong(1976) before a long, memorable run on BBC's 'Allo 'Allo, among others. Keith Buckley,  you'll no doubt recall as Uryens in Boorman's Excalibur(1981)...ahem. Or maybe not. Austin would helm the South African House of the Living Dead(1974) before returning to the small screen. The initial shock of the film's gratuitous levels of nudity wears off after roughly ten minutes, and little else remains to keep the viewer's attention afterwards. Still, the Michelle's (Vicki more than Ann, for this guy, personally), nude or otherwise, aren't the most awful thing you could spend an hour and a half ogling like a flesh-mad pervert. For them, and the groovy magic ceremonies, Virgin gets it's cherry Wopped, twice over. Worth a look.


The dark lord and master requests a private, nude, interpretive frug over by the sofa, darlin'.

"Curse of the Crimson Altar" (1968) d/Vernon Sewell

Despite bearing little resemblance to H.P. Lovecraft's short story 'Dreams in the Witch House', which tonight's review is supposed to be based upon (though I find it more similar stylistically and in tone, to 1970's film version of Dunwich Horror, which combined trippy psychedelic visuals of the day with indescribable horrors in the same fashion), this seldom seen late gothic effort from Tigon Studios full of witchery and human sacrifice proves lively and entertaining enough to satsify even the most jaded genre die-hard in the end. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a cast headed by the likes of Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, and Boris Karloff in front of your lens, either, as this one can boast.


"Isn't anyone going to paint psychedelic flowers on my belly, too?"
We meet an antiques dealer named Robert Manning (Mark Eden) as he departs for his hometown of Greymarsh, where it seems his brother Peter has vanished, though the audience sees him signing into a witchcraft circle upon the uber-repetitive hard sell of a sultry green witch named Lavinia (Steele), ritual-shanking a sacrificial chick, then getting branded by a muscle creep in a leather loincloth and matching antlers (!) before his cinematic sibling even realizes he's gone missing. On route to Craxted Lodge, Manning interrupts some young sophisticates as they hunt down a bit of strumpet in a cat suit through the woods. These groovy kids and their exotic kicks...Upon arrival, he crashes something of a high brow hallucino-orgy before finally meeting Morley (Lee) to inquire about his brother, remarking that the lodge's ambience leads him to expect Boris Karloff to pop up any minute. He's then introduced to the invalid Professor Marshe (Karloff, ha-ha.), the area's foremost authority of witchcraft and the occultish arts, who likes neither his attitude nor his limited appreciation for fine brandy. Despite the spooky vibes he's catching, Manning agrees to stay at the lodge while he scrutinizes his brother's whereabouts, and Morley's attractive young niece, Eve (Virginia Wetherell), while he's at it.


"Konga!! Put me down, Konga! Dreadfully sorry, old chap, wrong movie..."
Thanks to the meddling of Morley's half-witted manservant, Elder (Gough), Manning begins to uncover the mystery behind Peter's disappearance, and it's connections to the town's current festival commemorating the stake-burning of the lodge owner's green-hued ancestor for witchcraft. Fancy that. He begins having vivid dreams of said ancestor goading him to sign something, then dagger-shivving him when he refuses, with his missing brother and some en-masked cultists in attendance. Before anyone can point the accusatory finger at the chatty green bird, we find out her spirit is being invoked through a zany kalaideoscopic lamp, and that Manning stands as the last descendant of those who sentenced Lavinia to death, and what's more, neither Eve nor the wheelchair-bound Marshe is aligned with the lanky mustachioed warlock looking to even the ancient score. In the end, the lodge burns to the ground with Morley inside, and as the relieved survivors look on, he transforms into the witch among the licking flames from atop the building.


"Lord Satan has informed me that, unless we recruit more cult members, he shall be forced to downgrade us to 'The Crimson Get-together'."
Curse would stand as the last of Karloff's films that he would live to see premiere, famously contracting pneumonia on the set, before tackling roles in four low-budget Mexican horror films, with just half of one lung. Despite suffering from weak script and direction, I'd still consider it one of the better efforts from Tigon, and dare I say, a must-see for any fans of the actors involved, as they're all much better individual pieces than the film itself is, on the whole. If you want to see the same general idea executed at a much higher level, look no further than 1960's City of the Dead/Horror Hotel. On the scale, let's call this one a deuce.


Why, yes. Yes, I would. Flames, ceremonial headdress, green skin, and all.