31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 3 - The Witchmaker
The Witchmaker
99 minutes
Dir. William O. Brown
USA/1969
Sometimes even I have to ask myself where I find these films. Tonight we head down to the bayou to learn how to make a witch in this bizarre low budget satanic romp called The Witchmaker.
Deep in the swamps of Louisiana girls are getting ritualistically killed, being hung upside down, having an Egyptian Ankh symbol drawn on their partially naked body and drained of their blood, as we observe in the opening scene of this film. A young women is swimming in the swamp (?) wearing her large bra and grandma panties, gets outs, drys off her arms and legs and then puts dry clothes on top of her soaking wet undergarments (?) As soon as she is done, she is attacked by Luther the Berserk, our chief villain in this flick. Yes that is his real name and he refers to himself as that in the film.
Cut to a professor and his students on a psychic investigation to the ritualistic murders in the swamp, which apparently has a steaming history of a witch population. The group consists of a bunch of forgetful faces and names and Anastasia, who is a psychic and whose grandmother was a witch. You know she is going to come in handy later in this film. So Luther gets wind of these people hanging out in his swampy backyard and zeros in on Anastasia and decides he needs her to join his coven. Apparently Luther is a witch or warlock, whatever, and needs to strengthen his coven. So he summons the help of Jessie the witch, some old broad who says she will help him, in return he must perform a ritual to have Satan make her young again. Seems like a fair deal.
After much boring chatter and some of the students getting picked off by Luther, we are just about to throw in the towel on this film when the story finally gets to its conclusion. Luther has a sabbath, a bunch of witch friends stop by, he gets Anastasia there, they are going to trick her into converting to the dark side, everyone is happy and decides to have an orgy as witches supposedly do at these things (at least that is what some Christians told me), but who should show up but what is left of our rag tag group of psychic researchers who break the party up and try and save the girl. But is it already too late?
Here are a few things we have learned from this movie. Garlic can make you invisible, it is very bad for witches to drink pig's blood and beware the quicksand in the swamp, it is everywhere and will pull you under quickly. Despite it's low budget and abundance of boring dialogue scenes, The Witchmaker isn't too bad of a film if for nothing else but to hear the amazing song at the end of this film, "Hail Satan, Hail Satan, What is my purpose?" I recommend sitting through this for that part alone. One of the most frustrating parts of this film though is all the teasing of nudity then quick cuts or strategic cover ups. Now I am not saying a movie needs nudity to be good, but it can sway a bad film to be a better one. The Witchmaker for whatever reason implies that there should be a lot of nudity, but then always quickly cuts or strategically has some naughty bits blocked. If you don't want to have any nudity fine, but don't imply it to your viewer just to deny them, that started to get frustrating throughout the film. So The Witchmaker, despite its faults, yeah I dug it.
The Witchmaker
99 minutes
Dir. William O. Brown
USA/1969
Sometimes even I have to ask myself where I find these films. Tonight we head down to the bayou to learn how to make a witch in this bizarre low budget satanic romp called The Witchmaker.
Deep in the swamps of Louisiana girls are getting ritualistically killed, being hung upside down, having an Egyptian Ankh symbol drawn on their partially naked body and drained of their blood, as we observe in the opening scene of this film. A young women is swimming in the swamp (?) wearing her large bra and grandma panties, gets outs, drys off her arms and legs and then puts dry clothes on top of her soaking wet undergarments (?) As soon as she is done, she is attacked by Luther the Berserk, our chief villain in this flick. Yes that is his real name and he refers to himself as that in the film.
Cut to a professor and his students on a psychic investigation to the ritualistic murders in the swamp, which apparently has a steaming history of a witch population. The group consists of a bunch of forgetful faces and names and Anastasia, who is a psychic and whose grandmother was a witch. You know she is going to come in handy later in this film. So Luther gets wind of these people hanging out in his swampy backyard and zeros in on Anastasia and decides he needs her to join his coven. Apparently Luther is a witch or warlock, whatever, and needs to strengthen his coven. So he summons the help of Jessie the witch, some old broad who says she will help him, in return he must perform a ritual to have Satan make her young again. Seems like a fair deal.
After much boring chatter and some of the students getting picked off by Luther, we are just about to throw in the towel on this film when the story finally gets to its conclusion. Luther has a sabbath, a bunch of witch friends stop by, he gets Anastasia there, they are going to trick her into converting to the dark side, everyone is happy and decides to have an orgy as witches supposedly do at these things (at least that is what some Christians told me), but who should show up but what is left of our rag tag group of psychic researchers who break the party up and try and save the girl. But is it already too late?
Here are a few things we have learned from this movie. Garlic can make you invisible, it is very bad for witches to drink pig's blood and beware the quicksand in the swamp, it is everywhere and will pull you under quickly. Despite it's low budget and abundance of boring dialogue scenes, The Witchmaker isn't too bad of a film if for nothing else but to hear the amazing song at the end of this film, "Hail Satan, Hail Satan, What is my purpose?" I recommend sitting through this for that part alone. One of the most frustrating parts of this film though is all the teasing of nudity then quick cuts or strategic cover ups. Now I am not saying a movie needs nudity to be good, but it can sway a bad film to be a better one. The Witchmaker for whatever reason implies that there should be a lot of nudity, but then always quickly cuts or strategically has some naughty bits blocked. If you don't want to have any nudity fine, but don't imply it to your viewer just to deny them, that started to get frustrating throughout the film. So The Witchmaker, despite its faults, yeah I dug it.
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