Gwen Mayfield is a schoolteacher who has a nasty experience involving witchdoctors in Africa so returns to teaching in England at a small village . Quickly being accepted in to the close knit community she starts having suspicions that things aren't what they seem . Is she being paranoid or is there more to this village than meets the eye ?
I remember seeing this many years ago late one night on channel 4 but fell asleep . As I said it was late one night and this might have had everything to do with it rather the film's content itself . The screenplay was adapted by Nigel Kneale from a novel by Norah Lofts and if Kneale adapted someone's grocery list I'd still find it compelling . In some ways THE WITCHES resembles the writer's one off teleplay from 1975 MURRAIN about a vet finding the local's persecuting an old spinster who they believe to be a witch . Everything is delivered in a slow deliberate manner which is in no way a criticism because the slow pace allows time for the performances to breath and for the audience to second guess the direction the story might be heading in . This is a very nice combination of Gothic drama meets the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock and doesn't need a lot of incidence in order to hold the attention . There is a slight problem in that if you stop to think about the villagers would have detailed knowledge about Gwen's bad experience in Africa so that's a bit of a plot hole but apart from that everything else is well paced and involving you're more than willing to overlook any flaws
There is a problem and a seriously major one and that is the story's climax in the last ten minutes which has to seen to be believed and is so bad you'll leave the film thinking the other 90 per cent was just as bad which it certainly wasn't . Nigel Kneale suggests that he thinks the whole idea of witches and black magic is nonsense and tries to convey this with the witches coven at the end but director Cyril Frankel seems to have taken this a bit too literally and the witches dancing about give the impression that they're doing a parody of an acid house party from 1988 with the suggestion that here's also a bit of sex going on. It's absolutely hilarious and laugh out loud funny when one instinctively feels it should have been disturbing and grotesque and there's a serious clash between the writer's vision of the story and that of the director which tends to sink the entire film as a production
I remember seeing this many years ago late one night on channel 4 but fell asleep . As I said it was late one night and this might have had everything to do with it rather the film's content itself . The screenplay was adapted by Nigel Kneale from a novel by Norah Lofts and if Kneale adapted someone's grocery list I'd still find it compelling . In some ways THE WITCHES resembles the writer's one off teleplay from 1975 MURRAIN about a vet finding the local's persecuting an old spinster who they believe to be a witch . Everything is delivered in a slow deliberate manner which is in no way a criticism because the slow pace allows time for the performances to breath and for the audience to second guess the direction the story might be heading in . This is a very nice combination of Gothic drama meets the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock and doesn't need a lot of incidence in order to hold the attention . There is a slight problem in that if you stop to think about the villagers would have detailed knowledge about Gwen's bad experience in Africa so that's a bit of a plot hole but apart from that everything else is well paced and involving you're more than willing to overlook any flaws
There is a problem and a seriously major one and that is the story's climax in the last ten minutes which has to seen to be believed and is so bad you'll leave the film thinking the other 90 per cent was just as bad which it certainly wasn't . Nigel Kneale suggests that he thinks the whole idea of witches and black magic is nonsense and tries to convey this with the witches coven at the end but director Cyril Frankel seems to have taken this a bit too literally and the witches dancing about give the impression that they're doing a parody of an acid house party from 1988 with the suggestion that here's also a bit of sex going on. It's absolutely hilarious and laugh out loud funny when one instinctively feels it should have been disturbing and grotesque and there's a serious clash between the writer's vision of the story and that of the director which tends to sink the entire film as a production