Witchcraft (1964)

I first saw this film on TV, as a child, back in the early seventies.  Quite why I was allowed to stay up and watch it, I don't recall.  But I do remember that it scared the Hell out of me.  It then seemed to vanish from sight - I don't recall any further UK TV showings or UK DVD releases.  Thanks to the wonders of streaming TV via my Roku box, however, I was recently able to watch Witchcraft again. While it didn't scare me like it did all those decades ago, I still enjoyed it as a suspenseful and atmospheric B-movie.  Witchcraft was the the first of eight films which resulted from the 1960s alliance of B-movie producers Robert Lippert and Jack Parsons.  Both owned small cinema chains, Lippert in the US, Parsons in the UK, and were looking to produce small scale movies to distribute both through their respective chains and more widely as supporting features to bigger films.  Lippert had connections with Twentieth Century Fox and in the 1960s had had a co-production deal with a pre-Gothic horror Hammer Films which secured their films US distribution.  The Lippert-Parsons co-productions encompassed science fiction, horror, crime and espionage stories, mainly shot in black and white and generally running well under ninety minutes.

Witchcraft is, without doubt, the best of these productions, crisply shot in monochrome and featuring a then contemporary UK home counties setting.  In common with other Lippert-Parsons productions, it top bills a second ranked US actor for the international market, in this case Lon Chaney Jr.  In truth, he has little to do, other than burst into rooms ranting at other characters and presiding over black masses, but it was one of the last decent roles he'd play before his death in 1971, his subsequent career rapidly descending into a series of glorified cameos in westerns and horror films.  The real lead is the perennially underrated Jack Hedley, who delivers a typically understated but effective performance as the film's main protagonist.  Mention should also be made of Yvette Rees as the resurrected witch Vanessa, who, without ever uttering a single word, provides a suitably chilling performance.  A striking looking actress, Rees succeeds in projecting an aura of pure evil as she silently causes people to be drowned in their baths, drive their cars over cliffs or even when she's pushing old ladies down the stairs.  (It has been rumoured that Rees was also the subject of producer Jack Parsons' unrequited affections).

Right from the outset, with the opening scene of a bulldozer ploughing through a mist shrouded graveyard, tearing up the tombstones, director Don Sharp focuses upon creating an atmosphere of chilly unease.  The opening also symbolises the film's central theme of past clashing with the present.  Sharp carefully establishes that these events are unfolding in a familiar present day of new towns and housing developments which sweep away the old with little regard for tradition.  Most of the action unfolds against everyday backgrounds of offices and living rooms, only toward its end invoking the more traditional horror imagery of crypts and witches' Sabbats.  The supernatural seeps into the ordinary slowly and subtly - the witch Vanessa's appearances are sparse: appearing in the back seat of a car (glimpsed by the driver in her rear view mirror - this is the scene which really scared me as a child), before it drives off of the road, for instance.  I think that it was the rooting of the action in a familiar everyday setting which unnerved me so much as a child - the previous horror films I'd seen had all set their terrors safely in the past or some mythical, fantasy-like, middle European setting.  Witchcraft implied to te younger me that it could happen anywhere - supernatural evil could even infiltrate a modern house like the one I lived in, not just ancient manor houses or Gothic castles.

The plot of Witchcraft is straightforward - in the seventeenth century, after hundreds of years of animosity between the two families, the Lanier family had Vanessa Whitlock condemned as witch and buried alive, gaining control of the Whitlock estate in the process.  In the present day, Bill Lanier (Hedley) is a developer whose plans for a new estate require the clearance of the old graveyard in which Vanessa is buried.  Only the Whitlocks still oppose the development, refusing to remove their family headstones.  Without permission from Lanier, his manager Forrester orders the graveyard cleared of the remaining tombstones, the bulldozer finally stopped after an intervention from the present head of the Whitlocks, Morgan Whitlock (Chaney).  The bulldozer, however, has already disturbed Vanessa's grave, and the witch rises from her tomb.  In league with Morgan, a practising witch himself, and his coven, Vanessa starts to avenge herself on the Laniers, starting by contiving, via a voodoo like process, to have Forrester drown in his bath.  Complicating the issue is the fact that Morgan's daughter, Amy, is in love with Lanier's brother, Todd and finds herself torn between him and the coven.  The coven holds its black masses in the old Whitlock crypt, part of which extends under the old Whitlock house, now occupied by the Laniers.  Amy eventually clashes with Morgan when he and Vanessa plan to kill Todd, setting the witch on fire with a brazier.  As the Whitlocks all perish in the succeeding conflagration, the Laniers escape and watch the old Whitlock house burn to the ground.

What makes the film though, isn't down to its plot, but rather its carefully constructed set-pieces, effective performances from the principal cast and its atmosphere of gathering evil, as the violent past erupts into the complacent present.  It is this clash between contemporary rationality and ancient superstition which lies at the heart of the film: it quickly becomes apparent that the veneer of rationality is thin, with many characters suddenly reverting to belief in the 'old ways' as events unfold.  Sharp paces the film well, with the sense of unease gradually building, as the apparently unstoppable Vanessa's manifestations become ever bolder, intruding more and more into the lives and home of the Laniers. This second viewing of Witchcraft confirms that it is a bona fide minor classic, its small scale adding to the sense of claustrophobia which permeates the film - the really does seem to be no escape from the ancient evil of Vanessa, with cast inexorably drawn back to the old Whitlock estate.  The version of Witchcraft I saw had been digitally restored by Dragonflix and is currently available on their streaming channel.  It is a commendably high quality restoration, featuring a sharp and clear monochrome picture.  It is well worth a watch.