 |
| Available at Amazon.com |
My knowledge of British exploitation films doesn’t go much beyond the old Hammer films of the Sixties and Seventies, so when I say that I was interested in seeing Virgin Witch it was because I had fond memories of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and the buxom Hammer women. Imagine my disappointment when I finally watched the DVD and saw that the movie was little more than a random assortment of nude scenes glued together by a flimsy, haphazard plot. I may have liked this movie if I was fifteen, but then again I’d like to think that even fifteen-year-old me had better taste.
Virgin Witch‘s plot isn’t really important to the overall goal of the movie—i.e. naked women—and I’m pretty sure that the people involved realized this because halfway through even the pretext of having a coherent story is pretty much abandoned. The basic idea is that Christine and her sister Betty (played by real sisters Anne and Vicki Michelle) are living away from home in the big city of London for the first time. Christine wants to be a model and answers an ad posted outside a grocery store. The person who posted the ad was Sybil Waite, a rather famous manager, lesbian, and witch. Sybil tricks Christine into coming to a country house for a weekend with the promise of a job. Christine decides to take her sister with her, and soon we’re treated to scores of scenes of Christine posing in various stages of nakedness for a photographer while Sybil jealously watches from the bushes. Little do the sisters know that the people who own the house are witches and plan to use Christine as a virgin sacrifice.
We later learn that the sacrifice in question is not Christine’s life, but her virginity, as the head witch has the honor of deflowering her during a midnight ritual, and this ridiculous plot point is pretty indicative of one the major problems of the movie: it doesn’t try to be scary. For a movie that claims to be erotic horror, there’s actually very little horror going on. There’s no attempt at creating tension, atmosphere, or even a sense of danger. The people involved clearly became so fixated on the erotic that they forgot the horror.
Now, I could get into a long-winded debate on erotica’s value as a genre, but that would really be beside the point because this is just a bad movie. The script is simply godawful—chock full of rotten dialogue and plot and logic holes large enough to fly a 747 through. The directing is bland, and the acting is mediocre at best. The only reason to watch this is because Ann and Vicki Michelle are beautiful women who walk around naked the majority of the time, but that’s really not enough.
However, I will say that it could have been worse. Virgin Witch was released by Redemption, a company that seems hell bent on dredging up the worst exploitation films from around the globe—many of which fall easily into the torture porn category—so by comparison this release is almost great cinema. But that’s the same kind of dubious distinction as being the best $2.00 wine. This is simply a bad movie and the only reason that it hasn’t been forgotten is because it has plenty of naked women and pseudo sex scenes.
The transfer actually isn’t that bad considering that this movie was originally released in 1972. The video is anamorphically enhanced for 16:9 TVs, and the only problem I had was that it was sometimes difficult to see what was going on during the dark scenes. The audio, though, doesn’t fare as well. There are no technical specifications on the audio aside from it being Dolby Digital, and there were far too many times when the sound would unexpectedly bottom out or gain an annoying reverb. If there were subtitles I would have turned them on just so I wouldn’t have to constantly fidget with the volume.
Trailer (running time: 1:48)
Still Gallery
Original Artwork
Contact
Redemption Trailers:
Nature Morte (running time: 2:12)
Killer’s Moon (running time: 2:25)
Maybe I’m getting old, but the promise of full-frontal nudity in a film doesn’t excite me anymore, and that’s all this movie has to offer. This is the sort of movie I wish I could give negative scores. Not recommended for anyone anywhere.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Redemption Films presents Virgin Witch. Directed by Ray Austin. Starring Ann Michelle, Vicki Michelle, Keith Buckley, and Patricia Haines. Written by Beryl Vertue. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated NR. Released on DVD: July 29, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.
About Josh Begley
