FANTASIA OBSCURA: A Witchcraft Flick that Conjures Up Some Sinister Thrills
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, we just can’t put a finger on the magic that makes things work, but oh, can we appreciate it when it happens…
Burn, Witch, Burn (aka Night of the Eagle) (1962)
Distributed by: American International (in US)
Directed by: Sydney Hayers
It is the people we know best who can, on rare occasions, seem most unreal to us.
Which is a good description of what happens in the movie based off this work, the second of three:
We have a cold open (in the US version) where Paul Frees, in a solid effort to sound like Orson Welles, states that witches may actually exist, before he casts a few counter-spells to allow us to watch the rest of the film in peace.
We find ourselves after the credits outside Hempnell Medical College in England, where Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde) is giving a class where his main theme of the lecture is that superstition has no place in the modern world.
We see Taylor interact with students in the class at both ends of the spectrum of opinion, from the besotted Margaret Abbot (Judith Stott) with a heavy crush for her teacher, to the rebellious Fred Jennings (Bill Mitchell) who feels entitled to a good grade despite his having skipped class so often. All of which get left at the door of the classroom before the Friday faculty gin game can take place at his place, hosted by his darling wife Tansy (Janet Blair).
We see a lot of sniping going on between faculty members and their spouses over cards, which while it seems as we watch to be a bit nasty could always be a lot worse. Particularly prominent in their cutting remarks are Taylor’s colleagues, such as Lindsay Carr (Colin Gordon) and his wife Flora (Margaret Johnson), as Lindsay is in competition with Taylor for posting as head of the department. Of course, Taylor thinks nothing of it, as he’s assured in is belief that everything is due to his talent and brilliance…
…which he tests after he becomes suspicious of Tansy’s collection of wards and totems which she placed around the house to enhance Taylor’s luck and protect him from curses. He roots out everything she set up as protections and forced her to destroy them, in the name of rationality and as a blow to superstition.
Which doesn’t go all that well for him. Taylor is accused by Margaret of rape, and Fred pulls a gun on his teacher. From there things go downhill, especially when Tansy herself is under attack by whatever malevolent forces have it in for them.
And while it takes longer for Taylor to change his world view than it takes Stevie Wonder to argue against that stand, he comes to realize that there’s more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt in his philosophy. And whatever doubts he may have had get dispelled when a large stone eagle comes to life and tries to rake him to death…
…which is why the film was called Night of the Eagle in the UK; go figure..
It’s easy to figure why this film captivates as well as it does, considering its pedigree. Leiber’s source material, first published in 1943 before an expanded edition came out in 1952, contains the theme that the women around us practice some form of magic that can either aid or destroy the unwary. Whatever your feelings about such a statement, good or ill, it’s a potent and evocative stand to take, even today (maybe especially so). Beyond the startling statement made by the work itself, it certainly can claim a place in the Parthenon of ‘urban fantasy’ works to come out from that time on.
It certainly helped that the screenplay based on the novel was done by two respected masters in genre themselves, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. Both writers, responsible for many sterling examples of genre in the last half of the century, came up in collaboration with probably the best adaptation of Conjure Wife filmed so far. The script is very tight, with what changes they had to make from the source material dictated by the film’s run time and the limits of the production’s budget not getting in their way.
With writing this good, even the worst of directors couldn’t foul it up that badly. Happily, Hayers’ direction serves the script well. His quick cuts in many scenes help to jar the viewer subtly to accept that the world is not what we think it is or should be, in alignment with the themes Leiber stressed in his novel.
Poster for UK release
Both script and director get a lot of mileage out of the cast’s work. Wyngarde, Blair, and Johnson do a lot of heavy lifting when called upon, and their performances make the material work well. And with the rest of the cast giving their best, the film can’t help but soar better than one would imagine it might. The fact that William Alwyn provided a killer score for the film is just extra insurance that wasn’t necessary to take out, but worth having just in case, which makes things even better.
What we end up with is an overlooked film that merits close examination, especially concerning its aspect of depicting an unseen world that we would be foolish to dismiss out of hand.
And if you don’t believe in stuff like that, more so the pity, as you suffer for it…
NEXT TIME: We wrap up Season of the Witch with a work from a horror master that, sadly, was not a masterpiece…
