THE WITCHES

What a way to end a career. THE WITCHES (1966), a hot mess of a Hammer horror film, was the last film role for Academy Award winning actress Joan Fontaine. But the film wasn't her first foray into the realm of the cinefantastique. Fontaine co-starred in Irwin Allen's feature film VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA in 1961. But only genre fans like me (and my buddy Kelly Greene, with whom I recently watched THE WITCHES), remember her for these efforts. All other film fans will recall her appearances in two superb Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, REBECCA (1940), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination and SUSPICION (1941), for which she won the Best Actress Oscar.

THE WITCHES (released in the U.K. as THE DEVIL'S OWN), is a muddled horror film from the get go. Fontaine stars as English school teacher Gwen Mayfield who is involved in a violent native upraising at a mission school in colonial Africa at the beginning of the film. The uprising carries a strong whiff of voodoo and black magic and Gwen suffers a nervous breakdown as a result of the events.

When she recovers, she's hired as a teacher in the small British village of Heddaby, where strange things begin happening almost immediately. At about the half way point of the film's 90 minute running time, she's "Scooby-Dooed" by a fake voodoo attack which causes her to experience a relapse which lands her in a nursing home, sans memory. Her memory slowly returns, she escapes and returns to Heddaby where she discovers the truth about what's really going on.

What's really going on is a coven of witches led by Stephanie Bax (Kay Walsh), who wants to sacrifice young virgin Linda Rigg (Ingrid Brett) to Satan himself. Bax lets Gwen in on the mad scheme, which Gwen, of course, eventually upsets, destroying the cult and saving Linda.

The sceenplay by Peter Curtis (based on the book THE DEVIL'S OWN), makes no sense whatsoever. A teacher suffers a nervous breakdown due to exposure to witch craft. She's hired in a village where witchcraft is practiced. The practitioners of witchcraft fake a voodoo attack, causing a relapse and confinement for the teacher. The teacher recovers, escapes, returns to the village where the main villain tells her everything that's going on and gives the teacher the information needed to thwart the scheme. The end.

There's no suspense, no tension, no horror to speak of at all. Cyril Frankel's direction is slow and plodding and it takes forever for what passes as a story to develop. Fontaine looks lost amidst all of the hugger-mugger taking place around her. You can almost see her thinking, "if this is the best part I can get now, maybe it's time to quit the acting game."

All in all, THE WITCHES is a sad state of affairs for everyone involved. With a better script and direction, it could have been an effective little shocker ala THE WICKER MAN (1973) and Fontaine certainly deserved better than this as a swan song.

I can't recommend THE WITCHES to any but the most devoted Hammer horror enthusiasts and even those fine folks will find this one a disappointment. Thumbs down.