Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Witches Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 21, 2019

Despite being the younger sister of Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine carved out an impressive, if less prolific, career on screen in her own right. She co-starred with Laurence Olivier in the Selznick/Hitchcock production of Rebecca (1940) and a year later won an Oscar playing Cary Grant's wife in Hitch's Suspcion. Fontaine also appeared in such celebrated films as Gunga Din (1939), Jane Eyre (1943), The Constant Nymph (1943), Ivy (1947), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). By 1966, her movie career was winding down and she was dealing with health concerns (she had a serious bout with pneumonia at the time). Fontaine read Peter Curtis's 1960 novel The Devil's Own, bought the rights to it, and handed it over to 20th-Century Fox which developed it with Hammer and Seven Arts. The actress didn't regard the book as horror but a "detective story with suspense and thrills," as she put it to a reporter in July '66.

Gwen Mayfield (Joan Fontaine) is a teacher preparing to leave a mission school in African when late one night, she's suddenly attacked by witch doctors and voodoo fanatics. She blacks out and an unspecified period passes before she begins a new teaching assignment in a rural English hamlet known as the Heddaby School. It seems that she inhabits this beautiful and pastoral village without endangerment. The school kids are obsequious and nothing out of the ordinary happens around town. But she's followed by a black cat and two of her students stick pins into dolls. Her student Linda's (Ingrid Brett) Granny Rigg (Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies) acts kooky and mixes a potion in her wine. Gwen strikes up intelligent conversations with Stephanie Bax (Kay Walsh), the village's newspaper reporter, who seems to be her ally.

The Witches, which was also screened in the US and other parts of the world under the title, The Devil's Own (thus retaining the namesake of Curtis's novel), is lovingly photographed in the English countryside by cinematographer Arthur Grant and at Bray Studios. The first half of the adaptation is a slow-burn with odd things transpiring around the village. The middle hits a lull when Gwen appears to go into a coma and then wakes up as an amnesiac in a senior home, not able to recall the events at Heddaby. The final third is more engrossing but the final denouement (a sacrificial rite) is pretty laughable. There have been far superior cinematic portrayals of witchcraft, especially Benjamin Christensen's Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) and Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath (1943). The Witches doesn't approach the apex of Hammer's production line but its aesthetics and camp qualities make it worth a watch.

The Witches was Fontaine's final screen role and she enjoyed working with director Cyril Frankel, who she described as "per­fect for me. He is kind and gentle and getting every ounce of suspense and thrills from each scene." A year after the film's release, Fontaine lamented to Tony Pellela of the Pocono (PA) Record that Fox "did such a poor job of distributing it” and it was not widely seen by audiences.

The Witches Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scream Factory brings The Witches to the US on Blu-ray for the first time on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The film is presented in its original screen ratio of 1.66:1 and the slim black bars on the sides are natural for this framing format. The Witches has also been released in Australia by Shock Entertainment, in Germany by Anolis Entertainment, and in the UK by Studio Canal. All three appear to use the same master as their foundation. The Anolis looks the darkest and the blacks are too dark in obscuring important details. Scream's transfer is a smidgen brighter than SC's. The green leaves and landscapes look lush on the SF (see Screenshot #s 3, 5, 20 & 21). Grain is more evident on SF and SC than it is on the Anolis. The grain pattern was a bit scattered during dissolves and scene transitions, though. Pink, red, and bright colors are very well-defined. Kay Walsh's makeup and lipstick in capture #2 are crisp. I was very pleased with this transfer. Scream has encoded the main feature at an average video bitrate of 34000 kbps.

Scream Factory has provided twelve scene selections for the 91-minute feature.

The Witches Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1567 kbps, 24-bit). The master is in solid shape with no noticeable hiss or dropouts. The dialogue delivered by the British actors is clean and intelligible. The score by composer Richard Rodney Bennett (Equus) anchors the action with aplomb. It occasionally rises in pitch and is spaced out evenly along the front channels.

Optional English SDH are available.

The Witches Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Audio Commentary with Filmmaker/Historian Ted Newsom - an expert on horror and sci-fi film, Newsom delivers a feature-length that's informative and sardonic in wit. He discusses Fontaine at considerable length and is very familiar with her autobiography. He also discusses the careers of the other supporting players. Newsom is forthright on the film's weaknesses and isn't shy about expressing faults with Nigel Kneale's screenplay. In English, not subtitled.

• Hammer Glamour – A Featurette on the Women of Hammer (44:09, 1080p) - originally appearing on the 2013 UK BD, this extended featurette contains interviews with Hammer Horror's leading and supporting ladies, including Martine Beswicke, Vera Day, Jenny Hanley, Valerie Leon, Caroline Munro, and Madeline Smith. It doesn't really deal with The Witches but it's a good historical program about the roles these women played in some of Hammer's most memorable films. In English, not subtitled.

• U.S. Trailer THE DEVIL'S OWN (1:08, 1080p) - Fox's official trailer for the Hammer film.

• Double Feature Trailer PREHISTORIC WOMEN and THE DEVIL'S OWN (3:33, 1080p) - the studio paired The Devil's Own with Prehistoric Women on a double bill in theaters back in '66 and '67. These are actually two TV spots.

• Still Gallery (4:28, 1080i) - the first thirty-two images comprise black-and-white publicity photographs from the US and Spanish press kits; the remaining twenty-six are an amalgam of posters, lobby cards, and newspaper ads, nearly all of which are in color.

The Witches Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Witches was Joan Fontaine's swan song on film and she still looks glamorous at age 48, if a bit too even-keeled at times. Scream Factory has assembled the best overall version of the film, recording a new commentary with film historian and documentarian Ted Newsom, a 45-minute featurette on several of Hammer's actresses, and some ancillary bonus materials. The 2K transfer looks very strong and there are no problems with the lossless monaural presentation. A SOLID RECOMMENDATION for The Witches.