6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
1960s British B-movie chiller featuring voodoo, the supernatural and general dark arts. A comely young British teacher takes up a remote posting in darkest Africa where the local juju man lays a hex on her. She has a breakdown and is forced to return to the UK. There, she takes up a post at a rural school where all appears well on the surface. It turns out, however, that the place is a hotbed of witchery and darkness and that a virgin sacrifice is planned for the near future. The film was directed by Cyril Frankel, who'd made Hammer's 1960 child abuse drama 'Never Take Sweets from a Stranger', and the script was by Quatermass author Nigel Kneale.
Starring: Joan Fontaine, Kay Walsh, Alec McCowen, Ann Bell, Leonard RossiterHorror | 100% |
Supernatural | 9% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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.
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 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.
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