Verdict
Summary
Treating witchcraft and spells with the utmost severity and acting as though all of this hocus pocus will change the viewers’ perceptions and very lives simply by watching it, Burn Witch Burn is effective as a mood and paranoia piece with the tone becoming more intense and disruptive the more it goes along.
Plot:
A blessed man inadvertently curses himself when he realizes his wife is a witch.
Review:
A university professor named Norman (Peter Wyngarde) seemingly has a great life with a promising career, peers who respect him, students who adore him, and a wife who dotes on him. His class has something to do with mythologies and superstitions, and he is adamantly opposed to faith and in anything of the supernatural. He also has the attention of a younger female student who desperately wants to start an affair with him, which rankles the ire of a male student who hates him because he’s in love with the girl who would rather have their professor than him. When Norman is going through a drawer at home, he accidently unearths a deadly charm that his wife Tansy (Janet Blair) put there to bless his life. He’s stunned by this: His wife is a witch! Not just any witch, either, no, but a very powerful one who has used spells to alter the course of his destiny, and now that he has upset the spell, his life will now have the opposite effect! From that point on, he seems cursed! The young lady from his class who wanted his attention has now accused him of rape. The young man who hates him now attempts to kill him. His career and reputation teeters on being destroyed. Other people around him are behaving strangely around him. He gets in a car crash. And finally, he begins to lose his sanity as supernatural forces are at work against him!
Treating witchcraft and spells with the utmost severity and acting as though all of this hocus pocus will change the viewers’ perceptions and very lives simply by watching it, Burn Witch Burn is effective as a mood and paranoia piece with the tone becoming more intense and disruptive the more it goes along. When a giant eagle starts attacking the protagonist, it seems insane, but it’s also kind of frightening because star Wyngarde acts so frantic and crazy in the scenes of the climax. Director Sidney Hayers did a great job with the everyday aspects of witchcraft and being a witch that it almost feels like a precursor and inspiration for films like Hereditary and others of that ilk that are conjuring creepy spells on audiences today.
Kino Lorber’s brand new Blu-ray edition of Burn Witch Burn comes in a beautiful new HD master, and comes with two audio commentaries (one by Tim Lucas, another by Richard Matheson), as well as an interview with Wyngarde and trailers. There are two versions of the film on the disc: the US cut, and the UK cut, which is titled Night of the Eagle.
