Witches (pt. II)

I Married a Witch

Bell Book and Candle

Black Sunday

The Love Witch

Happy October 🎃 I am thrilled that it is finally the best month of the year, despite the prolonged heat, persistent allergens, the common existential crises, and overall lack of Halloween spirit around me. I know there’s still time until Halloween, but I’m detecting a distinct lack of spooky vibes. Maybe it’s because everyone is too tired, maybe it’s because Halloween falls on a Monday this year, maybe it’s because the world itself is so scary on its own, but even the Hallmark store seems to have skipped right past * my * Christmas and has moved right on to Mariah Carey’s Christmas. Well all I want for Christmas is to have a good Halloween, readers, that’s why I soak up every bit of scary ooky spooky cheer that I can. Last week we kicked things off early with an adventure into Black Horror, and this week we’re exploring one of my favorite mysteriously scary topics, a staple of Halloween and the magical mascot of all things creepy: witches. I’m such a dedicated witch film fan, I cannot believe that I’ve only done this film genre once before. So to make up for the lack of witch representation on this blog, tonight we’ll be celebrating not two, not three, but four divine pieces of witchy cinema—some more formative, and more memorable, than others. Most of the films tonight come from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, when there were so many stories surrounding witches, you’d think it were the Salem Witch Trials. This was not the first era of witch cinema, as our silent viewing of Häxan proved, but the 40s-60s were really the hey-day of pop culture’s witch obsession—that would only be rivaled by the cinematic witch renaissance of the 1990s. 1942 brought us the René Clair classic titled I Married a Witch. I Married a Witch is one of the many witch films that begins with the burning of a witch, except here, it’s not all fire and brimstone and horrific anti-femme atrocities, it’s also funny. It very cleverly pokes fun at the absurdity that these violent spectacles were—showing a priest giddily passing out libations and snacks to a happy-go-lucky crowd of observers. We overhear a conversation where the victims at the stake are being discussed, in just as caddy and gossipy of a manor as any interaction on the Real Housewives. A woman has been accused of using witchcraft, and her father has been accused of being a full-on sorcerer. (Behind every great sorcerer, etc.) Not only are these people being burned alive, but what’s left of their corpses will remain buried under the strength of a large tree, who’s roots will allegedly keep their spirits in place. But because witches are witches, their power can’t fully be stopped—I mean what did these dumbass puritans expect—and the man who accused her of being a witch, and all of his male descendants, are cursed to forever be unlucky in love. What follows next is the earliest montage that I’ve ever seen, jumping from 1770, to 1861, to 1901, all showcasing generations worth of men with absolutely no game, and no hope to have a lasting love. Then suddenly, in 1942, lightning strikes the old tree that sits atop the witches’ grave, and the witch and her dad are free. They can only appear as clouds of tornado-shaped smoke, but they very quickly study a party of humans at a nearby house, trying to decipher the 1940s fast-talking vernacular, and the 250 year old witch named Jennifer (seems more 1940s than 1640s but what do I know?) determines that she wants to be in a human body again so she can mess with humanity once more. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke becomes a brand new, human-formed Jennifer (Veronica Lake). But as cynical as she is, Jennifer finds herself falling for the already-engaged and very nervous gubernatorial candidate descendant of her accuser, Wallace Wooley (Frederic March). (Ironically, Lake and March hated each other in real life. He called her a “brainless little blonde sexpot, void of any acting ability” and she rightfully called him a “pompous poseur”—a far more succinct burn. You should really read more about their beef.) This is really where the rom part of this com kicks in, and Jennifer’s crusade to win over Wallace begins. At first she tries to make him fall in love with her without magic, but while Wallace is confusingly charmed by Jennifer, he is still very much(!!) engaged to Susan Hayward. Susan Hayward, by the way, steals the show with her resting bitch face. The rest of this film is a comedy of errors, deaths, unabashed cheating, and gloriously ridiculous hijinks that are often incited by Jennifer the home-wrecking witch. I by no means condone cheating, but I really do love a film centered around a glamorous woman who causes utter chaos then feels only kinda bad about it. (See: To Die For) And what’s cool about Jennifer was the fact that even though she’s a somewhat uninformed outsider adapting to a new world, she wasn’t dumb. She didn’t at all fall into the Born Sexy Yesterday trope, instead she just happily danced into the “modern” world, thriving in whatever mayhem she may or may not have caused. The glamour was severe in this film, the effects were fairly impressive (with a smoke budget that must’ve cost millions), and the sense of humor was unexpectedly current. This movie is instantly funny and witty, and despite all of the bad blood on set, it told its silly story well. The tv show Bewitched was based off of this and one other film: Richard Quine’s 1958 film Bell Book and Candle. While the story seems relatively simple, and strangely similar to I Married a Witch, Bell, Book and Candle would, at times, strangely meander around its topic and take its time fleshing its story out. First, really quickly, I have to air my grievance with the title of this movie and the play its based off of. I understand the three witch prop references, but I do not understand, as an avid user of the Oxford Comma, why the play and film are titled with just one comma in it. This, more than any of the outrageous premises of tonight’s films, was appalling and infuriating to me, but I digress. Bell, Book and Candle follows Gillian (Kim Novak), a Greenwich Village-based witch who owns an international art shop. Above her shop lives Shepherd (Jimmy Stewart), a book publisher who is somehow completely unaware of the bombshell living beneath him, who for some reason lusts after him. I’m not gonna talk shit about Jimmy Stewart again because I reserved my one rant for commas, but it will just always be odd to me that he was ever the love interest when there were dudes like Cary Grant (who wanted the role) and Rock Hudson around. But like in Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak are star-crossed lovers with many issues—except this time Kim Novak’s acting was much better because she didn’t have Hitchcock torturing her, and their biggest issues were that she’s a witch and he’s engaged. Yes, once again we’re faced with an all-powerful witch who could use their powers for anything and decide to use them to fall in love with a man who is already in a relationship—further proving the fact that nothing is truly original and if you wanna plagiarize a little, no one will actually care. Conflicted premise and all, Bell, Book and Candle was a fun time, complete with weirdo extraordinaire Jack Lemmon, horror icon Elsa Lanchester (thee Bride of Frankenstein) and some of the grooviest witchy beatnik vibes you can possibly imagine. It was nice to see a good performance from Kim Novak and her (actual) cat, and it was nice to see that the makeup department figured her eyebrows out, even if they also seemingly doused Jimmy Stewart in bronzer. One film that certainly did understand its makeup assignment was Mario Bava’s Italian witch film from 1960: Black Sunday. This is another one of those staples of witch cinema, with its imagery and title referenced so often that I really wish that I had more to say about it. Black Sunday, like I Married a Witch, is based on the premise of a burned witch coming back from the dead to enact her revenge, but here there was no humor, only blood, bats, and some of the most defined jawlines I’ve ever seen. This film wasn’t that slow and it wasn’t that bad, it just wasn’t that exciting either. I feel like, while it spanned many centuries of storytelling, not much really happened. Reading about this movie and its inspirations gave me more context and appreciation for the whole product, but I wish I had liked this more. What began with a very brutal witch death ended with a bit of a whimper, and this witch thought that this witch deserved much more revenge than just a few measly, off-camera kills. While the makeup and effects were solid, with an especially cool sequence of dozens of actual scorpions coming out of the dead witch’s eyes, I wasn’t wowed by the end of Black Sunday. A lot of doom was promised but it was mostly just chic, spooky aesthetics and a couple of unceremonious deaths. I’ve seen my fair share of beautifully gory Italian horror films, and while I was under no impression that Black Sunday would be overly violent or vicious, I did think that a lot more occurred in this film based on its icon status. What I liked best about this movie is what I like best about most witch films: women are inherently underestimated, not listened to, and not taken as threats, so they can very very easily carry out their plans—whether they be murder or matrimony. In the case of Anna Biller’s 2016 film The Love Witch, both are involved. The Love Witch, while claiming to be set in the present day, was, from start to finish, a technicolor 1960s spooky sexsploitation film. I understood from the very first frame what the vibe was going to be, and I loved it. I just kept wondering, how much of this would be style, and how much would be substance. I was skeptical along the way, but overall I think I enjoyed this weird movie—because it was so dedicated to its aesthetic and attitude and commentary on gender politics that apply to the past and the present. The protagonist Elaine (Samantha Robinson) only wishes to be in love and to find someone who loves her just as much, but every man finds a way to disappoint, and we’re never quite sure if her witchcraft is helping or hindering her. And while I appreciated the conflicting conversations around a woman’s sexuality, and how much power she can gain from it, I was never really sure what the film’s actual stance was. It was most certainly in support of female sexuality and empowerment, but it also felt like a meager attempt to appease both sides of the argument. The premise was very 60s, as well as the music, the dialogue, the random singing, the costuming, even the kinda bad acting. I am just assuming that that last part was also intentional, because everyone in the cast really leaned into the cadence and essence of these silly, sexy, hallucinogenic films of the era. The commitment to emulating a certain kind of film was impressive, and with all due respect, a bit theatre kid-ish. What’s especially impressive to me is that Anna Biller wrote, directed, edited, costumed designed, and set designed this film. She spent six months making Elaine’s pentagram rug from scratch. She had a very clear vision and she fully, wholeheartedly, confusingly stuck to it, which I respect—especially because I also have an appreciation for this era of film. That, more than its mostly foreseeable plot, makes The Love Witch a feat of filmic and witchy success. Its overall a feminist film, which I think could be said of all of tonight’s films—even if that feminism was a bit feeble. I hope you’ll conjure up some Halloween holiday cheer with me, my witches. Someone’s gotta do it! 🧙‍♀️