Well, here we are. The 1st of our final three Halloween Horrors posts for 2024. With Halloween only a few days away, the holiday season is now in full effect. If you believe the ancient legends, the veil between the world of the living and the dead has thinned and all sorts of ghost and spirit are preparing to bring a serious case of “spooky” to our plane of existence.

Today’s Halloween Horrors entry features a tale in which one such entity returns to the world of the living to enact a healthy dose of mayhem, madness, and retribution. The undead tend to be quite fond of those things evidently, as they never seem to come back for more pleasant things, such as neighborhood barbeques or charity cake sales. Then again, it does seem somewhat understandable that death might sour one’s disposition.

Gifting us with this entry is our friend Brian Schuck of the phenomenal movie review/retrospective site Films From Beyond the Time Barrier (filmsfrombeyond.com). Besides being a fantastic and knowledgeable writer, Brian has been just the nicest guy, so I’m honored to not only have him joining us once again as a contributor to our series, but also to have had the opportunity to take part in his yearly “Famous Stars of B Movies” blogathon. The fact that he is also an avid fan and advocate of black and white horror films doesn’t hurt either as I will always welcome someone who champions these classic fright films of yesteryear.

 

Witches vs. Land Sharks: Witchcraft (1964)

Starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Diane Clare, Jill Dixon, Jack Hedley and David Weston
Written by Harry Spalding
Produced by Robert L. Lippert and Jack Parsons
Directed by Don Sharp
Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox

 

One of the most despised villains in all of moviedom is the garden variety land developer. Never mind that we’ve all lived, worked, shopped and/or played somewhere that was once a gleam in the eye of a developer — if the movies are to be believed, such people spend all their time plotting to build condos on top of cursed burial grounds or bulldoze over the delicate habitats of unknown creatures that are just looking for an excuse to munch on a bunch of unwary humans.

Witchcraft opens with a scene straight out of a preservationist’s nightmare: a bulldozer comes rumbling out of a pea-soup fog, churning up crumbling gravestones as it makes its destructive way through an old cemetery. An outraged old man in a black coat waves his gnarled cane and yells helplessly at the operator to stop as a group of equally distraught people trail behind him.

Before you can say “shopping mall built on top of a former cemetery,” the old man, formally known as Morgan Whitlock (Lon Chaney, Jr.), is banging on the door of wealthy land developer Bill Lanier (Jack Hedley), bellowing about the desecration of his family’s 800 year-old burial ground. (We learn later that this is only the latest skirmish in a centuries-old blood feud that started when the Lanier clan accused the Whitlocks of being witches, and took their land after condemning and burying matriarch Vanessa Whitlock alive. Ouch!)

Somewhat surprisingly, Bill Lanier is not your typical heartless, greedy businessman. When informed by the belligerent old man that Lanier’s construction partner Myles Forrester (Barry Linehan) ordered the bulldozers to level the Whitlock cemetery, Lanier is concerned and promises to look into it. Lanier confronts his partner, who is much more the stereotypical sleazy, amoral type. Forrester protests that time is money, and they can’t afford to dither around by negotiating with the Whitlocks. Nonetheless, he agrees to back off.

In the dead of night, Lanier visits the cemetery to assess the damage (what better time is there to go nosing around in a B horror movie?). He’s about to leave when he hears an eerie cry that freezes him in his tracks. Backtracking, he wanders over to one of the broken tombs, where, of all things, a toad is sitting (more on the toad later). Brushing the dirt off the tomb face, he discovers that it’s the burial place of Vanessa Whitlock. A broken piece with a strange engraving on it catches his eye, and, almost absent-mindedly, he picks the piece up and takes it back to his car. After he leaves, the heavy lid of a stone coffin begins moving as something sighs and moans underneath it.

When Bill gets back to the house, he realizes the engraving on the fragment from Vanessa’s tomb — a hex symbol enclosed by a circle — is identical to one on a stone that fronts the main fireplace. It seems that the Laniers not only took the Whitlock’s land, but they also stole their stately home as well, and now 3 generations of Laniers live in it — Bill, his wife Tracy (Jill Dixon), his younger brother Todd (David Weston), his mother Helen (Viola Keats) and the grand dame of the family, Grandmother Malvina (Marie Ney). They don’t know it yet, but with the inadvertent freeing of Vanessa’s vengeful spirit, there will be hell to pay..

Further complicating matters is a sort of Romeo-and-Juliet-esque side plot wherein Todd is in love with Amy Whitlock (Diane Claire), who lives with her grumpy uncle Morgan in a run-down old house that is not nearly as nice as the Laniers’ ill-gotten mansion. Todd is so worried about Amy running afoul of her uncle’s evil temper, that he invites her to stay over at the Laniers’. Helen is against it: “A Whitlock hasn’t slept in this house for over 300 years!”

Soon, Amy is the least of Helen’s worries, as she is visited in her bedroom by the specter of the revived witch, who, when the household is roused by Helen’s screams, vanishes, leaving traces of dried mud from the cemetery on the floor. This is an ominous sign of things to come. At this point, Vanessa (Yvette Rees) has already dispatched the greedy developer and defiler of graves, Forrester, by submerging a voodoo doll (called a devil doll in the film) in water — Forrester is later found drowned in his own bathtub, with what looks like finger marks on his throat!

Vanessa, apparently having lost none of her witchy abilities after spending centuries buried alive, utilizes the devil doll again by tying it to the bumper of the Whitlocks’ car. With this magical contrivance, she’s able to hypnotize the driver into believing (s)he’s on the right road, while in reality the occupant is unwittingly steering the car into a deep gravel pit. This happens twice (!) in the film, once successfully (from the witch’s standpoint) and once not (but I won’t spoil who the victims are).

Before the film draws to a close, someone is going to take a nasty tumble down the mansion’s main staircase, and the Laniers will find out that no one and no place is safe from the centuries-old evil.

Witchcraft is an interesting horror genre grabbag: produced by an American B-movie mogul (Robert L. Lippert, dubbed “The Quickie King” by Time magazine), written by an American, shot in the UK with an all-English cast (with the exception of Chaney), and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox. Even with the American involvement and contemporary setting, Witchcraft is English Gothic down to its roots. Also, there is just something very English about a protagonist who, despite being a wealthy businessman descended from a long line of avaricious land sharks, still has a functioning conscience.

Yvette Rees as “Vanessa” is highly reminiscent of Barbara Steele, who had been chillingly effective as a resuscitated, vengeful witch in Black Sunday (1960), and as a result kept coming back from the dead over and over in subsequent films. In this case, Rees wears a simple funeral shawl and very little makeup, instead relying on Arthur Lavis’ excellent black and white photography that bathes her in shadows. In addition, a low-key but ominous music score enhances her ghostly, malevolent presence (courtesy of Carlo Martelli).

Lon Chaney Jr. provides the star power for Witchcraft (not to mention name recognition for the U.S. market), but is given little else to do other than bark like a grumpy old dog at everyone around him (wisely I think, he doesn’t attempt an English accent). Once cultivated by Universal as the star who would carry on the legacy of Karloff, Lugosi and his own father, by this point, Chaney was in no position to be choosy about roles due to his alcoholism. (He wasn’t completely down and out — some bright spots from the sixties include a turn as the creepy warlock’s assistant “Simon” in Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace, and one of his all-time best performances as “Bruno”, the keeper of the demented Merrye clan in Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told.)

The rest of the cast ranges from competent to very good. Jack Hedley and Jill Dixon as Bill and Tracy Lanier are very believable as a very modern couple who, at the beginning, have no use for the superstitions and blood feuds that have been handed down by previous generations. Gradually, the superstitious past catches up with them as the evil that Bill’s partner has unwittingly unleashed takes over their house. (Bill catches on a little too gradually — even after terrifying ghostly manifestations and a highly suspicious death in the family, Bill and Todd nonetheless depart on a business trip to London, leaving the rest of the family to Vanessa’s not-so-tender mercies. This is one of the film’s few throw-the-popcorn-at-the-screen moments.)

 

Harry Spalding’s screenplay builds the suspense gradually in classic fashion and inserts a couple of bits of business that add nicely to the supernatural atmosphere. The toad seen on Vanessa’s broken tomb, and later crawling around the Laniers’ fireplace, has traditionally been associated with witches and warlocks. In some folklore, there are “procedures for removing a toad from one’s home, to prevent a witch’s wrath.” [Amphibian Life, “Frogs and Toads in Religion, Mythology and Witchcraft,” https://www.amphibianlife.com/frogs-and-toads-in-religion-mythology-and-witchcraft/%5D

There is also a mention of Roodmas, which is an old Christian celebration that roughly corresponds with the witches’ sabbath Beltane (or in Germany, Walpurgis Night), occurring on April 30 – May 1.

In addition to Vanessa’s creepy manifestations (including a scene where her shadow stealthily descends down a staircase in the background as Tracy talks on the phone), there is a satisfyingly thrilling denouement involving dark ceremonies in a previously undiscovered underground crypt.

According to Lon Chaney, Jr. biographer Don G. Smith, director Don Sharp (who the year previously had helmed Hammer’s underrated Kiss of the Vampire) was “intrigued by the idea of making a present-day witchcraft story. In fact, the opening scene establishes the basis of the conflict as the camera pans from a busy village street to the ancient Whitlock cemetery. With a small budget and a tight thirteen-day shooting schedule, the crew often had to rely upon suggestion to get across the desired effect. While effectively filmed in black and white, Witchcraft nevertheless had the unenviable task of competing against the lavish colorful horror of Hammer Studio. … With the passage of the years, however, the suspenseful and atmospheric Witchcraft has rightfully established a loyal fan following. [Don G. Smith, Lon Chaney, Jr.: Horror Film Star, 1906 – 1973, McFarland, 1996, p. 162]

If you haven’t seen Witchcraft, this Halloween season is a perfect time to join the cult. (The film is currently available to stream on Tubi, Amazon and Apple TV.)