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Our
film opens with a couple walking alone
along a lonely wooded path. Dried leafs
crunch beneath their feet as the man
noticeably leaves the woman in his wake
where she lingers a
few feet behind...They’re
coming to get you Barbara…
WRONG
MOVIE!
Sorry.
The
out of kilter soundtrack clues us in that
we are not on this plane of reality: The
man reads a paper, pushing his way through
tree branches, oblivious to the fact that
they whip into the woman’s face, drawing
blood. They pass a baby crying, and an
older girl on a swing, but only the woman sees
these things while the man notices nothing
but his newspaper. Suddenly,
they’re in a car. He comes to a stop and
gets out; the woman is now wearing a
collar. He attaches a leash and drags her
into a kennel where they lock her in a cage and
the man says he’ll be gone for a week.
The
caged woman snaps out of her funk as a real
estate agent shows her a new house. Things
are still a little off-kilter, so we’re
not yet sure if this is real. I doubt it.
This is confirmed when it’s revealed
that the house comes complete with a
gaggle of women for bridge. It also comes
complete with a handyman who’ll do *ahem*
anything. (Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.
Say no more.)
But the salesman says,
according to her request sheet, the woman
doesn’t want that option. (Too bad.)
The woman looks into a mirror and is
shocked to see an old and grizzled visage
looking back.
Then
finally, Joan (Jan
Mitchell)
wakes up from her dream (I
think)
when Jack (Bill
Thunhurst), her husband, leaves for
work. Alone again, day in and day out,
Joan
feels there is no real fulfillment in her
life and she's doomed to die a tired old
hag. This will be the focus of our film.
When
Joan
goes to see her shrink for a little dream
interpretation, we find out Jack is a
successful businessman, and that they have a
daughter, Nikki. The doctor understands she
feels isolated, uninvolved, and trapped,
and while she blames it on her mundane
life, he says
the only person trapping Joan in that
lifestyle is Joan. (That’ll be $200.)
Later,
Jack
drags Joan to a party of fellow suburbanites. (We
notice that the host of the party is the
salesman from Joan’s dream.) Joan
buddies up with her usual crowd and the
conversation turns to Marion Hamilton,
where tumor has it that Marion is an honest to
goodness -- bell, book and candle -- bona
fide witch. Sounding different, Joan becomes intrigued
with this.
Later,
after Jack leaves on a weeklong business
trip,
Nikki (Joedda McClain) compliments her
mother on her appearance, then leaves to go on
a date. Joan admires her looks and takes a
pill. (Prozac?) She then takes the
pill out and flushes it down the toilet. (Her
first step in breaking free of her WASP
mold.) Tagging along with her
friend, Shirley
Randolph (Ann Muffly), for a Tarot reading
by Marion Hamilton (Virginia
Greenwald), on the way there, Shirley asks Joan if she
ever thought of screwing around on Jack.
She has no answer. Marion welcomes
them into her home, and is pleased with
Joan's keen interest in the
art of witchcraft. Marion relates how her craft
was passed down via old family
secrets. She complains that nowadays,
anyone can be witch; with mail order
catalogs and discount Witch-Marts, and
while
she reads Shirley’s future, Joan cracks
open a tome of Witchcraft for Dummies.
On
the ride back home, Joan and Shirley get
into an argument. Joan believes there is
something to all this witchcraft, but
worries that
maybe its just another passing
fad for the WASP set to try. Shirley
laughs it off and reveals that her life
isn’t so hot, either. During the
reading, a card said a dark haired
stranger was coming between Shirley and
her husband. Joan assumed the husband was
cheating. She was wrong. Shirley admits
that she's the one screwing around with a
brown-haired stranger. Shirley comes in
for a nightcap, and they find Nikki and
her date beat them home. Nikki introduces Greg
(Raymond
Laine), her sociology
professor at the college, and
we recognize him as the handyman from the
dream. Together, as they
all get snockered on martinis, the
discussion turns to witchcraft. Greg doesn’t
believe in it and feels the mind is just
open to suggestion: If you believe you are
cursed, then you’re cursed. (A self
fulfilling prophecy, or getting hoisted
with your own patootie.)
Greg
(who comes off as a real creep) can feel the repression coming
from the housewives. When Shirley
leaves to go to the can, he pulls out a
cigarette and mangles it to look like a
joint. Ignoring Joan’s protests, he
quickly convinces Shirley it’s real reefer.
As she
goes into a false high, Greg tries to
break through her inhibitions: seems Shirley’s
angry because she’s past her prime, but
doesn’t feel finished yet. Greg pushes
too far, she breaks down crying, so Joan
kicks him out of the house. Nikki
apologizes, but Shirley begs
Joan to take her home. Greg
sneaks back in and tries to apologize,
too. He’s also convinced that Joan thinks he
was really trying to make some moves on
her through Shirley. (The two gave each
other the old oogle-eye several times.)
Joan takes her friend home, and they
have a nasty fight while stumbling to the
door. Shirley falls down,
and
we see the shadow of her husband waiting
for her.
Joan
returns home and hears Nikki and Greg
doing the horizontal bop. Sneaking into
her own bedroom, as she hears her daughter’s
sexual pleasure, Joan rolls around on her bed in a fit of sexual frustration.
Hearing this, Nikki rushes in, disgusted that she came
back and caught them.
The
next day, Joan admits to her shrink that
Nikki has run away from home. She also
admits to being more worried about herself
than her daughter. The doctor considers
this a real breakthrough. (That’ll be
$200.)
Jack
comes back and turns belligerent with the
news of his daughter’s disappearance. He
slaps his wife several times and becomes
even more enraged that she let Nikki get
"balled" in their own house.
They call in the police, but Joan covers
for Greg. She
goes and sees Greg at the college. He
doesn’t know where Nikki is, but thinks
she really came to see him. She denies it (but
we're not so sure.) He says he’ll be
waiting by the phone; all she needs to do
is call, and he’ll come a running with
his pants around his ankles.
That
night, Joan wakes up with a start. Drawn downstairs by some strange
noises, she panics when a shadowy figure tries to
break in. She quickly chains the door. As
the
figure moves to the side window, she tries
to call the police; but the line is cut.
Then the assailant, dressed in black and a
large demon mask, breaks in and wrests a
knife away from her. Joan runs toward the
front door, unlocks the chain, but the
attacker has belted the door shut from the
outside. Trapped, she
runs upstairs to her bedroom, and as the attacker
pounces on her, and Joan fights for her
life, all this turns out to be just another
dream -- her
nightmare caused her to thrash violently, Jack
woke up. He calms her down, but offers no words of comfort after this
night terror and tells her to just go back
to sleep.
The
next morning, Joan starts to order more
books on witchcraft and hits the natural
living stores and holistic shops, stocking
up on batwings, lizard legs, and
gopher tongues. She then starts casting a few
spells, but always manages to hide all the
menagerie before Jack comes home.
When
Jack
leaves on another trip, Joan, growing
tired of her normal friends, and losing
interest in her old routine, conjures
up a spell on Greg that will make him come
to her, and succumb to her will. She
dresses up, pours herself a drink, and
waits; then pours herself another drink,
and waits; then pours herself yet another
drink, and waits some more. Now
completely snockered, she finally calls
him and he comes right over. As they make
the whoopee on the linoleum floor like two
carp out of water, she claims to have him
under her spell -- while he thinks she finally got
drunk enough to call him.
The
next day, Joan visits Marion and asks to
join her coven. Marion says it’s a
career path not to be taken lightly.
It’s not like Bewitched. And it’s not a
question of believing, it’s the
knowledge that you gain and resisting the
temptation to abuse it for personal gain. (Why
else would you want to become a witch?)
Joan
wakes up in bed with a start. (Again?
So was that last part and the sex just a
dream? Curse you Romero!) The intruder
is back, so she goes downstairs and chains
the door again. Grabbing the same knife,
she waits while the attacker breaks in at the
side-door, then rushes to the front door,
prepared to hack through the belt -- only
this time it’s chained! The attacker
closes in but the phone starts ringing.
Joan
wakes up in bed with a start. (Kee-rist.
Stop doing that. I mean it.) It’s
the police; they found Nikki in Buffalo.
Joan's
dreams have got her worried. She calls
Greg over, wanting his help for a conjuration
to scare off the demon attacker. Come over
he does, sees her set up, and thinks
she’s finally gone off the deep end. He
scolds her because she wanted to have sex
with him, but now she’s saying the devil
made her do it. She relents and they have
sex in front of her makeshift altar. Joan awakens before he does and starts the
incantation anyway. Greg eventually wakes up
and watches her. As
she gets deeper into the spell, a cat (her
familiar?) makes its way into the
house. Before she can finish, Greg grabs her
and they have sex again. (See. She
doesn’t need the mumbo-jumbo to get
any.)
After
this trist, Joan
finally seems happy. She attacks her daily
routines with a renewed vigor. She calls
Greg and says they can’t see each other
anymore because Nikki’s coming home
tomorrow. He says it’s her loss and
hangs up. Then, she takes a load of laundry down
to the basement and things turn sinister.
The
intruder is back.
This
time Joan snatches a shotgun out of a closet, but
before she can get it loaded, the intruder
is upon her and (you guessed it!)
she wakes up screaming. It was only a
dream. AGAIN!
Sweet
monkey ba-jeezus! Just how far back does the
dream go anyway? You know, you can make the argument
that the whole damn film up to this point
has been a dream. Gah.
Outside,
it’s raining hard, and a car pulls up; Jack
has returned home
a day early. He fumbles with his keys,
unlocks the door, but is extremely annoyed
to find his front door chained. When he calls
for his wife to let him in, he's answered
with a shotgun blast to the face and
chest. Inside, petrified, Joan slumps at the top of the
staircase. Only this time, she
doesn’t wake up.
While
Jack bleeds to death, we overhear some
policemen complaining how Joan will get
away with it because she thought he was a
prowler. Later, Joan is stripped down
naked and initiated into the witch's coven
and pledges unbridled allegiance to her
new lifestyle.
Time
passes, and we’re at another suburban
socialite cocktail party. Joan is there
hobnobbing with old friends. When a tepid and
tired looking housewife approaches her,
Joan sees she’s just the way she used to
be. She anticipates her questions and
answers that "Yes, I am a
witch."
With
this final statement, Joan’s visage becomes
clouded with self-doubt as she begins to
ponder some imponderables.
The
End
Wake
up, Chad! Wake up!
This
film is no dream. No sir. Nope. Nope.
Nope.
After
the phenomenal (and most deserving)
success of the independently produced
classic, Night of the Living
Dead, George
Romero has followed up that success with a
few good films, but, more often than not,
dropped a huge turd on the cinematic
landscape.
After
Night he stubbed his right toe with
There’s Always Vanilla,
and then his left
toe with Season of the
Witch. He got back
on track with The
Crazies, fully recovered
with Dawn of the Dead,
but then flamed out
with Day of the Dead
-- and I personally
think he’s been scuffling ever since.
Season
of the Witch has wallowed in obscurity and
it’s not very difficult to see why.
Romero got most of the financing from a
film company that was trying to go legit
-- up until this film, all they had produced
was soft-core porn and exploitation
quickies. Romero finished the film, called
it Jack’s Wife,
and turned it over to the distributor who really didn't know how to
market it; so the film died at the box
office.
Trying
to recoup their losses, the production
company retooled the film. Giving it a
new name, Hungry
Wives,
they spliced
together a new trailer that made it appear
to be a porno movie. That didn’t work
either.
After
Romero released Dawn of the
Dead, veteran
schlock producer Jack H. Harris got a hold
of the film. He cut it’s running time by
30 minutes and released it as Season of
the Witch trying to cash in on Romero’s
notoriety due to his latest zombie flick.
Well,
the film struck out on three pitches. It
didn’t please the Romero fans because it
wasn’t that scary, suspenseful, and for
some lacked the old Savini punch. There is little
nudity in the film, except at the end, for
the skin crowd, and by taking 30 minutes
out all Harris did was make a muddled film
more muddled. This might explain why the
copy of the film I have says Season of the
Witch on the cover,
Jack’s Wife in the
credits, and the included trailer calls it
Hungry Wives.
I
will admit to liking the film better the
second time through.
(I dozed off the
first time.) I think Romero is at his
best making films with biting social
commentary.
At this juncture, I’d usually point out
that in the later Dead films, the
commentary is lost in a sea of gore and
stupidity, but I
believe I’ve beaten that horse to death
--
so let's move on, shall we? Romero
also likes to bring
bizarreness and horror to the safety of
the suburbs in films like this and
Martin. And I
do like the point he brings out when asking
the question if witchcraft and holistic
practices have become the new "in
thing" for the yuppie crowd. I find
it hilarious when Joan goes on her
shopping spree for her witch paraphernalia
and uses her charge cards.
As
a viewer, you’re never quite sure if
Joan’s spells are really working. She
casts the spell on Greg, but then winds up
having to call him to come over; a call he’s been waiting for since they
first met, so the spell isn’t even
necessary. Joan just uses the
witchcraft to finally come out of her
repressed shell. After her first sexcapade
with Greg, all seems right in the world; but
then we find out it’s just another
dream. Frankly, I found this
disappointing. Sometimes we don’t need
the supernatural answer, so I guess I’ll
side with Greg on this. On
the same stroke, Romero
keeps us off balance constantly in the
film as we can’t focus on anything because
we’re never sure if Joan is dreaming or
not. This might be brilliant filmmaking,
but as a viewer, I found it extremely
annoying. (Keep your ears on the
soundtrack. That's usually offers a clue
as to whether it's a dream or not.)
The
nightmare sequences themselves are pretty
good. Each one getting more intense. The
gist is simple: the more independent Joan
becomes, the more difficult it becomes for
her to escape from the killer. (The
belt on the door turns into a chain, but
she grows smarter each successive dream
too.) Is this her mundane existence
fighting for its life? (Hea-vy.) If
that’s true, then the ending makes sense
because her only real chance of escaping
her tired life is by killing her husband
and starting over.
But
then the film gets all cryptic on us in
the end. Joan is free from her old way of
life, but when she’s brought into the
coven, to me, it seems she’s now locked
permanently into her new life with no
chance of change or she'll face the wrath
of the other witches. I think that Joan
also comes to that realization at the end
-- to her own horror -- as she stares
blankly into the camera after telling
another repressed woman that she is, indeed,
a witch.
Yes,
Romero
likes to use monsters to make us look in
the mirror in hopes that we realize it is
WE that are the true monsters (or are
the root cause of the monsters, and when
faced with these monsters we'll never be
able to cope properly.)
Season of the Witch works best when this
is applied, but the last fifteen minutes of
the film skewers this, sinking the film
for me. For a brief moment, there is no
boogeyman and the witchcraft doesn't work.
Joan kills her abusive husband by accident
-- maybe, setting herself free,
but then it's revealed there are more
sinister forces at work behind the scenes.
And at that point, I really didn't care.
For
Romero fans, Season of the Witch will be a
disappointment. It has its moments, but, to
me, it’s too muddled for its own
good. To Romero's defense, the film's lack
of cohesiveness may be due to the later
hatchet job that Harris did for his
re-release. The original cut appears to be
lost forever, but I honestly don't know if
that'd help.
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