Witchcraft (1964)

• Year: 1964
• Released: 01 Sep 1964
• Country: United Kingdom
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058753/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/witchcraft
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: Not Rated
• Genre: Horror
• Runtime: 79 min
• Writer: Harry Spalding
• Director: Don Sharp
• Cast: Lon Chaney Jr., Jack Hedley, Jill Dixon
• Keywords: witch, curse, cult, witchcraft, graveyard,

	6.2/10
	53% – Audience

Witchcraft Storyline

Since the 17th Century when the Lanier’s buried a Whitlock woman alive as a witch and took over the Whitlock estate, the Whitlocks have hungered for revenge. Against the wishes of both families, Amy Whitlock and Bill Lanier are planning on getting married. The Laniers have sent bulldozers onto the old Whitlock Estate to level the land for a construction project. Morgan Whitlock and his daughter Amy make a futile effort to stop the bulldozers that overturn headstones and churn up graves in the Whitlock Cemetery. That night, an overturned coffin opens and Vanessa Whitlock, the witch buried centuries ago, rises from the grave. Together with Morgan, they use their supernatural powers and soon, one-by-one, the Laniers meet with fatal accidents. Tracy Lanier follows Amy into the family crypt and is astonished to see Vanessa and her witches in weird supernatural rites.

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Witchcraft Movie Reviews

Desecrated tombs, family feuds, hypnotizing witches AND Lon Chaney Jr… Hell yeah!

In all honesty “Witchcraft” is just an average British horror accomplishment from the sixties, but I’m slightly biased and overenthusiastic because I’m a big admirer of the subject matter (witchery and family curses), the director (Don Sharp also made “Psychomania”, “Dark Places” and many other overlooked genre movies) and the notorious cool guy who receives top billing even though he only sporadically appears in the film (Lon Chaney in finally another role that suits his grim appearance). Somewhere deep in the remote en rural British countryside, the centuries old feud between the Whitlock clan and the Lanier family sparks up again. For the big upcoming real estate project of the Laniers, a bulldozer ravages straight through the Whitlock family cemetery and destroys the grave of 17th Century ancestress Vanessa Whitlock, whom was accused of witchery and buried alive by the Lanier family. Well, the accusation wasn’t false for sure, as Vanessa promptly rises from the tomb and teams up with the grumpy Morgan Whitlock in order to bring the entire Lanier family down. Several members of the Lanier family die in mysterious circumstances, but complications arise when it turns out that Morgan’s little niece Amy is in love with a Lanier enemy. “Witchcraft” is a competent enough and well-paced occult thriller with gloomy black & white cinematography, a couple of original ideas in its screenplay and an extremely tense finale. Lon Chaney Jr. is naturally menacing, but the biggest creeps are provided by Yvette Rees as silent the hypnotically staring witch Vanessa Whitlock. If she would appear behind me on a flight of stairs, I would surely throw myself down from them as well! There are also two very nifty and imaginative fright scenes involving a car and its passenger(s) driving through a bumpy landfill and towards certain death, although in their minds it looks as if they’re driving on a safe and cozy lane.

where is this film now?

Having watched horror movies from the age of four, and still going strong today in my 40s. Two films that spring to mind that scared me as a kid were “The Night Walker”, and “Witchcraft”. unfortunately neither are shown anymore on TV,which to me is a great pity as films like this do give you the creeps and certain scenes from these movies still stand firmly in my memory after all this time. Forget all the gallons of blood and gory mutilation that movies today seem to rely on. Give the audience the old traditional things that go bump in the night, the dark shadows flashing across the walls, eerie sounds etc… With the movie Witchcraft, I can remember a couple of sheer terror moments as a child watching this at my Nans house. One being a woman gets into her car in the morning, she checks into the rear view mirror everything fine.She glances a second time, only this time the witch is sitting in the back seat staring at her. This then results in her crashing the vehicle down an embankment. The second scene is a man taking a bath,and in another part of town the witch is holding a voodoo doll of the man, then submerges the doll into a water vat, thus drowning him. Hope this film will become available on DVD someday.. after all its been 35yrs since I last saw it..

The writers really knew their craft.

When horror movies are done right, they can have you riveted and frightened even knowing that it’s fiction. This British horror film is one of the few English language horror films to represent the Italian style of the genre, participate those by Mario Bava. It has more than a passing resemblance to the 1960 gothic masterpiece “Black Sunday” although the story is fresh on its own. My only gripe is that some of the death sequences aren’t really realistic in the sense of being realistic to cause death, particularly a car accident where the victim sees a completely different road than what they are on (that part is creepy!) and an old woman falling down a flight of stairs, although there, she is just seriously injured.

The hammy Lon Chaney Jr. is over the top as usual as the patriarch of a family of witches, going haywire over the destruction of a family plot in the local cemetery which unleashes the spirit of the long dead witch, Yvette Rees, buried alive 300 years before and able to control the final fates of her family’s longtime enemies who have disrupted the final resting place to build upon it. The hatred between the families is made worse by the romance between two of the younger members of each, giving Chaney more scenery to chew to the fear that he might choke on the pieces.

The entire ensemble is very good with special recognition needed for Marie Ney, the matriarch of the family the witches have been battling for centuries. When she sees Rees at the top of the stairs, she appears to be daring her to push her down, or welcoming a fate that is delayed in happening. Rees appears in the oddest and creepiest of ways, not saying a word yet exhuding complete evil. She’s a rival to Barbara Steele of “Black Sunday” as one of the creepiest onscreen witches outside of Shakespeare. Everything about this movie through the strong production values makes it an absolute grand guignol delight that is one of the best horror films of the 60’s, perhaps the best of one that most fans have never heard of.