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source: Witchcraft

Trailer—Witchcraft

Witchcraft

WITCHCRAFT stars Lon Chaney Jr. as Morgan Whitlock, the head of a family with ancient ties to black magic and devil worship. Whitlock is upset that the family's ancestral graveyard is being bulldozed for future development. Adding insult to injury, this is being done by the Lanier family, the descendants of the very people who killed many Whitlocks as witches! Let the feud begin. This is a wonderfully dark, diabolical film, full of doom and death by bizarre "accidents". The real fun starts when Vanessa Whitlock (Yvette Rees) rises from her cold earth to exact vengeance. She's the perfect ghoul, in a Barbara Steele / Vampira sort of way! Very entertaining, with a nice touch of bleakness. Chaney Jr. is at his best as Whitlock, making one wish he'd been able to continue his career minus his personal difficulties...

This is one of Lon Chaney Jr's last films - it's considered to be his last significant role by some. His part is really good and Chaney is outstanding. I could almost swear he was really angry in this film - he played the part of Morgan Whitlock so well. The rest of the cast is just as good - convincing! Some of the sets in this film are very creepy looking and created a great atmosphere. The story was pretty good too for a film about witchcraft. Overall a good film. This one might make a great double feature with House of the Black Death (1965) or The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel) (1960). 7.5/10

I first saw Witchcraft on TV when i was around seven years old and it scared the pants off me! I used to have this feeling for years afterwards that the witch stood in my garden looking up at my window waiting for me to peek from behind my curtain late at night! Since then of course I've grown up and out of that fear (ive also moved house umpteenth times) and if anything i now find the witch (Yvette Rees) quite sexy and she could haunt me anytime! Even though I'm lucky enough to own a copy of the film i think its a shame that it isn't available on DVD. Its now perhaps thought of as dated and is to all intents forgotten but for me it will always remain the horror movie that showed me for the first time what the cinema was capable of. Itll always have a special place in my heart. Ill watch it every now and again and it takes me straight back to my childhood and daring myself to peek around that bedroom curtain. A forgotten horror classic.

When I finally caught up with it, this turned out to be a nice little mid-1960s thriller, made very much in the style of a Hammer Films production (indeed, as such it makes a suitable double-feature with the film it's paired with on DVD, DEVILS OF DARKNESS)- it makes good use of settings, has a decent script and quite adequate acting (especially a typically hammy late-career performance from Lon Chaney Jr), and evokes a very effective atmosphere of evil. What I was most surprised about (and impressed with) was the striking black-and-white photography and lighting, which really contributed to that atmosphere, particularly in its use of the reawakened witch. Definitely a fun, creepy movie for a rainy Saturday afternoon!