This is a strange one. Richard Johnson (whom you might know from Martin Clunes' Doc Martin) is a lover of many women in Rome (a fanny rat, as they say). The thing is, he's getting the feeling that there's this creepy old woman following him around the place. After trying to track her down several times he responds to an ultra specific advert in a magazine looking for a librarian who exactly fits his description - you guessed it -the library is in a creepy old mansion in the middle of Rome and the old lady is seemingly the only inhabitant.The old lady wants him to transcribe all her dead husband's writing and sort the library out and even live in the house. Richard thinks she's full of crap and is halfway out the door when the old lady's daughter Aura makes an appearance, which coincides with Richard reconsidering the job while making eyes at Aura (and she seems up for it!).Aura's up for it only if Richard takes the job, moves in, doesn't mind all the dead cats lying about, ignores the dead husband in the casket and gets rid of the previous transcriber who appears to have gone mad. That sounds like a good idea to Richard, who seems to be thinking with his 'lower brain' as it were.But this is also where things start getting really weird, because Aura also seems to be stringing along the other transcriber, playing mind games with Richard, and Richard's also having to put up with the old lady seemingly spying on him all the time.Is this film sufficiently coffee table? It seems to want to be a horror and an art-house film and some sort of serious battle of the sexes type film, but the only character you can really care about is the other transcriber, Fabrizio, played by Volonte as a very broken man. Richard is too much of a jerk to like, and even gives Aura a good punching at one point. There's rather a lot of blah in this film, but Damiano does through in a lot of strange shots and images too which keeps things from bogging down to much in dialogue. Much stuff involving shadows, darkness, and a very strange interaction between Aura and the old lady too.Don't get me wrong though, it's an okay film, but lacking in the more cerebral aspects, like boobs and gore. This is a long long way from Richard Johnson's late eighties Italian film Ratman, that's for sure!

This one seems to pick up on the Bavaesque idea to stage a psychothriller in a lavish but rundown Roman villa—a terrific set with a labyrinthan Orson Wellesian quality--and includes some chase scenes reminiscent of Bava too. The plot involves Sergio answering a want ad for a scholar to reorganize an old library (as in the Hammer Dracula), by an old women and her here-one-minute-gone-the-next, and extremely beautiful daughter. The main problem is it took me about five minutes to figure out what was going on, then I had to sit through another 90 minutes of Richard Johnson not being able to figure what it all meant. Let's see, a reclusive old woman, rare flowers, magic tea, dead cats, a daughter who only appears now and then, then mimics the gestures of the old woman. And yet he just doesn't get it. It's OK when horror movie characters are a bit dumb, but to be utterly clueless stretches one's patience. This movie also blundered badly by trying to fill up a horror movie framework with psychological thriller soap-opera argumentations ad infinitum and, some of which, involving a male librarian already trapped in the old women's employ, are unwatchably tedious (had to hit the fast forward button a few times). Here and there, some sequences work, like when Johnson has to remove Aura's dress no hands allowed, or a very weird bathing sequence or the final scene, but generally a fatal case of genre confusion. Not watchable except for spelunkers after Italian movie witches (but this one is far downhill from Argento's Suspira and even the fairy tale witches in movies like Lucifera).

Italy put out some interesting horror films in the 1960s and, as Italian horror is the best in the genre as far as mood and psychological drama is concerned, The Witch is worth viewing if for no other reason.Which is not to say it is a masterpiece because it is not. The pacing is a bit slow even by the standards of the time and the English dubbing is in places atrocious. The main character Sergio, played by Richard Johnson, (the only American in the cast), is male chauvinistic to the extreme, but to be fair we must remember that not too many years ago this was thought to be a desirable quality in any self-respecting male. But even with these shortcomings I found this to be a very interesting and disturbing film, as good horror should be. The Witch also benefits from being shot in black and white, something I wish more of today's directors would realize about these types of stories and take advantage of when filming said stories which depend upon dark mood. Sergio has noticed an old woman (Consuela, played by Sarah Ferrati) who seems to be around him and near all the time and is quite surprised to learn that it was she who placed an ad in the local newspaper for somebody to chronicle her deceased husband's papers, which are quite erotic in nature. Sergio has doubts about this but accepts the job when he meets Consuela's' beautiful daughter Aura, ably portrayed by Rosanna Schiaffino, a dark-haired beauty who reminds somewhat of the great Italian horror actress Barbara Steele. The remainder of the story is the three-sided psychological duel between Aura, Consuela and Sergio. Sergio, very much a man of the world, surrenders his soul and self respect when he murders Aura's current lover in order to win the right to stay in the old woman's house to be near Aura. Only, the old woman has other plans, for she is a witch and can force Aura to come and go at will. For all practical purposes Consuela and Aura are one and the same person, and Consuela has been enamored of the handsome Sergio for a long time. I won't give the ending away, will say only that Sergio at long last re-asserts himself, hopefully to rebuild the pieces of his broken life. We are led to believe at film's end this is quite possible, probable even.Some reviewers have stated this is a film about woman hating. I do not agree as the degradation and destruction of Sergio psychologically are the main elements of the story. I would say it is a film about the hatred of men, not women.You probably won't find this one anywhere although I have been pleased to see a number of obscure films hit the market this year on DVD at very reasonable prices. My VHS copy came from Sinister Cinema. If you do find it, happy viewing. For students of obscure horror films, it is a can't miss.

This is a pleasantly dated picture, the story of a womanizing linguist who is hired to sort through an old widow's sexual biography (written by her late husband) and gets tangled up with his employer's mysterious beautiful daughter and her lover. Very Italian, slightly Gothic, slightly mod, and erotic enough (for its time), this is a slow but pretty movie, which is also pretty satisfying, all things considered.