This is yet another film where you should probably watch it without the aid of booze or sleeping pills or whatever as barely anything happens at all for its entire running time. That said, it's not a total failure, but it's not that good either.After a fairly interesting start where a woman finds her cat stabbed to death by a young girl, then sets that young girl on fire, said woman goes to lay it on Fatal Attraction style with her ex, photographer Mario (and that is one THICK moustache that man has on him). Mario's not taking her insane advances too well, so he cancels his vacation and takes an assignment to go to Witches Mountain to take pictures of stuff.So far, so early seventies European horror. Mario heads off and somehow hooks up with a woman he was taking topless picture of on the fly. The two of them head off to Witches Mountain and the film kind of grinds to a halt.Uneventful, or atmospheric? Brooding or boring? That's up to you. Me, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open as these two wandered around the brooding, atmospheric Spanish landscape in a uneventful, boring way. There are touches here and there that saves the film from being a total flatliner (like the guy taking creepy pictures, the start of the film, others) but this isn't the best Euro-horror I've watched. At all.

I couldn't make sense of this film much of the time, and neither could anyone else, based on other reviews. The opening scene of this film has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the story. In it, a photojournalist with a big mustache cancels his vacation to get away from his girlfriend. He is assigned to photograph a mountain range. It's rumored to be haunted, but I couldn't tell whether he heard that from his boss or later in the film. On his way, he meets a beautiful writer (Patty Shepard) and convinces her to join him on his working trip. Throughout the film, there is this terrible music score, mostly consisting of noisy chanting that makes you want to scream "SHUT UP ALREADY!!!" What really will gall a person is that the film always seems like it's about to become good, though it never does. There is beautiful mountain scenery and some genuinely creepy atmosphere. The inn and the silent, abandoned old buildings scattered on the mountain are rather ominous. The foggy nights look real, not like someone put an artificial fog machine on the set. And the idea, while not original, had potential. But it never does improve, at least not enough to be worthwhile. Here's how it goes, more or less. They stop at this inn run by a weird innkeeper (you expect him to be named Igor) with a hearing problem. There is a scene where the writer thinks a peeping tom is in her window, but the scene is so dark, I had no idea what was going on. Whether this was poor lighting or a poor film transfer is unknown to me. In any event, we never find out know what happened. There is a scene where she wanders off during the night. Whether she is sleepwalking or mesmerized by the witches of the title is never explained. Another scene which is never explained is when their car is stolen, then found again, with nothing stolen. They wind up in this apparently abandoned mountain village whose sole inhabitant is this seemingly kindly old woman. There are other things, including a chained wild man in a cave who is never explained, an attempt to sacrifice the writer in some way (will they kill her or brainwash her into joining them?), the witches themselves, a bunch of brunette women in white robes who don't show up until the last 15 minutes of the film and whose practices and beliefs are never explained. Even the closing scene doesn't make any sense. When all is said and done, most people will be saying, "Huh?"

As someone else mentioned, it begins with a bizarre prologue about a little blond girl killing a cat. Then the main story: a photographer (Gaffari) and a writer (Shepard) meet by chance and take a trip into the mountains. First they spend the night at an inn where the slightly deaf landlord gets hollered at, with increasing irritation to the audience, by Gaffari. Once in the mountains they seek shelter again and are invited in by a kindly old lady who seems overly hospitable to strangers (Hansel and Gretel, anyone?) What happens next I will leave for the bold viewer to sort out because I most assuredly couldn't. Now, I like Eurohorror, and this woulda been better if only Artigot (writer AND director) had made some attempt at logical story telling. The backdrop (Pyrenees?) makes an excellent and intriguing location for mysterious and occult occurrences. The verdant peaks could easily obscure supernatural forces and those who command them. The photography is nice. Just wish the whole thing made sense. You can view this film at archive.org.

This movie has it all! A super macho stud and an amoral chick in the lead roles. Mod clothes, big hair, wooden acting made worse because of dubbing from Italian into English, a script that makes you wonder why the character say or do certain things, etc. While watching the movie, I could just hear what Joel, Crow, and Servo might say. It was fascinating to watch such a good BAD movie. If you like cheesy movies, then hunt this one down. English title THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN. Great fun!