cinema history class: the naked witch

Session: Babes with Bodies that Kill, Week 1
Movie: The Naked Witch (1961)
Directed by Larry Buchanan & Claude Alexander

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Researching his thesis about local superstitions and folklore, a college student digs up and frees a witch who then goes skinny-dipping. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

This had a reasonably good, though arguably cliche, storyline. And it was reasonably coherent. But everything about the production betrayed its cheapness.

For starters, it was very short -- under an hour. And within that hour, there was a lot of filler. It started with several minutes of narration with the camera scanning over a Bosch-like painting of demons and witches. I'd say the extended skinny-dipping sequence was filler but if the main goal of the movie was to show nudity then, well, that sequence should have been longer. Of course, if you're watching this movie for nudity, you're gonna be disappointed. Maybe in 1961 (or 1964, which is when it hit theaters), T&A was harder to come by. The background music was very hit and miss; Sometimes it was spot on, but other times it made it sound like we watching in an ice-skating rink.

I was annoyed by the overuse of narration instead of dialogue. Keith explained that that was a money-saving maneuver. I mean, we're talking about a movie with an $8,000 budget. Even 60 years ago, that was very little.

We did discuss that there were little things that could have made the film much better without costing a lot. For example, it's never really explained why the student (he's never actually given a name) digs the witch up. They could have added some pantomime to indicate that, looking at her grave, he was overcome by some unseen mind-control (presumably from the witch herself). He looks at the grave, then turns away. Then he pauses and turns back. Then away. Then back at the grave he falls to his knees and starts digging. That would have made the whole sequence better. But they never did pay me to help write it, so...

I ended up being of a mixed mind. I really wanted to like this more than I did. And I wanted to pan it more than it deserved. In the end I gave it a kind of middling rating.

Ratings:

Me: 6
Dave: 9.2
Ethan: 3