In October of 1982, fans of the HALLOWEEN series were confused about the third film, which was titled HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. While technically it had more to do with the actual holiday than the others in the series, the film didn’t feature infamous slasher Michael Myers or star Jamie Lee Curtis. In time, the film gained a cult following and a slick blu ray edition has recently been released. But when the film was originally released theatrically, someone thought it would be slick to simultaneously repackage a 1972 film titled HUNGRY WIVES under the title SEASON OF THE WITCH and put it out the same weekend as the third HALLOWEEN film to swipe some of the successful series’ revenue (got all that?). And while I couldn’t find any proof they were successful, I can testify that the theatre I saw George A. Romero’s SEASON OF THE WITCH in (the now defunct Amboy Twin) was packed to the rafters…and the second showing sold out as well.

Despite being a huge Romero fan, I had never heard of SEASON OF THE WITCH (or HUNGRY WIVES) until I opened my local paper that Friday afternoon and saw an ad for HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH and, right across from it, and ad for another film simply called SEASON OF THE WITCH with the tagline, “An early work from the master of horror, George A. Romero!” And seeing this, I knew where I’d be that night; HALLOWEEN III was going to have to wait a day or two. I also convinced two of my buddies to put off their HALLOWEEN III screening and, knowing we were doing it for a Romero film, they joined me. In the pre-Internet days, there was no Googling to see if something was worth it or not.

I still have the black and blue-marks on my upper arms from being punched for a few hours after SEASON OF THE WITCH ended. And I couldn’t blame my friends for their anger.

The film takes forever to get moving. And, even then, it moves like a horse being dragged to the glue mill at high noon. We meet a bored housewife named Joan (Jan White) who has a husband who’s always away on business and a college-aged daughter who has the personality of a handball. Joan spends her days as a bored housewife and her nights at her neighbor’s boring parties, as well as a ridiculous amount of time walking through the woods in artistically-shot, trippy sequences. I think this was the first time I heard an audience start yelling for the film to get going so early on…maybe after fifteen minutes? As a Romero fan, I was getting annoyed at all the noise, but by the middle of the movie I had joined them.

The boredom is broken up with dream sequences of Joan being attacked in her home by a masked assailant. She seeks therapy for her nightmares but it doesn’t help and the dreams continue…as did the audience’s cheers for the masked assailant to kill her. Joan eventually visits a woman who gives her a tarot reading, and she develops an interest in witchcraft after finding out the tarot woman is part of a coven.

In the only sequence I enjoyed, Joan goes to some kind of underground hippie-owned store to purchase witchcraft supplies. I couldn’t stop laughing over a sign on the wall that said “Take Some Trash” posted over several garbage cans right inside the store! Over the years I’ve wondered if this was some kind of comment on the end of the hippie era, but now think it was just Romero tossing some goofy fun into this dreadful mess that I recently read is the only film of his even he wishes he could remake.

One amazing thing here: I don’t recall a single person leaving the theater. The film, while slow and painfully boring, does tend to keep your interest in the wake of the nightmare scenes. I think most audiences had a crazed bloodlust by the final minutes, hoping this masked intruder would finally decapitate Joan and end this celluloid torture session.

But in the “shock” ending, Joan is having another nightmare when she wakes; someone is pulling on the front door handle, trying to break in the house. She grabs a shotgun. The crowd I was part of went nuts…and I’m talking scream-out loud nuts! Most cheered for the guy breaking in to kill Joan…a few even begged her to blow her own head off! (Yeah, we New Yorkers are a happy bunch). But neither request happens. Joan ends up shooting the intruder.

And the intruder ends up being her husband Jack, back early from yet another business trip.

Boos erupted to the point I was partially deaf for a good half hour.

I still can’t remember what happens after that, but I’m pretty sure Joan joins the tarot reader’s coven. Either way, some older woman next to me said, “Man, that was really for the birds!”

And despite being a George Romero fanatic, I had to agree. SEASON OF THE WITCH (a.k.a. HUNGRY WIVES, a.k.a. JACK’S WIFE) is a slow, tedious, boring-as-you-can get feature that even the most die-hard horror fan will have trouble getting through without a fast forward button. Being in a suburban grindhouse made it kind-of fun (and barely bearable), but I’d love to know how other audiences around the country reacted to this “early work from the Master of Horror.”

I’ll take another dozen of Romero’s …OF THE DEAD films before sitting through this thing again. Until next time, I’ll be putting ice packs on my upper-arm bruises…

© Copyright 2013 by Nick Cato

When the BEST part of a film is a slow-moving recurring nightmare sequence, you know you’re in trouble! The Masked Intruder from SEASON OF THE WITCH (1972).

]]> http://skiffleboom.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/film-director-george-a-romero-podcast-on-they-came-from-the-north-with-special-guest-michael-mcvey-skiffleboom-com/ Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:22:01 +0000 Skiffleboom http://skiffleboom.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/film-director-george-a-romero-podcast-on-they-came-from-the-north-with-special-guest-michael-mcvey-skiffleboom-com/ http://www.dvdverdict.com/mp3s/podcast1203.mp3

Film Podcast “THEY CAME FROM THE NORTH“ features a uniquely Canadian perspective on the career and canon of renowned filmmakers.  Released through DVDVerdict.com and available on iTunes, the podcast is hosted by the diabolical Steve Power (Newfoundland), Jon Mercer (Newfoundland), Andrew Forbes (Ontario), and Gabriel Girard (Montreal).

Each week, these Canucks offer up a hearty discussion regarding the “Good,” the “Bad,” and the “Ugly” from each filmmaker’s body of work:

The “Good” selection is often a film held in the highest esteem, for quality and enjoyment.

The “Bad” selection is more middle of the road, though NOT NECESSARILY bad!  It can be a good film, but has some flaws that keep it from greatness.  It can also be a film that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the canon.

The “Ugly” selection is the true bad selection.  It is considered the lesser or least of the director’s films, and can be skewered Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.

For episode #24 of THEY CAME FROM THE NORTH (Podcast #1203 on DVD Verdict) the crew invited me as a special guest, and we had a grand time looking back on Romero’s oeuvre.  You can download the podcast here, but BEWARE!—this 2 hour discussion is for movie geeks only:

http://www.dvdverdict.com/mp3s/podcast1203.mp3

Join Jon, Steve, Andrew, and special guest Michael McVey as they celebrate and denigrate the life’s work of director/writer George A. Romero.  The Night of the Living Dead series, Monkey Shines, Knightriders, Creepshow, Season of the Witch… what’s not to love?  (According to the Canadians, not a whole lot.)

You can play along at home with IMDB and Youtube pages open, looking up the facts and clips as we go.  Here is the trailer from the 1982 horror anthology classic “CREEPSHOW”—watch Ted Danson drown while Leslie Nielsen shrugs:

The George A. Romero Playlist at Skiffleboom’s Youtube

Knightriders Tom Savini 1981 George Romero Skiffleboom

by Steve Habrat

After George Romero left his mark on American cinema with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, he made a handful of films that were largely overlooked until he returned to the zombie genre in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead. These films, made from 1971 to 1976 included There’s Always Vanilla, Hungry Wives, The Crazies, and Martin. Perhaps the best two in this string are 1976’s Martin and his 1973 film The Crazies, which like Night of the Living Dead, held up a cracked mirror up to the Vietnam War. In The Crazies, Romero didn’t go to great lengths to mask the fact that he was blatantly criticizing the unpopular war, even including characters that openly discuss fighting in the Vietnam War. While The Crazies certainly boasts Romero’s trademark brainy subtext, the film becomes one of his shoddier pieces, one that, like much of his other work, is extremely low budget and feels like gorilla style filmmaking. It’s the ideas and images that keep The Crazies in the horror game and the trademark gore is what has recruited its cult following.

The Crazies takes us to Evans City, Pennsylvania; where a mysterious biological weapon named Trixie has accidentally made its way into the town’s drinking water and is turning the good citizens of the peaceful town into wild-eyed “crazies.” After a series of shocking murders, U.S. troops descend upon the town and begin executing a quarantine of Evans City. As the citizens are rounded up without explanation, violence erupts and many of the citizens end up dead or irreversibly insane. Firefighter David (Played by W.G. McMillan), his pregnant nurse girlfriend Judy (Played by Lane Caroll), and David’s best friend and firefighter Russell Clank (Played by Harold Wayne Jones) begin trying to find a way out of the plague-ridden town. Along the way, they hook up with a terrified father Artie (Played by Richard Liberty) and his teenage daughter Kathie (Played by Lynn Lowry), but as their journey continues, certain members of the group begin to think they may be infected with Trixie and putting the rest of the group in danger.

The Crazies is ripe with images that could have been pulled from stock footage of the Vietnam War. In addition to our two heroes who served in the war (David was supposedly Green Beret and Clank was an infantryman), the opening moments of the film are frenzied flashes of an invasion, soldiers bursting into homes, rounding up civilians, encountering resistance from terrified citizens who only wish to know why they are being forced from their homes. In the opening moments, The Crazies gets by on the gossip spilling from the mouths of the actors in front of the screen, trading stories on mysterious truckloads of soldiers spilling into the town while Romero’s shaky camera hovers in all the confusion. His rapid fire editing is certainly in tact in these opening moments, giving The Crazies an almost documentary-like feel to it, like someone quickly spliced together these apocalyptic images for the evening news. The lack of a big budget also allows The Crazies to feel more authentic, much like the limited green that kept Night of the Living Dead grounded in reality. This imagery really comes to a head when a priest bursts from a church that has been overrun by the soldiers, none of them listening to his pleas for peace. He rushes into the streets with a can of gasoline, splashes it all over his body and then sets himself ablaze while horrified onlookers shriek and soldiers rush to put him out of his misery. It is scenes like this that elevate The Crazies from simple B-movie carnage to grave reflection, leaving it lingering in your head the next day.

The Crazies also uses the idea of peaceful people suddenly erupting into violence to really give us a few sleepless nights. A father destroys the inside of his home while his two terrified children watch, one child finding their mother murdered in her bed while the father douses the downstairs in gasoline and then drops a lighter into the gas. Countless wild-eyed citizens arm themselves with double barrel shotguns, pitchforks, and knitting needles to kill them a few gas-masked soldiers who refuse to spill any updates on their situation, some soldiers not even fully understanding why they are taking over this seemingly harmless small town. There are very few images more harrowing than a grinning granny walking up to a soldier and stabbing him in the throat with a knitting needle. There are also the scarring images of children witnessing their parents murdered by the trigger-happy soldiers, who fail to find any alternative to calmly talking down the citizens trying to defend themselves. Romero expertly blurs the infected with those who are on the defensive, causing the viewer to be unsure who is really sick and who is protecting themselves, further adding to the unruly terror.

The Crazies does suffer from some shoddy craftsmanship at points but one can assume that is because of Romero’s limited budget. Yet having seen Romero with a big studio budget (Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, Survival of the Dead) and comparing it with his much more resourceful work, I have to say I prefer the contained Romero. There is plenty of gore in The Crazies, a trademark of Mr. Romero and there are plenty of disturbing moments to solidify The Crazies as a horror movie legend. The presence of a few familiar B-movie faces (Richard Liberty and Lynn Lowry, who together get one of the most unspeakable sequences of the film) also makes The Crazies worth your while. The rest of the cast does a fine job, especially Jones as Clank, who may or may not be sick with Trixie. The appearance of Richard France as the cure-seeking Dr. Watts is also a fun addition, playing almost the same role he would eventually play in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. The Crazies works on multiple levels of horror, from the documentary-esque footage on the streets of Evans City to the good citizens turning mad all the way to the scenes with several major government officials discussing dropping an atomic bomb on the town, all of which are classic Romero touches. Even though it is not as consistent as Romero’s other horror offerings, The Crazies ultimately settles like a brick in the bottom of your stomach, cynical and suggesting that our own unwillingness to work together will be our ultimate downfall.

Grade: B+

The Crazies is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

This compilation from Upstate label Lo-Fi Kabuki Records is a mixed bag of twenty Capital region acts all united by a few different elements, most notably the broad idea of each group submitting ‘scary’ songs, as in songs that fit neatly into the overarching theme of ‘Halloween music.’ Some of the songs are very explicit in their references to the one widely recognized holiday that seems to acknowledge and even encourage darker, more experimental music; the words ‘Halloween’, ‘ghost’, ‘blood,’ and ‘haunting’ appear in several of the song titles, while others are somewhat less conventional but no less moribund, sporting titles such as “Cannibal Bride” and “We’re Not Dead.”

The accompanying music might be a little shockingly subdued for listeners who see the titles and automatically expect the kind of over-the-top death metal that a release presented in this manner might be expected to contain. Instead what we have is a set of songs that seem to take a number of cues from underground music of the 1980s, specifically post-punk and the music generally associated with that term.  The heaviest influence on these groups across the board seems to be Wire; the manic energy and even danceability of the group’s overall early catalog is married to the slightly more sublime flirtations with synthesizers that appeared throughout Chairs Missing (1978) and 154 (1979), as well as the lo-fi nature of their 1977 debut Pink Flag.

This amalgam shows up in varying degrees throughout the majority of the songs here and is on full display in the best two tracks on the compilation, “We’re Not Dead” by Hungry Wives and “The Haunting Party” by Severe Severe. The former relies heavily on one of the main ingredients of dark music; a propulsive beat courtesy of the drummer leaning on the toms and ignoring the typical crashes, which are mixed low, largely substituted by a tambourine. The result is not unlike the furious drumming of some kind of jungle death cult, banging out a primitive rhythm that captures the desperation of the vocals and lyrics. The latter song similarly employs the rhythm section to create a sense of impending doom by likewise forsaking the cymbals and shifting the emphasis to the relentless pounding of the snare drum, creating an effect of being chased through the woods at night by a madman who continually revs his chainsaw in anticipation of chopping you up. These two songs are not too much alike, the tempos and instrumentation are very different, but they share an approach in that they conform to the typical verse-chorus form. Other songs here flirt with this but often eschew it in favor of a more open-ended experimental approach that forgoes any discernible structure, which at times can lead to admittedly mixed results. But these two songs revel in it and are, as a result, the most successful pieces of music on the compiliation.

Other songs tend to lean one way or another in the balancing act of Wire’s musical spectrum; “Witch Hunt!!” by Black Andy is a nice sketch of what might serve as a slice of a larger work. There are some nice minimalist rhythms, as well as atonal intrusions by the synthesizer, and is one of the better tracks. Similarly, “Blood and Guts” by Bleeding Hands is a somewhat interesting little bit of lo-fi almost in the vein of early Redd Kross, and makes its point with a walls of guitars and synths overdriven until they are little more than furious sheets of white noise.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the pieces that delve very deeply into the synthesizer predilections, such as “Traps” by Todd Is New Each Moment, “Blood Angel” by Moondoon, and “Hause” by Mr. Owl. These three cross the line and lapse into dance, trance, rave, even disco-esque music. A wonderful use of synths is displayed on Matthew Carefully’s “Four Halloween Dreams” and Kite Person’s “Doom at the Door,” both of which manage to not overwhelm the listener with way too many layers of faux-instrumental nonsense, and in the case of Kite Person’s track even manages to smuggle in some beautiful, haunting (pun intended) vocal melodies.

Beyond the basic Wire, Magazine, Bauhaus et al. references there are a few songs that sound explicitly like other acts from around the same time period. That’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing; some of them can pull it off very well. The Grave Surfers turn in a pretty good tip of the hat to the Jesus & Mary Chain in “Sid & Necromancy,” right down to the laconic delivery of the Reid brothers. Swanfeeder is able to deftly ape some of the signature moves of the Birthday Party in their own “Show You,” where the production is claustrophobic with the lead guitar sounding like it was pulled from Dick Dale’s nightmares in the middle of a bad trip. The titular Ghoul Poon turns in “Hell Rides a White Horse,” which sounds almost exactly like something Eric Gaffney would’ve turned in to the early Sebadoh records; double-tracked vocals droning about dark subject matter over a sparse rhythm and meandering guitar leads.

Scattered throughout the album are four hip-hop tracks that fit in well with the same lyrical/musical themes. The best is definitely Oddy Gato’s ”Kings of Halloween.” Gato knows the elements of a successful track. Firstly, he seems to understand that good hip-hop comes not just from being able to rhyme but being able to produce a clever turn of phrase. Secondly, he doesn’t try to overextend himself by singing as well. Thirdly, it is short; once he has made his point and said his piece, he is done.

So, lots of stuff here, and depending on whether or not you have a soft spot in your heart for certain genres that were prevalent in the underground of the 1980s music landscape and are contemporaneously beloved by certain niche communities, then you will like this. Like most compilations that attempt a cross-section of a certain basic locality, there are bound to be a few songs that endear themselves to the listener more than others. Try to find the gems here, of which there is a good number, and you’ll be satisfied.

________________________________________________________________

Review by Liam McManus

Written and Directed by George A. Romero 

Cast:
Jan White: Joan Mitchell
Bill Thunhurt: Bill Mitchell
Joedda McClain: Nikki Mitchell
Ray Laine: Gregg Williamson
Ann Muffly: Shirley Randolph
Neil Fisher: Dr. Miller 

This is a little known gem by one of my favorite directors. I am guilty of being more familiar with his genre defining zombie movies, but have recently decided that I need to delve a little deeper into his other artistic endeavors. Pleasingly enough, I ran across Season of the Witch. I more often refer to it as Hungry Wives, Romero’s preferred title.

The movie begins with a dream like sequence that is somewhat confusing. Joan, riding in a car, following a man through the forest, passing herself swinging, carefree with a smile playing at her lips. The car parks, the man getting out and hooking the collar she is suddenly wearing with a leash and leading her from the car to a pen with other dogs. This beginning sequence sets the tone for the entire movie for Joan’s emotions and feelings about her life. Trapped and trained like a well behaved dog afraid of getting swatted with a rolled up newspaper.

Joan is a woman trapped in a domestic life. A not-unattractive middle-aged housewife in upper middle class society. Expected to play bridge, cook, clean and perform other seemingly menial tasks in her mundane and repetitive life. She sees herself in a mirror as a wrinkled and aging hag. She has come to the understanding that she is a woman past her prime, undesireable to men of any age.  In an attempt to cling to her youth and overcome the old woman in her reflection she delves into an extra-marital affair, witchcraft and murder.

The quality of the film itself is poor and the low budget is evident. Even the sound can sometimes be annoying in it’s constant fading in and out. However, the message, story and relatively decent performances given more than make up for it. If you have a little patience and a love for Romero’s vision on just about any given topic then I would recommend giving this film a watch.

Reviewed by April Oldag

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