I can just imagine the director on this Roger Corman campy but obscure horror film with Satanic overtones, going to actors Allison Hayes, Val Dufour, Pamela Duncan, Billy Barty and Richard Garland, and insisting that they over-emote and sneer and snarl and do everything including chew the scenery. It's an absolute hoot, a fun bad movie, one they might have thrown popcorn at in the movie theater after paying their quarter or $.50 to get a ticket. It's the type of film that reminds me of the scene in "Ed Wood" where the Paramount executive believes that somebody played a practical joke on him after Wood dropped off reels of "Glen or Glenda". Seemingly told through the eyes of Satan himself (Richard Devon, complete with pitchfork and G.C. Murphy's 1950's style Halloween costume), this takes Duncan (given the soapy character name of Diana Love in the current day sequences) back to the middle ages where she finds herself escaping from prison while waiting to be beheaded for being believed to be a witch.
Through some back story thanks to hag witch Dorothy Neumann (looking like a witch thrown off of Living Island by Witchi-Poo and "Head Witch"), the viewer learns these witch's stories, a convoluted account of curses being passed down from their witch mothers, several of whom became beautiful (Duncan and Hayes) and Neumann condemned to look like Margaret Hamilton's hag in "Comin' Round the Mountain". There's an evil British night (Garland), a feisty midget (Barty) and a rivalry between Duncan and Hayes for Neumann which will lead them straight to the gallows. The modern story has Duncan being hypnotized by Val DuFour and the warnings that evil from the past might just come to the present because of the sinister revelations yet to come. It's made so cheaply that I expected the castles and fake trees of the woods to sway out of vibrations on the set. But there's something endearing about something made so badly that it's impossible to take seriously, even if the beheading scene towards the end makes you grimace. My question though: how many heads can one basket hold? Nobody seemed to be removing them (or the rest of the body) after the grand executioner swung his blade down on the panicking person's neck.
Through some back story thanks to hag witch Dorothy Neumann (looking like a witch thrown off of Living Island by Witchi-Poo and "Head Witch"), the viewer learns these witch's stories, a convoluted account of curses being passed down from their witch mothers, several of whom became beautiful (Duncan and Hayes) and Neumann condemned to look like Margaret Hamilton's hag in "Comin' Round the Mountain". There's an evil British night (Garland), a feisty midget (Barty) and a rivalry between Duncan and Hayes for Neumann which will lead them straight to the gallows. The modern story has Duncan being hypnotized by Val DuFour and the warnings that evil from the past might just come to the present because of the sinister revelations yet to come. It's made so cheaply that I expected the castles and fake trees of the woods to sway out of vibrations on the set. But there's something endearing about something made so badly that it's impossible to take seriously, even if the beheading scene towards the end makes you grimace. My question though: how many heads can one basket hold? Nobody seemed to be removing them (or the rest of the body) after the grand executioner swung his blade down on the panicking person's neck.