No sooner do we dig up an old review for this horror masterpiece, than StudioCanal remasters it with a 4K scan and Kino adds some quality extras — just in time to start off the CineSavant Halloween season. College professor Peter Wyngarde refuses to believe that his missus Janet Blair has secured his high academic roost through witchcraft, but the lesson comes home with a vengeance when he throws away her amulets, potions and herbs — others on the faculty see an opening to throw malicious hexes his way. If you don’t like supernatural stories, it’s a dandy substitute for college politics, which as we all know can be vicious!  We’re even surprised by some startling special effects — this has to be director Sidney Hayers’ crowning achievement (next to Circus of Horrors, of course).

Burn, Witch, Burn
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1962 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 90 min. / Night of the Eagle / Special Edition / Street Date October 01, 2024 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair, Margaret Johnston, Anthony Nicholls, Colin Gordon, Kathleen Byron, Reginald Beckwith, Jessica Dunning, Norman Bird, Judith Stott, Bill Mitchell.
Cinematography: Reginald Wyer
Art Director: Jack Shampan
Costumes: Sophie Devine
Film Editor: Ralph Sheldon
Original Music: William Alwyn
Screenplay by Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, George Baxt from the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber Jr.
Executive Producer: Samuel Z. Arkoff
Produced by Albert Fennell
Directed by Sidney Hayers

“And now, with a free mind and a protected soul, we ask you to enjoy  Burn, Witch, Burn.”

A genuine horror gem, one of those supernatural pictures that actually ‘has something to say,’ is back in a new remaster just in time for Halloween, with a new audio commentary to boot. Sidney Hayer’s show investigates how superstition works and why it has power over people. It is both spooky and intelligent — the main characters are thinking adults with conflicts common to any college faculty. More than once I’ve thought, boy, it wouldn’t take much to make blood flow at the average University…”  It goes without saying that college folk love this movie.

American-International pictures, believe it or not, had nothing against quality productions if they could be made cheaply. Burn, Witch, Burn sees the ambitious company providing good English filmmakers with American distribution as well as the celebrated horror / Sci-fi screenwriters Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson. The resulting thriller gets high marks in every department. In theaters it worked audiences into a creepy panic; a 1974 L.A. County Museum of Art screening elicited applause from a packed audience. It’s perhaps the most respected feature from the prolific Sidney Hayers, a director who eventually segue’d into a long TV career. Hayers’ other scare classic is a whole different kettle of shocks: 1960’s highly successful, highly recommended mix of sex and gore Circus of Horrors.

The alignment of talent and opportunity that allowed the creation of Burn, Witch, Burn was indeed providential. Matheson and Beaumont collaborated on the script as a spec project and then sold it to the studio; Richard Matheson’s good relationship with A.I.P. president Jim Nicholson was probably a big help. Nicholson and Arkoff subcontracted the actual production to the Brits. The original English title Night of the Eagle sounds suspiciously like Jacques Tourneur’s superb Night of the Demon, known to U.S. viewers as Curse of the Demon. The stories are superficially similar, as both involve the summoning of a demon from Hell. But Burn is sourced from an old novel by Fritz Leiber, an author often promoted by Forrest J. Ackerman. Way back in 1944 it had been adapted as a B-picture for Universal’s ‘Inner Sanctum’ series, Weird Woman.

To Believe or Not to Believe.

The peerless Curse of the Demon took a step back from matinee thrills to examine the nature of superstition. Its hero is a rational skeptic who wants to expose a devil cult as a fraud, a con job using fear and intimidation … ‘Macabre, Incorporated.’  Burn, Witch, Burn offers the same idea in an even more personal context. Another protagonist dedicated to the suppression of superstition clashes with his own wife, who practices voodoo-like black magic picked up on a sojourn in Jamaica. With so many irrational (let’s be honest: flat-out stupid) ‘belief systems’ given credence in today’s culture, the hero’s domestic problem isn’t at all that unusual.

The setting is a provincial English college, complete with ivy on the walls. Professor Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde) teaches his medical school class the sociology of belief in primitive superstitions, and is dismayed when he discovers that his lovely wife Tansy (Janet Blair) is practicing black magic right in their college lodgings. Norman bullies Tansy with his anti-hoodoo fervor. He scoffs at her claim that her spells and charms counter ‘evil forces’ and are responsible for his good fortune at the college.

Refusing to believe that other faculty members harbor hostility toward him, Norman burns Tansy’s talismans, sachets, totems and other grotesque items. His personal fortunes take an immediate flip-flop. A female student (Judith Stott) accuses Norman of seducing her, and a male student threatens him with a gun. A truck almost runs him down. The administration begins to turn against Norman. His faith in rationality shaken, his livelihood in jeopardy, Norman comes home to discover Tansy missing. She has left a note saying she plans to offer her own life to save his, in a rite she once saw demonstrated in Jamaica.

The old joke is that Academic rivalries are vicious because So Little is at stake.

With its collegiate setting Burn, Witch, Burn brings the diabolical even closer to everyday reality than did Tourneur’s film. Even without witchcraft, the average college faculty is already a simmering cauldron of envy, bitterness and passive-aggressive rivalries. Norman and Tansy host a bridge game with an openly hostile professor’s wife, played by Kathleen Byron of Black Narcissus fame. Norman’s peers remark on his status as the golden boy of the faculty, the new man who will more likely than not leapfrog the seniority line and win the department chair. He doesn’t realize that it’s all a cover for their resentment.

Norman’s real enemy is the catty, insinuating professor Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston, of The Psychopath). Ms. Carr walks with a limp. She’s a bitter backstabber with a grudge against life in general, like one of the coffee-klatch coven folk in Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim. The difference is that Flora is also a scheming madwoman, drunk with her ability to summon Satanic powers.

We understand the character dynamics without special explanations. Tansy goes to market like a normal housewife but also leaves her little charms stashed everywhere. She is terrified to discover that one of their bridge night guests has hidden a counter-charm in their salon. When Norman burns Tansy’s defenses in the fireplace, Flora Carr’s hexes run wild. Not until Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby would we be invited to seriously consider random bad events as part of a concerted conspiracy of black magic. An appropriate short subject to accompany this movie might be Tex Avery’s cartoon Bad Luck Blackie.

Reginald Wyer’s sharp camera movements and tight, tense angles show he and director Hayers working at their best. Lighting changes express Tansy’s inner panic and Flora’s malicious enthusiasm. By the third act it appears that all the forces of darkness have been aligned against Norman. Do first-time viewers guess what’s coming by the repetition of shots of the stone decorations on the college ramparts?

The film doesn’t explain all of its magic, at least not to this thickheaded viewer. Norman appears to break one spell by making a gesture of faith in a lonely crypt, but I’m not at all sure why a recording of his voice should be so effective in the final act. If that were so, Father Merrin could just distribute a podcast with his voice shouting “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Beezelbub’s minions would be neutralized, everywhere.

It’s no matter, for Burn, Witch, Burn ratchets up the tension with great skill. Although neither as elegant nor as poetic as Jacques Tourneur’s earlier film, Hayers’ tightly organized visuals prep us to jump to the next level of menace. The movie’s grip is so tight that audiences jump at the sight of a single telling shot, when Tansy walks just a little bit strangely.

Both theater audiences I saw the movie with applauded at the conclusion. The hoodoo-voodoo thrills cover up the fact that the script faults ’emotional’ females twice over: first for foolishly believing in black magic, and then for weaponizing it. Tansy says she’s protecting Norman, but she’s really cheating for him. For every advance and promotion Norman ‘earns,’ an equally deserving candidate may be getting the shaft. Does Burn, Witch, Burn simply acknowledge the cynical reality of adult life?  If the consensus is that everything is rigged, only fools and martyrs play by the rules.

But there’s no need for us to lose our sense of humor. Burn, Witch, Burn is a great show for those of us that enjoy the romantic witchcraft comedy Bell, Book and Candle. Why didn’t some Manhattan Van Helsing stake the horrid devil-worshippers Kim Novak, Elsa Lanchester and Jack Lemmon through their pagan hearts?  Well, anybody would spare Kim Novak.

The beautiful Janet Blair makes an excellent Faculty Wikkan. The Hollywood actress might not be amused to know that she’s now remembered more for Burn, Witch, Burn than her near-classic comedy My Sister Eileen. Peter Wyngarde is the most body-proud sociology professor we ever saw. The actor’s contract must have stipulated that he gets to play a percentage of his scenes with his shirt off. The movie successfully aligns Norman’s skeptical arrogance with his overall vanity.

Margaret Johnston has a lark with the plum role of the eccentric Flora Carr.  ↓  Any self-respecting college department has at least one ‘interesting’ personality like her; larger institutions generate all kinds of crazies, good and bad. If actor Reginald Beckwith seems familiar it’s because he also plays the kooky Mr. Meek in Curse of the Demon. Neither he nor the talented Kathleen Byron is given the screen time they deserve, unfortunately. Lovely Judith Stott made few movies but leaves a strong impression as the student infatuated with Norman, who seems compelled to denounce him. Does the movie inadvertently suggest that female accusers of molestation are hysterics acting under mind control?

Unlike some Kino discs, KL Studio Classics’ Blu-ray of Burn, Witch, Burn is not a simple reissue. We eagerly double back to bring attention to it. StudioCanal has remastered the film from a new 4K scan. The resulting image is cleaner and more stable than before. Cameraman Reginald Wyer (Unearthly Stranger) takes advantage of the pleasing English light, with soft grays and few hard shadows in exteriors. The night exteriors show off creative lighting schemes; some midnight doings on a remote beach display excellent dusk-for-night work.

Previous discs just had the American version of the film, and sometimes added the English title sequence as an extra. This 2024 edition gives us both versions separately. The frightened eye behind the Night of the Eagle UK title is a live-action element, which becomes a still image for the A.I.P. version. The American title isn’t spelled consistently between the film and its poster — on film prints it reads Burn, Witch, Burn but the dramatic poster art removes the commas. Or at least, some posters do.  →

It’s a silly detail, but we’re not sure why the American IMDB lists the show as Night of the Eagle … they almost always substitute U.S. release titles.

American-International wisely decided that the show needed no editorial changes, but comparing the two version yields a couple of major alterations. Some credits vary in the title sequences.  Writers Matheson and Beaumont took the issue of credits to the WGA; the ruling was they would get sole billing in the U.S. while George Baxt would keep his credit in the U.K.  The American final card “Do you believe?” is in Night of the Eagle a simple “The End”. The A.I.P. version includes a vocal introduction spoken over black by Paul Frees. It was routinely dropped from TV broadcasts but re-introduced on a laserdisc release from around 1996-97. Frees’ quavering, menacing voice would soon be strongly identified with Disney’s Haunted Mansion theme park ride. The grim speech, a kind of exorcism, was a perfect mood-setter for kids primed for a take-no-prisoners spook show, even if it is delivered in a spirit altogether different from the fairly sophisticated thrills that follow:

“You may doubt the effectiveness of these spells, but through every civilization, people have believed in witches. Could they all be wrong? I don’t think so. For I have seen its power proved too many times. I am now about to dispel all evil spirits that may radiate from the screen during this performance!”

More good news: earlier disc presentations including Kino’s had some distorted dialogue, especially in the first reel. Strongly affected was Paul Frees audio prologue — the track was distractingly sibilant and ‘crunchy.’ The remaster must have directed some expert attention to the problem, as the voice tracks are now much better, almost entirely fixed.

Kino carries over an old Richard Matheson commentary from the laserdisc days. His comments seem spotty at first, but he eventually tells the entire story of the show’s making. He has fond words for the film and especially his friend and writing partner Charles Beaumont. Matheson earned only $5,000 for a couple of his Poe pictures, amounts adjusted with bonuses from James Nicholson.

Also present is a previously-seen interview with actor Peter Wyngarde. Unlike some representations on discussion boards, he comes off as no more self-obsessed than any other actor. He shares some good memories of the shoot. Then we get trailers for both releases. They aren’t sold that much differently, but one emphasizes the film’s eagle more.

The new extra is an audio commentary from Tim Lucas, a track that offers a nice series of surprises. Tim sees other differences in the audio track, noting that A.I.P. gave William Alwyn’s music a more dynamic mix. Near the end of his talk he acknowledges that the movie is one of the best horror pictures of the 1960s, an adult, intelligent thriller. The name ‘Tansy’ is short for Tanith, Tim says, making a very apt classical allusion. Burn Witch Burn rewards Tim’s analytical approach — it is overloaded with content begging for interpretation. He says that the only edge Hammer films had on Hayers’ movie were monsters … but we get a pretty good one in the frightening last reel.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Burn, Witch, Burn
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Commentary by Tim Lucas
Commentary by Richard Matheson
Interview with Peter Wyngarde
Two the-west-wing-martin-sheen-melissa-fitzgerald-book-anniversary
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September 29, 2024
(7197burn)

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