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Joan Fontaine (Rebecca, Suspicion) gave her final big screen performance in this horror/mystery about a school teacher who stumbles into a mystery involving a cult of witches and disappearing children. It was Fontaine who spearheaded the production, discovering Norah Lofts’ novel The Devil’s Own and bringing it to Hammer Films for adaptation. It’s a better-than-average Hammer film while the mystery builds, beginning with the town’s curious panic around an adolescent couple’s blooming romance and escalating with voo-doo dolls and murder. Fontaine carries the film admirably, determined to protect her students while overcoming her anxieties about witchcraft, a phenomenon that has already driven her to a nervous breakdown in the past. Kay Walsh is equally memorable as Fontaine’s most trusted friend and confidant in a town where everyone’s allegiance becomes increasingly questionable.
What knocks The Witches back a few steps is its goofy and anti-climactic final act. Fontaine is welcomed into a ceremony where the witches plan to sacrifice one of her virginal students. For some reason, the villains don’t see her as much of a threat. She quietly watches their long, choreographed ritual — a bizarre combination of dancing and orgiastic behavior that’s inadvertently hilarious. And then, at the last possible moment, she thwarts everything with a quick, sudden gesture that hardly feels worth the build-up.
Directed by Cyril Frankel (Never Take Candy from a Stranger), screenplay by Nigel Kneale (The Quatermass Experiment, First Men in the Moon). With Alec McCowen, John Collin, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, and Leonard Rossiter.