The Witch Who Came from the Sea

REVIEW
An eerie, low-character study that also manages to be among the most shocking and confrontational horror films of the era, The Witch Who Came From the Sea is undeniably a mixed bag: the screenplay (by lead actress Millie Perkins’ then-husband Robert Thom) is a rather jumbled, unfocused mishmash of half-developed themes and subtexts, and the film – while nominally a horror effort – contains little in the way of thrills or suspense. Yet the widescreen cinematography by then-newcomer Dean Cundey (a few years before he would serve as the regular D.P. for John Carpenter and then Steven Spielberg) is gorgeous, director Matt Cimber has shaped the material into a haunting, ethereal mood piece – and the lead performance by Millie Perkins is nothing short of remarkable; it’s not often one finds a performance in a low-budget genre work that is legitimately award-caliber, but Perkins is fantastic, and the film is worth seeing for her work alone.

She stars as Molly, a hard-drinking cocktail waitress whose mental instability ties itself into longing fantasies of her long-absent father, whom she romanticizes as a heroic sea captain (when the truth is far more tragic, and directly related to Molly’s madness). As Molly becomes more unhinged, she hallucinates wild sexual trysts with idolized NFL quarterbacks (a rather overlong sequence)…quarterbacks who later turn up castrated in real life. A party encounter with a fading television actor also ends violently, and it’s unsurprising how Molly’s new idol-worship romance with a TV commercials actor might turn out (particularly since he advertises razor blades…). Cimber is not particularly a director known for great subtlety – his other work includes sexploitation efforts like Man and Wife (1969) and The Sensuous Female (1970), and later minor blaxploitation entries such as The Black Six (1974) and Candy Tangerine Man (1975) – so the degree of atmosphere he brings to Witch is somewhat surprising, and very integral to the film’s 70s-time-capsule appeal.

But it’s Perkins who really makes the film essential viewing – delivering a performance of raw vulnerability (both emotionally and physically, as she also spends at least a quarter of the running time topless), the actress effortlessly interweaves pathos and rage, tenderness and cruelty. Witch is not without its considerable flaws, but it remains recommended viewing for 70s genre film buffs regardless.