Burn, Witch, Burn!
Dir: Sidney Hayers.
Starring Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair & Margaret Johnston. 1962
Adapted from Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife, by Leiber, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, Burn, Witch, Burn! is an outstanding and
contemporary look at witchcraft. Blair is the practitioner, and Wyngarde is the
husband who tries to convince her that it’s all superstitious nonsense.
However, it’s Wyngarde whose perceptions end up altered.
Smart, entertaining and suspenseful, Burn, Witch, Burn! deserves more recognition, and is, in many ways,
a precursor to Rosemary’s Baby. Here,
however, the heroine’s husband refuses to believe in her power until he’s shown
otherwise. In fact, the film hints at the notion that women in general posses a
necessary power that men, through our blindness, refuse to acknowledge.
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