- AKA “Burn, Witch, Burn”
- Directed by Sidney Hayers
- Written by Fritz Leiber Jr., Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson
- Stars Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair, Margaret Johnston
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEESFWr9h1c
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
There’s witchery afoot. Or is there? We wonder at first if it’s real magic or coincidence, but it becomes clearer what’s happening as it goes along. It’s very well acted, has an interesting script, and entertained.
Synopsis
We open on Hempnell Medical College. Normal Taylor writes “I do not believe” on the chalkboard. “This is how you stop all supernatural things.” He’s giving a lecture on superstitions and religion; he clearly doesn’t believe any of it. Margaret is the teacher’s pet, and Bill is the lazy student. Bill says Margaret is infatuated with her much older professor.
Harvey asks Norman if he and his wife Tansy are up for bridge tonight. Harvey’s wife is jealous of Tansy and Norman, the new professors in town. Norman might be promoted above Harvey, who’s been there forever. At home, Tansy complains about the jealous wives of Norman’s colleagues. She says she’d rather be in Jamaica. Norman laughs at Jamaican religions, which Tansy doesn’t appreciate.
They all play bridge, a game with no excitement whatsoever. Then they all break for coffee. Harold asks how Norman’s such a gifted professor, “Have you sold your soul to the devil?” Tansy flinches when she hears that. After the party, Tansy looks very upset, as there’s something she’s looking for but seems to have lost.
Norman goes upstairs, opens his dresser, and finds a jar with a dead spider in it. She says it’s a souvenir from their trip to Jamaica. It’s a good luck charm and why he’s so successful. After he goes to bed, she finds another spider and burns it in the ashtray.
The following day, Norman looks around for other “souvenirs” from Jamaica—and finds several. It looks like Norman’s wife is a witch.
Tansy comes home and finds all her spell-things spread out on the table. She admits she’s been doing witchcraft. She was doing spells to try to change the future. He’s simply flabbergasted that his wife believes such utter rubbish. She’s been protecting them both from the petty jealousy of the local people. It all started two years ago in Jamaica when Norman was dying after that terrible accident.
The two argue about the situation. He demands that she stop what he considers nonsense, but she’s terrified that bad things will happen to Norman if she doesn’t protect them. Norman gets his way, and they burn all her charms. He accidentally throws in a picture of himself, and she totally loses it. Not long after, a strange woman calls Norman. It’s a woman who says, “Norman, I need you.”
At school Monday, Bill confronts Norman for picking on him. Jeff thinks Norman wants Margaret for himself, but Norman seems surprised by the idea. Jeff talks about how Margaret behaved Saturday, and something clicks in Norman’s head about that phone call. The dean comes in, and he says that Margaret has accused Norman of violating her. Margaret is Flora’s ward; Flora is one of Norman’s colleagues.
Margaret says Norman raped her Saturday night, but he was home with Tansy. She admits that it was she who called him, “Something came over me. I hate you!” A little late, Bill comes in with a gun pointed at Norman. Norman tells him that Margaret recounted the story and then slaps him silly. “I’ll spread the truth about you; you won’t be able to get out of it!” Suddenly, Norman remembers Tansy and her “protections.” Could she have been right?
Norman gets home and finds that someone has sent him a tape of one of his lectures. Tansy tells him not to play it, but he does. It makes a strange sound, and she’s terrified. She turns it off; the phone rings, and the same sound is playing.
That night, Tansy does a ritual, “Let me die in his place.” Then she leaves him a recording that she’s leaving him. “I’ve gone away, so this terrible curse can no longer touch you. By midnight, this will all be over.”
Fiona comes over and says she saw Tansy heading for their country home. He zooms there, but traffic is heavy. He catches up to her bus, then runs off the road and wrecks the car.
By the time Norman gets to the country home, it’s getting late. He runs all over the place but cannot find her. He finds one of her black magic books, and it says that the ritual must be performed in “The house of the dead- the place of the dead.” He runs to the old nearby cemetery and breaks into a mausoleum.
She’s not there; she’s on the beach, walking into the ocean for her suicide.
Norman pulls out some candles and does his own ritual. Something moves behind him in the darkness—it’s s very wet Tansy.
Norman takes Tansy to the doctor, but she orders him to tell the doctor nothing about what happened. “Take me home!” She’s not dead, but she’s clearly still in shock or something.
In the middle of the night, Tansy goes to the kitchen and pulls out a big knife. She comes back to the bedroom and tries to stab Norman. He notices her limping strangely. We immediately cut to a pair of hands holding a voodoo doll. Norman stops the attack, and the hands drop the doll.
Norman storms to the college, where he goes through Fiona’s things. He remembers that she walks with a limp the same way Tansy had earlier. She comes into the office, and he confronts her. He pulls out the audio recording of his lecture, and that strange sound plays again. Fiona makes a face and then turns it off.
Norman still plays the whole thing off as hypnosis, but Fiona denies that. She was afraid of someone younger taking her place at the school. Fiona insists that it’s real witchcraft. She builds a house of cards on the table and then sets them on fire; back at home, Norman’s cat starts a fire. “Do you really believe your home is burning, Norman? Do you believe it?”
Norman says she’s raving mad and runs out. As he leaves, she turns the audio tape back, this time into the school’s PA system. As Norman runs to the car, he becomes terrified of the giant stone eagles placed everywhere on the campus. He sees one of them come to life and attack him.
Tansy wakes up and finds she’s locked inside a burning house.
The eagle bursts in through the door and chases Norman down the halls. It chases him into his classroom, where “I do not believe” is still written on the chalkboard. He hides in terror as the screaming bird approaches.
Lindsay enters Fiona’s office and switches the tape from PA to the room. Fiona looks terrified now and switches it off.
As Norman leaves the school, he notices the big doors are wholly intact, and the stone eagle is right where it always was. He gets home and finds Tansy out in the yard with many firemen. She’s OK, but the house is destroyed.
Lindsay says the dean has decided to give the promotion to Norman, but Fiona says he’ll change his mind. The colossal stone eagle falls as they leave the building and crushes her to death.
Commentary
The first choice for the role of Norman was Peter Cushing, but Cushing was too ill to attend filming.
It moves fast and stays interesting. There are a lot of “is it real or coincidence”-style bad things that happen to Norman once the magic charms are destroyed. Eventually, of course, we learn that there is real magic involved, but we don’t know about the second witch until very late in the story.