As you may have noticed, I use the word "trippy" to refer to a lot of the movies I talk about on here. Today's movie is essentially perfect for getting deep into the head of that adjective. This movie is nothing less than a waking nightmare, a dream in the dark. It has haunted me since I was a kid, and even to this day, I don't know if I've explored all of its mysteries, and I don't know if these mysteries exist beyond my head. But let's find out, when we travel together to The Witches' Mountain.
A lot of reviews I've seen for this movie highlight this movie's intro, and for good reason. A woman, whom we later learn is named Carla, comes home to her apparent mansion somewhere deep in the Spanish countryside. She discovers weird things scattered around her house, including a wig stabbed in the lawn with a knife, and eventually a dead cat. The apparent culprit is a precocious child named Gerta. Gerta is a creepy child done right, because she is never properly explained, and because Carla seems to be in her power, spending most of this opening scene desperately trying to bargain with her. Gerta basically says that she must take Carla to an unspecified location, which makes Carla extremely uncomfortable. The scene ends with Carla seemingly killing Gerta and herself by setting a gas fire.
Except after the credits (flushed with a creepy choir singing in an incomprehensible language), Carla is alive! She wants to get back together with her photographer boyfriend Mario, but Mario (who resembles his video game name-sharer if he was a '70s era college hipster) calls up his editor to cancel his vacation so he can get away from her. His boss sends him to take pictures of a lake on top of a mysterious, virtually-uninhabited mountain, and he accepts this job. His abandonment of Carla is never explained, but maybe he knows she's wrapped up in something supernatural. On his drive to the mountain, Mario picks up a girl whom he photographs nude, the laid-back and flirtatious Delia, played by the ever-charismatic horror queen Patty Shepard. She agrees to travel with him, even when he hallucinates weird music. The ensuing journey with lead them to a Marty Feldman lookalike innkeeper, inexplicable photos, and, of course, the coven of witches that is hidden at the mountain's peak.
And the whole time, the attentive audience is creeped the fuck out. If you focus--and can survive long periods of literally nothing happening--you can get easily sucked into the setting of the mountain. The dense jungles, the winding roads. People who like road trips through the middle of nowhere like I do (having been a ghost-hunter in the American Midwest) will find themselves lost in the scenery of rustic Spain, and the quietness of the evil present in the story makes it believable. That is to say, I totally believe that there are mountains in the far reaches of continental Europe where one can find strange things just like those depicted in this film. At least, I like to believe in them.
I wholeheartedly believe that The Witches' Mountain should be viewed as an artistic classic. It's a movie that relies on clues--it never says anything outright. The ending is hard to make out because of the poor video quality, but it's tied earlier to the scenes of the barbarian-man the witches have chained up in a cave. On my third viewing I realized the witches are holding up these chains to Mario, basically saying he'll be the next to wear them. Well, in some myths involving witches, the coven is composed entirely of women, who keep a single man as a prisoner basically to breed more witches and keep the coven alive. So that's what these witches do. And it's never expressly stated, never allowed to leave the shadows. It's a movie that's incredibly relaxing, and so maybe your brain turns off and lets you miss things. But if you can get into its rhythm, it'll sing to you.
Nostalgia brought me back to this one. I first watched it back in middle school after my aunt and uncle introduced me to Mill Creek Entertainment's 50 Chilling Classics pack, which contained the 1964 zombie classic, I Eat Your Skin, which I consider to be my first trash movie. My brother and I thought it was boring and we were right. But I remembered how the boredom and slowness really did take on that bizarre dreamy feeling, with a certain '70s trippiness to it. Years later in college I wanted to get creeped out by a "bad" movie. And so when I came back to this one, I was pleasantly surprised that while it was still a rough watch due to the pacing, there was enough to pay attention to it that it gave you the impression the people behind it cared. Perhaps they didn't care enough to make it in-your-face-exciting, but they left behind something gentler. Something worthy of checking out.
I've driven myself nuts trying to find out anything else about this film, including which mountain exactly it was shot on. I would love to visit the locales from this movie, especially the barebones inn run by the deaf not-Feldman (actually European creep-star Victor Israel, of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Hell of the Living Dead) or Delia's spooky old house. After all, it is a film about the dark secrets of the countryside, and so location is everything. I did manage to find an interview with director Artigot, wherein he talks about his movies facing censorship in Spain. Horror films that were deemed contrary to the religious goals of the Franco regime--and since we're talking trash, I should specify Francisco Franco, rather Jess--were heavily cut, especially if they involved themes like witchcraft. Artigot apparently also faced sabotage against his picture alongside these cuts, which removed some presumably-now-lost scenes involving nudity intended for more progressive foreign audiences. Discovering this stuff gave me a new look into the European horror scene in a way that didn't involve the Argento/Franco/Fulci/Mattei/Fragasso/D'Amato/Lenzi web of unification that you tend to find everywhere if you can bother to do enough research. As crazy as some of these movies got, they were also bound to rules that washed away those of lesser stamina. Raul Artigot, and The Witches' Mountain, held on, if anything because of a bootleg that formed the U.S. release.
Because a lot of my love of the movie comes from this external stuff, it is indeed a hard movie to enjoy. These meta-details don't help the film stand any stronger, and I would totally understand anyone falling asleep during it. If you show patience, though, the weird will leak out, and it will be good.
One last thing, in regards to the quality of the video, which is universal in every release I've seen: it is pretty bad. Consequently, I am super curious about the apparent HD print shown off in this YouTube video. If anyone out there has any information on this print, please let me know! Especially if it's linked to an updated release! In the meantime, watch what version you can find. The darkness works to good effect with the eeriness--even if you have to squint now and then.
P.S. Cihangir Gaffari, who plays Mario, also appeared in what appears to be a sexploitation Western called Seytan kan kusturacak, which translators tell me comes out to mean Satan Will Vomit Blood! This movie was made in 1972, just a year before its director, T. Fikret Ucak, made the world-famous 3 dev adam, aka Turkish Spider-Man vs. Santo and Captain America. I can only assume that Satan Will Vomit Blood is amazing and that I must find it immediately. (Ucak made another Western called Azrailin bes atlisi, which translates to, hell yes, The Five Horsemen of the Grim Reaper. And bless the lords of awesome names, this one's on YouTube!)
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