The Witch's Mountain

The Witch's Mountain from the early 70's is a cluster mess of a movie. I kept holding out hope that it would improve since it had some potential for some great creepy moments, but it never delivers anything but utter confusion. I honestly still have no idea what happened.

Mario, a handsome, young photographer is headed up to the mountains to take some pictures. Along the way he picks up Delia, a sunbathing beauty who, for reasons unknown, decides to go on this trip with him at the drop of a hat. Strange things begin happening their first night in the mountains, and an innkeeper warns them of danger, yet they press on.

Events lead them to a very old village inhabited only by on old woman – at least seemingly so, for when Mario photographs the surrounding areas people that weren’t present appear in the developed images. The area is actually inhabited by witches. Can Mario and Delia escape their clutches?

A combination of low budget, bad writing, bad directing/editing, and bad acting (this is a dubbed foreign language film, and dubbed movies frequently lose something in translation anyway especially if they are obscure) renders most of the movie unintelligible. I have no idea what the opening scenes are all about, and I have no idea what happened at the end. I don’t know what the witches were after or if they got it. I don’t know what Mario thought he accomplished or what he intended. Looking back it almost feels like I watched a movie that wasn't actually ever translated into a language I could understand.

The only thing good about this movie is some of the mountain settings. The old village looks very cool, particularly the old woman’s house. Some of the moments in this location are borderline creepy . Beyond that I can’t think of anything praise worthy.

The actions are often unbelievable. For example, Mario is looking for Delia in one scene. He goes inside, gets spooked, and runs back to the car. Delia is in the car and Mario acts like he expected her to be there. No “oh, there you are” or “where were you?” or any reaction to her whatsoever. He jumps in and hits the gas as if there were no question she would be there. What's up with that?

There's an odd opening scene that involves a child killing a cat and a woman setting a fire with no follow up to any of it. Suddenly she's at her boyfriend's house wanting to spend time with him but getting dumped (for unknown reasons) instead. Slight spoiler here, but the closet thing we get to an explanation is that she's evidently part of the witch coven.

The movie is full of head-scratching moments like this.

As if that all weren’t bad enough the music is horrendous. It's the horrible witch theme song mostly getting blasted at high volume many times. Awful awful awful.

I'm not up on my Spanish actors, but the name Patty Shepard sounded familiar to me. I'm not sure why, I can't find anything in her list of credits that sounds familiar, but maybe I missed something amongst all the titles I can't translate. John Gaffari, on the other hand, has been in a couple of other things I've seen but not in any capacity that has ever caused me to notice him. I'll forget who he is soon enough after writing this review.

MORALITY:

There is some mild violence and some unrealistic animal violence.

There is a very quick flash of nudity but virtually nothing sexual.

There is little if any strong language.

The characters, particularly Mario, like to smoke a lot.

SPIRITUALITY:

We are dealing with witches who have some sort of real power, but we never get much detail. Don't mess with witches!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

If you want a good mystery watch this thing and see if you can piece together what the story is supposed to be. Otherwise steer clear.

#TheWitchsMountain