The Witches Mountain (1973)

Back in the early and mid-70s, I delved into the effects of certain mind altering substances that resulted in what the hipsters called "Tripping".Said substances made, for me, the watching of TV a strange experience. The artificiality of adults play-acting was so apparent that I could not, even with the finest and most recommended of productions,(2001: A Space Odyssey, for example.), surrender my disbelief enough to give a whit about the storyline. I just saw adults stumbling around dioramas like lunatics lost in a museum."So?", you ask? Since being in that state usually had nothing to do with sitting around watching TV, my experiences were usually relegated to the wee hours when I got home and out of habit switched on the TV.By some cosmic joke of serendipity, the last 4 times my psychedelic experience coincided with TV viewing, this movie was on the local late night UHF movie show.If regular broadcasts confounded me, this one did the same with a mind-blowing power. "Huh? Wut? Did that just happen? What are they doing? His distributer is in his pocket? Chastity belts? What happened in the cave? Look at that mustachio!" I haven't seen it since, but it has retained a certain monumental presence on my mental landscape.Well, I just got a $5.99 collection of 20 horror(?) movies called, UNDEAD: THE VAMPIRE COLLECTION, which features this chunk of movie gristle. It's rated R, so I'm hoping it's an uncut version, which might give it some sort of continuity. As well as providing the comforting presence of mammalian exclamation points.Much lazier in my mental gymnastics these days, I plan to simply get baked and see how the ride goes. If the above reviews are accurate, I most probably won't have any better luck finding a lick of sense in it's JOURNEY INTO HORROR! AHROOOOOOO! SCARY! So, I'll leave you now. If anything of significance occurs to me in the experience, I'll amend this non-review.Thank you for your time.

I couldn't make sense of this film much of the time, and neither could anyone else, based on other reviews. The opening scene of this film has virtually nothing to do with the rest of the story. In it, a photojournalist with a big mustache cancels his vacation to get away from his girlfriend. He is assigned to photograph a mountain range. It's rumored to be haunted, but I couldn't tell whether he heard that from his boss or later in the film. On his way, he meets a beautiful writer (Patty Shepard) and convinces her to join him on his working trip. Throughout the film, there is this terrible music score, mostly consisting of noisy chanting that makes you want to scream "SHUT UP ALREADY!!!" What really will gall a person is that the film always seems like it's about to become good, though it never does. There is beautiful mountain scenery and some genuinely creepy atmosphere. The inn and the silent, abandoned old buildings scattered on the mountain are rather ominous. The foggy nights look real, not like someone put an artificial fog machine on the set. And the idea, while not original, had potential. But it never does improve, at least not enough to be worthwhile. Here's how it goes, more or less. They stop at this inn run by a weird innkeeper (you expect him to be named Igor) with a hearing problem. There is a scene where the writer thinks a peeping tom is in her window, but the scene is so dark, I had no idea what was going on. Whether this was poor lighting or a poor film transfer is unknown to me. In any event, we never find out know what happened. There is a scene where she wanders off during the night. Whether she is sleepwalking or mesmerized by the witches of the title is never explained. Another scene which is never explained is when their car is stolen, then found again, with nothing stolen. They wind up in this apparently abandoned mountain village whose sole inhabitant is this seemingly kindly old woman. There are other things, including a chained wild man in a cave who is never explained, an attempt to sacrifice the writer in some way (will they kill her or brainwash her into joining them?), the witches themselves, a bunch of brunette women in white robes who don't show up until the last 15 minutes of the film and whose practices and beliefs are never explained. Even the closing scene doesn't make any sense. When all is said and done, most people will be saying, "Huh?"

I admit, I had to fast forward through this poorly transferred DVD after about 30 minutes -- NOTHING was happening, and everyone has already described the "plot." But has anyone mentioned the opening scene -- a butcher knife is stabbed through a wig and it's impaled on the grass in the front yard! I'm guessing the bratty kid did it, put it's never explained. Really trippy opening.I wish this had been a better written or thought out film, because what we're left with if pretty daft and a movie that makes no sense isn't a "clever" movie, it's just a poorly executed film.I would like to see a cleaned up version and if there was any missing footage, I would like to see if it would help. Otherwise, this is an odd little film that is best if fast-forwarded through!

The strikingly comely Patty Shepard portrays a lovely sprite writer who along with jerky hairball photographer John Caffari discovers an evil coven of wicked witches living on a remote mountainside. Naturally, said coven have designs on making poor imperiled Patty their next sacrificial victim. Writer/director Raul Artigot (a cinematographer who shot "The Demons" for Jess Franco) trots out all the standard endearingly hokey scare tactics: an annoying little girl gets torched in the shocking pre-credits epilogue, shrieking black mass incantations on the soundtrack, bothersome black cats that turn into people, unsung character actor Victor Israel (the whistling train baggage handler in "Horror Express") as a creepy near deaf innkeeper, dense, all-encompassing fog, even mysterious sinister hooded figures roaming the misty woods at night! Ramon Sempere's exquisitely expansive photography and the ripely verdant countryside scenery give this likably clumsy outing an eye-filling picturesque look. Nice quintessentially 70's downbeat ending, too. Overall, this picture sizes up as a pleasingly atmospheric, if rather talky and leisurely paced fright flick programmer.