Review #77: 'The Witch Who Came from the Sea' (1976)

Molly (Millie Perkins) is a girl who is haunted by a childhood of sexual abuse at the hands of her now dead father. These images are however, repressed by her, and she constructs a fantasy world where he did in fact die at sea - as he was an explorer of the sea. This we later find out is drawn from the euphemistic term Molly's father used to describe the abuse: "Molly, lets get lost at sea".

This fantasy that Molly creates is also perpetuated in sequences that almost appear as if they are happening only in her broken mind. After seeing a couple of professional footballers on the TV (she describes them - and other men - as beautiful creatures to her two nephews), she seems to drift into a day-dream in which she ties the two up to a bed, in a pre-empted plan for sexual endeavour, but she proceeds to cut the penis off of one with a razor blade. As we later discover, these two footballers actually died. Whilst we are certain as an audience that Molly surely did this act, we seem to have no hard evidence of this. Is Molly simply imagining this?

The film is punctuated with short, and increasingly graphic depictions of Molly's rape as a child by her father. These haunting sequences are exacerbated by the increasing volume and amount of perpetual seagull noises filtered through an echo effect. As these moments become more frequent, we find out that Molly's father died of a heart attack during an attack on her. So in Molly's own mind, as her father died during this act - an act he has a euphemistic phrase for - did indeed die at sea.

Molly floats somnambulistically through the majority of this film. She seems almost not to be aware of the events that she is involved in. We seem to follow this path too. But we are also aware of her increasing breakdown. She becomes more erratic and confused about the people around her. She seems obsessed with television, and its ability to display the most beautiful people.

This is no masterpiece, not by a long shot. But it is an interesting piece of cinema. Director Matt Cimber (who has made no other work of significance) unfolds the rapid mental breakdown with a little bit of style. The production values aren't the best, but they are suitable for the content. I did enjoy its mix of seeming supernatural and grindhouse-style elements. It almost plays like a lost and degraded artifact of horror/art-house cinema.

This film bizarrely made it onto the UK's video nasties list (or at least the DPP list), where I can only assume was clustered with the more horrific films (such as 1972's Last House on the Left, 1977's I Spit on Your Grave) due to it's quite intense, but never graphic depictions of male castration.


Directed by: Matt Cimber
Starring: Millie Perkins, Lonny Chapman, Vanessa Brown
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy