Burn, Witch, Burn

1962

Whenever I hear the phrase, “British thriller,” I normally think, this is going to be so boring because I won’t understand what they are saying and they always have dramatic scenes in cars on the wrong side of the road.

However, this thriller about a successful sociology professor with an oddly jittery wife is not boring at all, although they do drive on the wrong side of the road. I mean the movie starts with a blank screen and a voice casting an incantation on the audience to protect us from the evil spirits in the film. Way better prologue than “reading” things.

The movie begins with the professor, Norman teaching a class about the dangers and importance of debunking myths, witchcraft, superstitions, and homemade potions in the face of legitimate medicine and science. Most of his students are enamored with him during the class, but there is an especially annoying blonde suck-up who you can tell has a crush on him. This sounds awfully familiar to lots of other horror films, but this girl is definitely going to be more trouble than she is worth.

The movie continues with Norman talking to another colleague about setting up a bridge game that Friday night. Nothing sounds more like an event that needs some form of sorcery to happen then a game of bridge. This is where I thought the movie was going to be boring.

The next scene shows the colleague, named Lindsay and his wife, Flora (who also works at the college) along with his sister (maybe mother, it’s hard to tell in these black-and-white movies) who starts complaining about how terrible Norman and his wife are. Flora seems to give them the benefit of the doubt. Lindsay ignores it. But the angry woman keeps yammering on about how untruthful and terrible this couple is.

Doesn’t stop them all from attending a bridge game at the house. They all keep making jokes about “good luck charms” and “witchcraft” and Norman’s wife, Tansy, keeps giving knowing looks. As in, Shit, I’m a witch and my cover’s been blown, so I’m just going to pretend to be neurotic and crazy about this awesome bridge game we’re all having. You all know that look.

As the movie progresses, Norman and the audience slowly start to discover the extent of Tansy’s obsession with her “protective witchcraft.” She goes to their beach cottage to practice her skill which she has been honing for the past two years. It began when her husband had an accident on a vacation in Jamaica. They never really say what kind of “accident” but I’m going with wake-boarding and cock-fight gone wrong. Tansy states that the good professor was at death’s door, and although she didn’t ACTUALLY promise to trade his life for hers, she started thinking about all the good things she could do with her skills.

In Tansy’s mind, she was responsible for all of Norman’s success and advancement at the college. Which is odd, because his success comes calling witches “crazy” and superstitions “neuroses.” Obviously, Tansy doesn’t see the irony. However, Norman doesn’t see the connection when bad things start happening to them as soon as he makes Tansy burn everything “witchcraft related” in the house.

First, he is accused of rape by the love-struck blonde student, after she makes an obscene phone call to his house. His cat starts acting weird. The blonde girl’s boyfriend pulls a gun on him. His wife won’t listen to his boring lecture tapes. Then she leaves him to go kill herself. On his way to stop her, he gets in a car accident, but is unhurt, just delayed on his trip to stop his wife’s suicide mission. He finally arrives at their beach cottage, but can’t find her. Luckily for him, through his years of trying to discredit spells and charms, he is actually able to stop his wife by using spells and charms he studied so hard. Oh British irony, you’re hilarious.

Now “Catatonic Tansy” exists, though. Although less twitchy then regular Tansy, Norman doesn’t know what to do with her. Thankfully, a demon voice comes through and tells him to take her home. Norman happily and stupidly obliges, because as soon as he gets her home, she tries to kill him. However, during her “Snapped” moment, Norman notices that she is limping, just like his colleague Flora from the college.

Norman runs to the college to gather up evidence that he isn’t the crazy one now. He breaks into Flora’s office who of course isn’t far behind. You don’t take over someone’s body without knowing a thing or two about their whereabouts. When Norman confronts her, she just cackles (literally) then starts lighting some cards on fire and playing Norman’s extremely boring conference speeches over the intercom. Norman goes bat-shit crazy and starts running from the building. Then, things get interesting. Flora sics her stone eagle on him.

I don’t want to give away the ending, but let’s just say eagles are bad-ass and we should be proud that they are our nation’s freedom bird. As in, freedom from persecution of religion! I don’t want to say the moral of the story is, Witches be crazy, but seriously every woman in this movie is a certified nut-job by all clinical standards. And when you get a bunch of crazy women together trying to out-do each other, you get high school and this movie. Which are both scary enough for me to need another horror film break.