Witchcraft '70 (1970)

The ultimate of infamous 60's shockumentaries, featuring fake native rituals, set-up occult ceremonies... and even couple of original rites from around the world. Italian director – Luigi Scattini, delivers gibberish footage from Europe, Asia and South America with a lurid voice-over meant to spike up the thrills. This basket of sleazy exploits was produced by Italians and initially titled "Angeli Bianchi, Angeli Neri", but when distibution got handled by Trans American Films ("Hallucination Generation"), it was repackaged as "Witchcraft '70" in USA and "The Satanists" in UK. In both countries it played as a typical exploitation picture, fixed for the youth market by yellow journalism sort of narration and sordid publicity. The topic at the time had all heads up with rising coverage of Manson's Family activity, great popularity of sexploitation movies and the success of "Rosemary's Baby". A right time to cash on satan related nonsense indeed!

Although this material was never praised seriously enough by anyone to become a big classic, much less a reponsible study of the subject, it got through the door of many occult movies collections anyway as a sort of B-class oddity. If you wonder, where's the contemporary lure, there's a rare opportunity to see on the screen such cult individuals as Anton Szandor LaVey or Alex Sanders. However, on the concept level this stuff is so miserable, that laughing might become difficult. Couple of absurd spoken sentences might bend you down a bit, but in general there's not much quirky humour going here. It's a blatant exploitation after all – a marathon of storytelling drivel, which unfortunately doesn't have much of a genuine, ritual footage to cover, instead packed in with so called tourist ceremonies - acted and directed versions of occult, tribal and religious rites, which overemphasize carnal elements and produce "sacred hysteria" going after Western expectations.



Not all of the sequences are fake though, but the real ones like a possession of a woman from south of Italy, who's mounted by spirit of Alberto and is thus able to pass the messages from the other world, are not very funky unfortunately. The same applies to "secretly captured on 8 mm camera" Candomble & native Indonesian ceremonies. The most valuable thing about this inane pile of bullshit seems capturing Alex Sanders and his wiccan coven's activities. This is one of very few video materials featuring this mythical personality, once called "King of the Witches" in England, who founded his own branch of wicca in schism with the original Gardnerian order. He let the crew watch his wiccan marriage ceremony, revealing the temple and his sky-clothed coven. Camera rolls while he's closing the circle with a sword and then kissing the body of The Goddess, but after that turns to shooting all the nice tits around!

But that's what this shockumentary is about (and the whole subgenre in general) – mixing sensational agenda about Satan worshippers popping up like popcorn all around the world with shots of naked cultists... and their beautiful breasts on the first plan. I don't know how successful this stuff was in drive-ins (or on TV), but it's dimy setting, paternal tone and rather slick pitch do not make for much entertainment nowadays. It's true, that they show some nice pieces of ass and from today's perspective nobody cares if they belong to a satanist, wiccan, hoodooist, neopagan or an Amish dropout. Still, narration is a real downslope, an essence of worn out gibberish, but there's an option of turning off the volume, if nothing else comes to mind. You might also try to read a book and turn your eyes when you hear something exceptionally gross, which happens every 15 minutes.

If you're here for LaVey, he comes on the screen by the end of this showcase opening the door of his San Francisco temple and then performing one of these famous pop-satanic rituals in his legendary outfit with flashing red horns on the top. Fascinating indeed! Nevertheless, from a necessary distance „Witchcratft '70” salacious agenda opens up to an interesting, off-screen analysis of the late 60's – creation of modern satanism by Anton Szandor LaVey, rising force of neopagan movement, exemplified by wicca covens in Great Britain and USA, sudden appeal of hybrid possession cults and the exposure of dark underbelly of the 60's counterculture, honked up by the media after Manson's Family gruesome acts. You definitely need to go around with this flick!

Full movie

Night Tide (1961)

Although Curtis Harrington's B-movie debut got slightly dusted with time and is rarely being revisited by movie geeks nowadays, it's off-beat, dreamy atmosphere and occult undercurrent combined with avant-garde cinematography, make it a perfect film challenge for those digging in vintage obscurities and forgotten gems. Made on a shoestring budget and filmed on a location in Venice Beach, California in glorious black & white, "Night Tide" was released in 1961 by American International Pictures and instantly flopped. From perspective of today it doesn't seem strange, because it wasn't much of a cheesy, drive-in flick, providing whole lot of cheap thrills by default like 15 ft women, teenage werewolves, giant crabs or octopusses from outer space – typical exploitation themes for late 50's early 60's AIP repertoire.

By filming a soft mystery, we couldn't grasp till the end and that never would be fully explained, Harrington sparked off instead an occult thriller, which harnessed esoteric tools like Tarot, Greek mythogy and Hitchcockian suspense via experimental cinema tools which he mastered well working with Peter Hamid, Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger on their legendary shorts and then making his own experimental works. In fact, Curtis Harrington was one of Anger's closest friends taking part in "Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome" (1954) together with other occultists belonging to Agape Lodge of O.T.O. - para-masonic order dedicated to practising Thelemic group rituals of Aleister Crowley. It's when shooting the movie with Anger, he got to meet Marjorie Cameron – John W. Parson's wife – whom he later invited to act as a witch from the sea in "Night Tide".

The whole plot of the film, which draws American sailor on a leave in a seaside town (Dennis Hopper) meeting a beautiful girl working in the circus (Linda Lawson), who he finds out soon is a dangerous femme fatale with an account of two lost boyfriends, both killed in an unusual accident, being herself deeply convinced to be a siren, plays out fundamentally in The Dream Time – a space and time continuum, where imagination is as real as flesh and bone. Harrington's cinematographic experiment with possibilities of setting the action in a sacred space is generally outlined by drifting characters of this bizarre game – sailor, circus people (with retired English captain as a siren show master), witch from the sea and finally the siren herself (girl who doesn't know neither where she came from nor where she's going to). These faint silhouettes – despite their soap bubble quality – pull the viewer deeply into the neverland, where he's supposed to confront the subconscious eye in the eye... exactly what Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren proclaimed in their own works.



Except occult musings, this fascinating film could be seen as a sort of late beat generation offshoot definitely owing a lot to beat experiments with form. It's countercultural derivation becomes strikingly evident in the first scene, when main character randomly meets his soon to be object of desire in a jazz cafe starting out a casual conversation, while bebop jazz is played live in the background. The whole frame of two people just kind of hanging out and falling in love could be actually seen as very beat – it just happened "on the road". Although "Night Tide" has a very tight narration, based on a sound screenplay, Harrington favours rather picturing atmosphere, using minimal dialogues, which serve mostly as the only anchors of a firm reality – barely an offset of The Dream Time. That's where he comes in fact near to Maya Deren's ritual masterpieces like "Meshes Of The Afternoon" or "Ritual In Transfigured Time", which hold onto life of the subconscious in an intriguing manner, with an exception that the latter ones drop linear structure totally.

After all, "Night Tide" is a very unusual picture staying off the rails by going B-movie strictly down the experimental line. Worth noticing is Dennis Hopper's acting as well, rarely brought up in any summary of his – however you wanna look at it – long film career. He's still pretty far from this outrageous, jibbery, drug-fueled style of late 60's, that went on the record around The Glory Stompers" (1968). Here he goes completely with the mood – a rebel soul swinger, who can make his tone of voice significant or suggest something barely with face mimics. It's hard to disagree, that in "Night Tide" Hopper was still one leg in the 50's, getting effortlessly theatrical as if still playing "Macbeth" in Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. His later, condensed fury is totally absent here. Clean face, straight walk, subtle speaking and last but not least almost adolescent emotions. I really enjoyed watching him here and if you feel like checking him in this Harrington's obscure flick, definitely go for it!

Scorpio Rising (1964)

"Scorpio Rising" is one of three most important Anger’s works, being crude and gritty like a coal in the same time. Still this amazing short comes across with a very peculiar social and occult agenda, concerning Aleister Crowley’s discoveries in the field of aeonic shift, which Anger harnessed to his artistic vision making great use of his reformed system of astro-psychology. Besides strictly magickal message this picture is a very enjoyable collage of "The Wild One" samples, vintage movie about Jesus Christ and homosexual-biker footage shot by Anger himself featuring fictional, outlaw MC… and you even get Elvis singing "Devil In Disguise" (great rockabilly classic). Going a little overboard you might say it was a first 60’s biker movie while it definitely had some proto-biker flick quality.

However, what makes it special is indeed it's mysterious message. Scorpio is rising… hmm? Bikers? Jesus? Elvis? How does it mingle? First of all Anger believed in a doctrine of art as magick, where every act reveals the Will, which brings Change. The movie was supposed to break open viewer’s head communicating something very significant. The old world was crumbling and the new one was being bulit! "Scorpio Rising" is in fact a prophecy of the cultural change, but to understand it better, you’ll have to inevitably dive for a second into the world of Aleister Crowley – probably the most important occultist of XXth century.



Scorpio is a zodiac sign – represented in the movie by a brute – while the sign is a symbol itself. As Crowley wrote in his books, Scorpio must be considered a fiery water element, an active one. It corresponds with Tarot Of Thoth card number XIII (Death), being ruled by "planet" Mars (symbolic representation of war and destruction instincts). As Crowley put it out, this card leads from putrefaction to exaltation, which means that element forces necessary change without a danger of being grinded in the process. Death card features a skeleton with a scythe (a biker) and a fish (Jesus), which represents swiftness and cold-blooded ability of survival. Anger played out both symbols to proclaim that in fact change will be brutal and vicious, but even if the old religions are already gone, the new energy possesses spiritual insight to lead the way. In the end he was right!

When you look at the high 60’s revolution (especially 1968), his insight comes sound and clear. Anger made his picture before the worst shit happened, but he felt the storm coming. He was even marching on Pentagon with his own platform trying to do his part. When you take all that into account, "Scorpio Rising" stands out as the only picture where speed-crazed, savage lads on choppers are being granted a spiritual status. I suppose that "The Born Losers" and "The Glory Stompers" never pulled off any correspondences of this sort, hence if you are seriously into occult cinema, this is a must-see for you!