Season of the Witch (1973)

Directed by George A. Romero. Starring Jan White, Ann Muffy, Raymond Laine, Joedda McClain, Virginia Greenwald, Bill Thunhust, Esther Lapidus, Neil Fisher. [R]

A bored housewife (White) with a sometimes abusive and frequently absent husband (Thunhurst) gets excited by a new affair and getting to know a neighbor (Greenwald) who practices witchcraft. Not a hidden horror gem that writer/director George Romero made during the decade-long period between his zombie movie classics (along with Martin and The Crazies), but a crude, talky drama with light supernatural/occult elements, something like Up the Sandbox or Belle de Jour in the tacky suburban milieu of the original The Stepford Wives, but a lot less interesting than that probably sounds. A few promising ideas go nowhere special, the feminist themes wind up deeply confused, and the acting is poor from nearly the entire cast. A curio only the irrepressibly curious should bother with. The famous Donovan song bearing the movie’s namesake shows up near the hour mark, but distributors hacked away at Romero’s original two-hour-plus cut for a ninety-minute movie retitled Hungry Wives so it could be sold as softcore sexploitation…despite there being hardly a lick of graphic sexual material!

37/100