This film remains under-rated and under the radar for it's atmosphere, cinematography, and editing (especially one great match-cut).
The film opens on the New England village of Whitewood in 1692. The Puritans are getting ready to burn a witch. What makes this different? For one, nobody was ever burned at the stake for witchcraft in what is now the USA - they hanged them. But burning is much more creepy and cinematic. Also, they happen to be burning an actual witch - Elizabeth Selwyn. At first she begs for help from Jethro, a puritan in the crowd. Jethro is asked if he knows this witch. He says no. As she is burning, Selwyn sends up a prayer to Lucifer that she will serve him for eternity if he curses Whitewood for her sake. Jethro sends up affirmations to Lucifer too. Note to Jethro - after this burning is over you might want to leave town because praying to Lucifer with a condemned witch is just not good form in a paranoid conformist society such as 17th century New England.
Cut to present day (1962) and a professor (Christopher Lee) is lecturing students on this particular incident on his series of talks on witchcraft. One particular student says she wants to do some field work on this subject, and the professor directs her to Whitewood and to the innkeeper of the town's inn.
When the student arrives she finds it forboding, and small groups of people gather in the street and stare at her. A ghostly fog shrouds everything. Let's just say our heroine gets more than enough field work to satisfy her thesis.
Soon, back home, her brother and boyfriend get concerned and they head to Whitewood too. Let me just say that this is one of those horror fllms in which the characters refuse to acknowledge the clues/warnings that would turn most of us in the opposite direction, but then we would have no movie if everybody had their curiosity tempered by self preservation.
With cinematography by Desmond Dickinson that is wonderfully atmospheric and eerie with one of the great inspired endings to a horror film.
Eeriest scene to me? When the innkeeper at Whitewood asks the young visiting coed if she would like to join the other guests in dancing and you see them spinning and pirouetting about in perfect synchronization as though they are decorative mechanical figures dancing in a jewelry box.
I'd recommend this one today. It really holds up and the horror - though not graphic at all - is very effective.
