Season of the Witch
In the psychological hierarchy of needs, once the basics are met, food, shelter, comfort, the individual is able to aspire to more, to meaning, fulfillment; a housewife whose daughter is now grown and no longer needs cared for, her husband a businessman who is often away on trips for days on end, Joan Mitchell has grown bored and restless with sitting at home and doing the laundry, feeling as though she needs more yet unsure where to turn.
Unable to even express what it is that she lacks, at a gathering of friends the conversation and gossip over free-flowing drinks mentions that a mutual acquaintance, not at the party, is a witch; her frustration needing direction, stimulation, Joan and her friend Shirley Randolph, older and more acutely aware of the disappointment of her life, visit Marion Hamilton to have her read their tarot, the cards speaking of hope, light and harmony through change.
Written and directed by George A Romero and released four years after his landmark of new wave horror Night of the Living Dead and before his return to the genre with The Crazies, on original release in 1972 the distributors substantially cut the film and absurdly retitled it Hungry Wives, Romero’s intended 130 minute version now lost but at least the name reinstated, the more suitable and representative Season of the Witch, Donovan’s song of 1966 providing inspiration to the transformation.
Starring Jan White as Joan and Bill Thunhurst as Jack, he is not so oblivious or indifferent to her as she imagines in her dreams where she is a concubine who walks ten paces behind him past what should be the shared landmarks of their lives, a reflection of the era, the lull after the post-war boom where women were comfortable but unchallenged, the conventional standbys of wife, mother or pillar of the church or community no longer enough.
Often overlooked in Romero’s work, a feminist character drama of a woman seeking more in her life than she has with only hints of the supernatural in Joan’s recurring nightmares, first mundane but increasingly sinister and the influence that teacher Gregg Williamson (Raymond Laine) exerts on her and the women around her, while unrepresentative and atypical of what might be expected, Season of the Witch should not be dismissed.
Joan’s therapist telling her that “truth is something that’s very difficult to live with,” it is a film which represents the truth of its time, a repressed woman realising that she does not need to repress her desires or conform to societal roles enforced upon her, addressing the subject matter seriously, with witchcraft presented as a lifestyle like any other religion with the “new age” documented in The Last Sacrifice, the prejudice of others the obstacle to be overcome in the journey to self-realisation.
Season of the Witch is streaming on Shudder now
