Once upon a time, in a small coastal village, there was a legend passed down through generations about a witch that came from the deep. The village, nestled between towering cliffs and crashing waves, was always shrouded in mystery. The people believed that the witch had emerged from the depths of the ocean long ago and had cast a solemn spell over the village. Nobody knew for certain where the witch had come from or why she had chosen their village as her home. Some believed she was a fallen mermaid, banished from her mythical underwater realm. Others thought she was a sorceress who had been cursed to live in solitude near the powerful energy of the sea.
The script is a solid one from scribe Robert Thom. The story he wrote is a clever little piece of a character study. Although it does not necessarily have quotable dialogue, its scenes and characters are complex, layered, and intriguing. Supposedly, it blends elements from actress Perkins’ own biography into it (perverting some of that stuff in such horrible ways that the actress’s own sister was horrified at the familial implications), but if so it would not mean much to a typical, uninformed viewer forty-five years later. Instead, we get a careful, thoughtful exploration of psychosis, the horrors found in living with or near someone who is prone to violent episodes, and the suspense of wondering when she’s going to go off and who’s going to suffer.
Hitchcock s vision was much more locked into the everyday visual world, whereas The Witch Who Came from the Sea is equally concerned with its killer character s dreams and projections. Other genius moments tap into LSD experiences every hippy s schizophrenic sampler , as figures talking to the camera on TV seem to be addressing us Molly directly.
Others thought she was a sorceress who had been cursed to live in solitude near the powerful energy of the sea. Regardless of her origins, the witch was feared and respected by the villagers. Every evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, signaling the onset of twilight, the villagers would lock themselves indoors.
I Think You’re Too Gentle for Me: The Witch Who Came from the Sea
Synopsis: Molly (Millie Perkins) is a complex woman, a beloved babysitter for her two nephews Tadd (Jean Pierre Camps) and Tripoli (Mark Livingston), the daughter who builds her departed father (John F. Goff) into some kind of hero, a sister who cannot see eye to eye with her sibling Cathy (Vanessa Brown), the lover of her bartending boss Long John (Lonny Chapman), and quite possibly a serial killer. When she sees weightlifters working out on the beach, she gets dreamy about them and soon enough sees them bashed senseless or hanging lifeless in their equipment. The two football stars her nephews like, Sam Walters (Gene Rutherford) and Austin Slade (Jim Sims) appear in a prolonged dream-fantasy where she seduces them, binds them together, and maybe starts to saw off their privates. When she sees a clean-cut guy on television, advertising razors, she wonders if he’s as clean as he appears; when she meets actor Alex McPeak (Stafford Morgan) in life, she maybe fantasizes about giving him a deep, deep shave. Is she really a hot-blooded killer, or is Molly just broken in the head? And why is she this way? Her story is a convoluted one, a challenging one, sometimes shocking, but never dull. Her tale unfolds in a dreamy, nightmarish way over the course of the surreal, erotic, and brutal character study of a woman on the edge of total self-destruction, The Witch Who Came from The Sea (1976).
Although director Matt Cimber’s The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976) did not get much positive coverage at the time of its release and seems to have slipped off the radar since, the film has a powerful screenplay, some terrific performances, terrific cinematography, and some keen, transgressive storytelling.
At its heart, this is a movie about a femme fatale working through some emotional issues. Taken on that level, it’s a gleeful sort of flick that makes some intriguing images of Molly’s inner mind.
Where the flick gets the most disturbing is in its evocation of Molly’s youth. Although she puts her father on a pedestal, calling him a hero who was lost at sea, flashbacks reveal a different story, about a pre-teen Molly (a harrowing portrayal from Verkina Flower, actor George “Buck” Flower’s own daughter) being the object of sexual abuse. This stuff is truly difficult to watch, though it’s never gratuitous in its images. The ideas at work, the inferences, the shifting of a grown man’s feet between a younger girl’s … ugh. Downright difficult to watch stuff. Disgusting and horrifying and powerful, made all the worse by what we don’t see. Molly’s certainly fucked up, all right.
Only films from the 1970s had this casual quality regarding sexuality. Although horror flicks would go on to be much more about teens and teenage problems as the decade wore on and even more so as the eighties and slasher flicks got underway—some might see the nudity on display in those flicks as a titillation for the audience, followed by the repressive “safe” messaging that sex = death. However, the films of the seventies were as often about adults as they were about young folks. This is true for The Exorcist (1973), last considered flick, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (1973), as well as next week’s flick The Premonition (1976). That said, sex, nudity, violence, and fright are not the domains of the young. The Witch Who Came from the Sea is a textbook example of a middle-aged woman getting frisky with men of various ages, all of them adults. There is a frankness to the sex and nudity, a casualness that is oddly refreshing. The sex itself might end in violent deeds, but the act is not itself demonized quite the way it would be in subsequent horror cinema geared toward titillating and socially programming the young. Even the occasional kinky moments, such as Molly binding two guys together (this following a sudden outburst from one of them demanding the other get his hand off his thigh) is done with a light, playful touch. It’s thrilling to see this MMF pairing because she has all the power, and these two macho dudes are ultimately OK with being bound together. One might pass out, but hey, it’s all fun. “What can you do with one leg free?” she asks a fellow before things turn suddenly vicious. The sex act itself isn’t a bad thing in the movie, abuses of power is the bad thing. That’s what leads to murder, that’s what led to sexual abuse in Molly’s past, that’s at the heart of all the trauma and terror in this flick. One character lends another power over him or herself and then gets the short end of the stick.
Of course, this kind of free-spirited sexuality informed quite a bit of director Matt Cimber’s early catalogue. Fun fact, after he did a slew of sexy movies and this horror flick, Cimber would go on to direct 56 of the episodes of GLOW: The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling in 1986-1987. The Marc Maron character in the Netflix GLOW (2017-2019) series is inspired by Cimber.
The script is a solid one from scribe Robert Thom. The story he wrote is a clever little piece of a character study. Although it does not necessarily have quotable dialogue, its scenes and characters are complex, layered, and intriguing. Supposedly, it blends elements from actress Perkins’ own biography into it (perverting some of that stuff in such horrible ways that the actress’s own sister was horrified at the familial implications), but if so it would not mean much to a typical, uninformed viewer forty-five years later. Instead, we get a careful, thoughtful exploration of psychosis, the horrors found in living with or near someone who is prone to violent episodes, and the suspense of wondering when she’s going to go off and who’s going to suffer.
This kind of film owes more than a little bit to the works of Robert Bloch, whose novel Psycho kicked off the whole psychological suspense subgenre of crime and horror fiction. As in that novel (and the 1960 adaptation from Alfred Hitchcock), we have an outsider, a quirky but seemingly normal enough person who harbors dark passions for blood and violence. Molly is our Norman Bates, and more in line with the character from the novel in terms of having internal horror stories that we get to witness. Hitchcock’s vision was much more locked into the everyday visual world, whereas The Witch Who Came from the Sea is equally concerned with its killer character’s dreams and projections.
Reality and dream, illusion and artifice are some of the major topics in the film’s subtext. Molly seems unable to understand that the characters people play on television are unrelated to the people they really are. This brings to mind the bit Harlan Ellison famously wrote encapsulating his disgust with the people who don’t seem to understand that actors deliver lines instead of thinking these things up on their own. He met a knucklehead who argued that there was no one who put words into Spock’s mouth. Molly and that knucklehead seem to be cut from similar cloths.
However, the movie finds ways to play with the metaphor of illusion and trickery in various overt and subtle methods. Molly lives in a fantasy world, one where she paints her father as a hero to her nephews, despite knowing that was not the case. It’s a world where Molly declares boys need heroes, knowing the very sports figures they currently revere will turn up in a scenario that will tear them to pieces. She weaves a fabric of fantasy into her own life, she daydreams of violence and innocence alike, she alternately beds or attacks actors. The finale of the film involves multiple manipulations, one played upon Molly and another played by Molly.
Illusions are crafted by those with power, and like the sex act, they are not themselves bad things. How they are used, and how they can be manipulated to abuse others, how they can erode mental stability, and how they speed the splintering of a broken mind are much more indicative of their ill effects.
The acting is top notch, with Millie Perkins delivering a powerful character study. This is the kind of work I complemented Dennis Christopher for in Fade to Black (1980), terrific, unflinching, and personal work in a story that never lets us catch a breath or relax. Perkins is the force that holds this entire narrative together, and she does it with ease. Her intensity is chilling, though her smiles are authentic; her sudden outbursts of violence are unsettling, but her affection seems so real. The script (written by her academic husband Robert Thom with her in mind) gives her so much to do and work with, we can tell she’s having some fun with the role. And yet, it is not a performance that winks at the audience. She plays it straight, plays it well, and leaves us utterly disturbed.
She is surrounded by a solid cast of familiar but not necessarily big star faces. They all bring their A-game to this production. For example, Lonny Chapman does a terrific job as her boss/lover who is slowly coming to the realization that his bedmate might be a bit crazier and far more dangerous than he gave her credit for. Long John is a bartender (possibly a bar owner who happens to tend his own bar) who loves sex. Molly is one of the few employees who said yes to his invitation into the sack. We can tell he’s fallen hard for her, and his hurt when she plays the field is also evident. Chapman gets to show off quite a bit of depth to a character who might’ve been a one note. He does a grand job bantering with his crew and pining (then fearing) his lover.
A special shout out to the always enjoyable George “Buck” Flower who makes an appearance here. Unlike many, (many, many) of his other roles, he’s not a drunk. He’s the clean-cut Detective Stone who, along with his partner Beardsley (Richard Kennedy), is hot on the trail of the killer responsible for the football player murders and other crimes. He is surprisingly effective in the role, lending some charm to a role that’s essentially a ruthless seeker of truth. Will he reach Molly before she can kill again? Spoiler alert, no. Will the team catch her at all? The detectives are utterly baffled by the serial killer shtick. This was that era before the idea really caught on. They have a hard road ahead of them and end up running along at least one false trail along the way. Flower is a treat to watch work, and (as in 1994’s Tammy and the T-Rex), it’s fun to see him play a sober jackass of a character.
The film’s title is an unusual one, since it suggests a supernatural story (the poster is equally ill informed, since it’s a Frazetta fantasy piece that has little to do with the events on screen). The Witch Who Came from the Sea is kissing cousins with George A. Romero’s Season of the Witch (1972), another film that explores women’s issues from the relative “safety” of a horror flick. Whereas that film employed some more supernatural imagery, using witchcraft as a means of breaking into its main character’s suburban malaise world, The Witch That Came from the Sea does not use any supernatural imagery whatsoever. There are some surreal moments, such as a raft afloat at sea covered with dismembered male corpses, with Molly bound to the mast like the young girl in that old chestnut, the Wreck of the Hesperus. However, the film itself is most realistic in its threats and its tone. The title itself comes from an explanation for the famous Botticelli painting, “The Birth of Venus,” depicting Venus/Aphrodite appearing from the sea on a clamshell. The owner of that print, Billy Batt (played with intensely sleazy charm by Rick Jason), a douche canoe of an actor who has no difficulty forcing himself on infatuated chicks who come to his party, explains the work as depicting the very phrase of the title. He explains the central figure is a witch born following her divine father’s castration, when his semen spilled into the sea. It’s not quite accurate to the painting (it’s actually the goddess of beauty and carnal love from Greek/Roman myth), but it’s exactly the kind of half-recollected grade-A bullshit a dudebro would spew to woo some foxy, stoned chick out of her panties. Little does he realize the firecracker he’s trying to set off …
The film’s look is terrific, thanks to a pair of cinematographers. Ken Gibb gets the first credit for the thing’s director of photography. However, cinematography genius Dean Cundey was also responsible for the film’s big look, bringing experience (and a discount) on some anamorphic lenses and the camera needed to use them. Of course, he would later go on to fame and glory as cinematographer/director of photography for Halloween (1978), Escape From New York (1981), Halloween II (1981), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Big Trouble In Little China (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), the Back to the Future series (1985, 1989, 1990), Hook (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), and a smorgasbord of other works. Although The Witch That Came from the Sea is not necessarily as uniformly innovative in its look as his future works, one can see Cundey’s hand in the look of the thing. He has a terrific eye and skill at capturing memorable images that make a production look like it comes from a far bigger budget than it has.
The Witch That Came from the Sea is a powerful drama that also happens to be a horrifying exploration of one woman’s mental disintegration. It’s a nasty little movie sometimes, and it’s one that’s not afraid to show its heart. A disquieting gem that is eminently watchable and worth the time investment.
The Witch Who Came from the Sea is available in a standalone version in DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions. It was also included in Arrow’s American Horror Project, Volume 1 Blu-ray set.
Next, we will explore The Premonition, another overlooked piece of horror from the 1970s. That flick also appears in a standalone DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming edition, as well as in the first volume of the American Horror Project set.
“I Think You’re Too Gentle for Me: The Witch Who Came from the Sea” is copyright © 2020 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Poster and still image taken from IMDB.
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They barred their doors and shut their curtains tightly, hoping to protect themselves from her dark and enigmatic powers. They whispered in hushed voices, recalling tales of her eerie presence and the rumored spells she could cast with a mere wave of her hand. The witch herself was a solitary figure, rarely seen by the villagers, who didn't dare to venture close to her dwelling. Her house was perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the tumultuous sea below. It was said that the crashing waves created a melodious symphony that accompanied her every move, adding to the mystique that surrounded her. However, as time passed, curiosity began to overcome the fear that had gripped the village for centuries. The younger generation craved to uncover the truth behind the witch's origins and powers. They were no longer content to hide behind locked doors and fearful whispers. They yearned for answers. One evening, a courageous young woman named Amelia decided to defy tradition and approach the witch's house. Bracing herself against the strong coastal winds, she climbed the treacherous path that led to the witch's abode. As she reached the top, her heart pounding with a mixture of anxiety and excitement, she hesitated for a moment before finally knocking on the creaky door. To her surprise, the witch warmly welcomed her inside. Contrary to the tales, the witch was not a malevolent figure surrounded by darkness and foreboding. Instead, she was a wise and gentle woman, harboring a profound knowledge of the seas and their mysteries. Amelia spent hours talking to the witch, learning about the power of tides, the secrets whispered by seashells, and the delicate balance of life beneath the waves. She discovered that the witch had come from a distant land, seeking solace in the tranquility of the village and the untamed beauty of the ocean. As the days turned into months, Amelia shared her newfound knowledge with the villagers, dispelling the once-held fears and replacing them with a sense of wonder and reverence for the witch. The villagers began to see the ocean not as a source of fear but as a place of boundless magic and infinite possibilities. The story of the witch that came from the deep changed the way the villagers viewed their world. They no longer saw the witch as a creature to be feared but as an embodiment of the enchantment hidden within their own lives. From that day forward, the village embraced the mysteries of the ocean and lived in harmony with nature, thanks to the witch who had come from the deep..
Reviews for "Diving into Darkness: Exploring the Haunting Story of the Witch"
1. Sarah - 2 stars
I found "The witch that came from the deep" to be a disappointing read. The story lacked depth and the plot felt disjointed. The characters were poorly developed and I found it hard to connect with any of them. The writing style was also lackluster, with awkward sentence structures and repetitive phrases. Overall, I was left feeling unsatisfied and would not recommend this book to others.
2. John - 1 star
"The witch that came from the deep" was a complete waste of my time. The story was predictable and the twists were lackluster. The writing was amateurish, with cliched lines and poorly constructed dialogue. The pacing was all over the place, making it hard to stay interested in the story. I found no redeeming qualities in this book and would advise others to steer clear.
3. Emily - 2 stars
I had high hopes for "The witch that came from the deep" but was ultimately let down. The writing was mediocre at best, with awkward phrasing and repetitive descriptions. The plot was confusing and lacked coherence, jumping from one scene to another without proper transition. The characters were shallow and lacked depth, making it difficult to care about their fates. Overall, I found this book to be a forgettable and unsatisfying read.
4. Michael - 2 stars
"The witch that came from the deep" had an interesting premise, but it failed to deliver. The pacing was slow, and the plot dragged on unnecessarily. The dialogue was stilted and unrealistic, making it hard to fully immerse myself in the story. The ending felt rushed and unresolved, leaving many unanswered questions. I was left feeling underwhelmed and would not recommend this book to others.
5. Rachel - 1 star
I couldn't finish reading "The witch that came from the deep" as it failed to capture my interest from the start. The writing was dull and lacked creativity, with predictable descriptions and unimaginative dialogue. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked personality, making it hard to care about their journey. The story felt like a rehashed version of other fantasy novels I've read before, and I found nothing unique or engaging about it. I was highly disappointed with this book and would not recommend it.