Season of the Witch (DVD)

Season of the Witch, also known as Jack’s Wife and Hungry Wives, was released twice — once in 1971, and again in 1982 after having been recut and hoping to rade in on the success of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Both times the movie tanked and I have a feeling it’ll do the same on DVD. It doesn’t matter that it was written and directed by George A. Romero… Season of the Witch is just a bad film.

Model-turned-actress Jan White plays Joan Mitchell, a bored suburban housewife and mother of a blossoming young woman. One day Joan decides to get a tarot card reading and buys a copy of a book called ‘How to Become a Witch, A Primer’ (nowadays, it would be ‘Witchcraft for Dummies’). She decides to test out her newfound skills on her daughter’s handsome college professor and before long she and the prof are going at it hot and heavy. But playing with the occult is never without its consequences and Joan finds herself in a world of deadly trouble. Sort of.

Season of the Witch is an incredibly dated movie that deals mainly with feminism and the changing roles of women at the time. There is very little in the way of horror or suspense here (not to mention a story), and while the movie is low-budget it looks and sounds worse than one might expect (apparently part of the problem is the 16mm print was blown up to 35mm and that’s the only version that still exists). The acting is all over the place – and the reason is revealed in the new interview/featurette with star Jan White… Romero didn’t bother to actually “direct” anyone.

Still, this new DVD is not a total loss. It’s got the 1971 non-horror Romero film, There’s Always Vanilla, which is also very dated (about the carefree sexual mores of the times), but at least somewhat more cohesive than Season of the Witch. There is also an interesting documentary from The Directors series about Romero. It’s a few years out of date, but it’s still a good rundown of Romero’s career and features interviews with him and many of the actors who’ve worked with him.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson