Virgin Witch (1972)
Two pretty girls are recruited for a modeling assignment at a large country mansion. All is not what it seems though as a witches coven lurks in the background,and aims to use the girls in their erotic rites.
Other films dealing with witchcraft such as Legend of the Witches have over the past few years been re-evaluated and been given more credit than they first received, not so Virgin Witch which is still seen as a guilty pleasure, a piece of sexploitation, rather than an acclaimed seventies horror film. Director Ray Austin gives the audience plenty of up-skirt shots and his camera comes to a halt each time it focuses on a pair of bare breasts or a pert posterior, adding to the smuttyness of the proceedings. Its these values that make Virgin Witch an offbeat, sleazy almost unsettlingly voyeuristic movie. The horror aspects to the film largely go unexplored until the last third.
The film has impressive scenes of the black arts. The sequences are directed with abundant glee as Ann Michelle's Christine is "taken" on the alter the rest of the coven are happily enjoying their own erotically charged rituals. Sans kit naturally.
The film stars sisters Ann and Vicki Michelle, Both actresses feel that the nudity involved was not what they signed up for and felt exploited by the experience. Both have disowned the film. It should be noted that according to author Simon Sheridan's booklet notes neither actress was paid in full nor has been to this day for working on the film so this probably fuels the resentment towards it as much as their experiences working on it.
The film itself is enjoyable enough if not actually scary or horrific, it has good production values and was filmed at the beautiful Admiral's Walk manor house near Woking, the same place Norman J Warren filmed Terror and the brilliant Satan's Slave.
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