“She’s
the girl with the power to turn you… to turn you off”
screamed the US ads for Virgin Witch, in a flagrant
case of false advertising matched only by the alternative title,
Lesbian Twins. Watch this grotty slice of British
sexploitation horror with anything like high expectations and
you’ll come away disappointed. But if you’re a connoisseur
of 1970’s Brit Smut, then this might have enough going for
it to keep you amused.
Real life Sisters Ann and Vicki Michelle play hitch-hiking
siblings Christine and Betty who find themselves in the big bad
city and the modelling agency of predatory lesbian Sybil Waite
(Patricia Haynes). Christine is hired for a photo shoot in the
sort of country estate that cropped up regularly in British genre
films (Satan’s Slave used the same location),
where she does a spot of nude modelling while hobnobbing with
Gerald Amberley (Neil Hallett), who is a white witch and general
cad. As Christine has psychic abilities, she is courted to join
Amberley’s coven, but Waite is less than pleased –
unsurprising, as it soon becomes clear that Christine is not content
to be a mere member of the coven, but instead want to lead it.
Meanwhile, Betty wanders around looking innocent and gormless.
Virgin
Witch offers up plenty of nudity – not all of it
aesthetically pleasing – along with a few moments of tension,
rather more moments of complete tedium and remarkably flat and
disinterested direction from Ray Austin. There are some amusingly
un-PC lines of dialogue, and the film at least has better production
values than most British sex films – combined with the horror
elements, and this could almost be a gateway film for anyone curious
about the genre.
Vicki Michelle, making her screen debut here, would eventually
wind up in dreadful British sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo,
and predictably doesn’t talk about this film anymore (though
most of us might see it as her finest hour and a half). Older
sister Ann is equally embarrassed by it, though as her later career
took in movies like Psychomania, House
of Whipcord, Cruel Passion, Haunted
and Young Lady Chatterley – most of which
involved more nudity – it’s more of a mystery why
she is so snotty about it. Then again, she ignored overtones to
appear on Severin’s PsychomaniaDVD,
so perhaps she just views the whole decade as a dreadful mistake.
“She’s
the girl with the power to turn you… to turn you off”
screamed the US ads for Virgin Witch, in a flagrant
case of false advertising matched only by the alternative title,
Lesbian Twins. Watch this grotty slice of British
sexploitation horror with anything like high expectations and
you’ll come away disappointed. But if you’re a connoisseur
of 1970’s Brit Smut, then this might have enough going for
it to keep you amused.
Virgin
Witch offers up plenty of nudity – not all of it
aesthetically pleasing – along with a few moments of tension,
rather more moments of complete tedium and remarkably flat and
disinterested direction from Ray Austin. There are some amusingly
un-PC lines of dialogue, and the film at least has better production
values than most British sex films – combined with the horror
elements, and this could almost be a gateway film for anyone curious
about the genre.
