Witchfire

There's a promising idea at the heart of this movie. Three female mental patients, distraught by the death of their psychiatrist, are allowed to attend his funeral. At the graveside service, they escape from their keepers and then make their way to an isolated, long-deserted house. At the house they hold an occult service designed to resurrect the psychiatrist and moments later he knocks at their door! Actually it's just a hunter who happens to be passing by but the women are convinced it's their psychiatrist reborn in another body. A younger, more attractive body.

Despite having the ingredients for a passable "B" movie -- part Gothic thriller, part camp comedy -- "Witchfire" never develops much in the way of narrative drive. The cast mostly seems to be killing time, waiting for the plot to arrive. Ading to the sense of "wasted opportunity" is the matter of the three women taking the hunter captive and tying him up. Once they make him their helpless prisoner, they can't seem to think of anything interesting to do to him. And since the hunter is played by the handsome and sexy Gary Swanson, they should have been able to come up with something. Like taking his shirt off, for example. When Swanson finally does get his shirt off, it's apparently to make love to one of the women but this sex scene isn't shown and even the hint of its presence raises issues which the movie doesn't want to deal with. Having the hunter's 11-year-old son look for his missing father is another questionable story angle.

Still, seeing Shelley Winters in full overdrive mode offers an undeniable form of compensation.