At a time when George A. Romero wasn't totally sure where his career would go after his debut Night of the Living Dead he tried his hands at doing films that still required the psychological tension of one's environment as a key factor, but changed the tone from the version of horror he spurred on. There's Always Vanilla was one, and Season of the Witch, aka Jack's Wife/Hungry Wives, was another, and it's here that one can see where Romero's career could have gone towards, and the interest picks up in different ways. It's not a film that will please most regular (or rather casual) Romero fans looking for a lot of sharp horror-movie attitude and satire. Then again there is a slight sense of satire in the works at the core of the film, but it's made more closely to ideas of suburban/bourgeois discontent and quiet subservience in a way of life without too much purpose. In fact, I'd liken it a little more towards Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour, with the witchcraft in this case as the substitute for prostitution. Only with Romero there's a specific notion being dealt with as well with the character of Joan Mitchell (Jan White) which links up with other Romero films like Martin and Bruiser dealing with the divided mind, between what's considered normal and completely abnormal and on the darkest tendencies possible.
The lack of wit, by the way, is something that kind of has to be adjusted to with Season of the Witch- usually it's one of Romero's finest traits- yet for me it wasn't that big an absence when dealing with the strengths. And oddly enough, a factor I usually don't attribute as strongly as with other Romero films is the screenplay, which for the most part (particularly in the first half) is filled with dialog and scenes that really make the characters a lot more realistic than one would expect with the budget and B-movie character actors. There's even one scene, involving a friend of Joan's friend Shirley (Ann Muffly, her one really significant movie role), who becomes drunk when Joan's daughter has a man over who tries to doggedly mess with her head, that borders on the kind of natural emotional truth of Cassavetes or something similar. Make no mistake, it ends up by extension of that being one of Romero's talkiest films. But he still makes room for his sense of the visual macabre, and, as a link back to Bunuel, obsessive this time with dreams, the obsessive repetitiveness of dreams in a woman who's going down a path that equally terrifies her and entrances her. There's psycho-sexual montages all abound in the dream scenes, and they aren't Romero's best bits of visual fancy (more due to budget than anything), though I'd place the sequences, particularly the first one and another involving a certain shot-gun, as being clever and chillingly in-your-face all the time.
And yet, with some strong things going for Romero- a fascinating character and 'small world' of malaise that forms into trouble and infidelity and abandonment of all sanity in surbubia, plus Jan White in a pretty good lead performance surrounded by better ones like Raymond Laine and Muffly- it feels always like a minor work, and with flaws abound. The script itself, along with the direction, hits some pot holes at times, the former when Joan's daughter just up and leaves after a fairly shocking scene where Joan "goes with it" as her daughter has sex in the house and thus kicks a lot of Joan's purpose to go into the witchcraft head-on to possibly 'conjure' her up. The motivation to start with that just seems lacking in the dramatic potential set up all in the first half of the film, making the daughter practically obsolete for the rest of the picture. There are still good scenes to follow, many of them creepy and with a sexual undercurrent, plus a great climax, but there's a lot of clunkiness too (and I loathed the Donovan song as it tried to make a mood that could've been made much more convincing). And as much as Romero brilliantly in spots does his best to overcome the limitations of his shoe-string production, the subject matter by its nature leaves him usually with lackadaisical set-ups and only a handful of really memorable images, mostly with the nightmares.
Season of the Witch will likely never be a great film, and it sits mostly in obscurity and aging by the day (albeit with an apparently bad DVD release, better ironically to find the most recent of VHS releases if possible), but I was still glad I saw it as a fan of Romero's, as even a lessor work always holds a little promise. I always admire when filmmakers can try new things and pull them off to the extents that they have in the simplest ways (in this case having a script that gives the actors something to do). That I'd always go for one of the 'Dead' movies or Martin or the Crazies before this goes without saying.
The lack of wit, by the way, is something that kind of has to be adjusted to with Season of the Witch- usually it's one of Romero's finest traits- yet for me it wasn't that big an absence when dealing with the strengths. And oddly enough, a factor I usually don't attribute as strongly as with other Romero films is the screenplay, which for the most part (particularly in the first half) is filled with dialog and scenes that really make the characters a lot more realistic than one would expect with the budget and B-movie character actors. There's even one scene, involving a friend of Joan's friend Shirley (Ann Muffly, her one really significant movie role), who becomes drunk when Joan's daughter has a man over who tries to doggedly mess with her head, that borders on the kind of natural emotional truth of Cassavetes or something similar. Make no mistake, it ends up by extension of that being one of Romero's talkiest films. But he still makes room for his sense of the visual macabre, and, as a link back to Bunuel, obsessive this time with dreams, the obsessive repetitiveness of dreams in a woman who's going down a path that equally terrifies her and entrances her. There's psycho-sexual montages all abound in the dream scenes, and they aren't Romero's best bits of visual fancy (more due to budget than anything), though I'd place the sequences, particularly the first one and another involving a certain shot-gun, as being clever and chillingly in-your-face all the time.
And yet, with some strong things going for Romero- a fascinating character and 'small world' of malaise that forms into trouble and infidelity and abandonment of all sanity in surbubia, plus Jan White in a pretty good lead performance surrounded by better ones like Raymond Laine and Muffly- it feels always like a minor work, and with flaws abound. The script itself, along with the direction, hits some pot holes at times, the former when Joan's daughter just up and leaves after a fairly shocking scene where Joan "goes with it" as her daughter has sex in the house and thus kicks a lot of Joan's purpose to go into the witchcraft head-on to possibly 'conjure' her up. The motivation to start with that just seems lacking in the dramatic potential set up all in the first half of the film, making the daughter practically obsolete for the rest of the picture. There are still good scenes to follow, many of them creepy and with a sexual undercurrent, plus a great climax, but there's a lot of clunkiness too (and I loathed the Donovan song as it tried to make a mood that could've been made much more convincing). And as much as Romero brilliantly in spots does his best to overcome the limitations of his shoe-string production, the subject matter by its nature leaves him usually with lackadaisical set-ups and only a handful of really memorable images, mostly with the nightmares.
Season of the Witch will likely never be a great film, and it sits mostly in obscurity and aging by the day (albeit with an apparently bad DVD release, better ironically to find the most recent of VHS releases if possible), but I was still glad I saw it as a fan of Romero's, as even a lessor work always holds a little promise. I always admire when filmmakers can try new things and pull them off to the extents that they have in the simplest ways (in this case having a script that gives the actors something to do). That I'd always go for one of the 'Dead' movies or Martin or the Crazies before this goes without saying.