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The Laniers and the Whitlocks have long been at war with each other,
essentially since the 17th century, when the Laniers had Vanessa Whitlock
(Yvette Rees) branded a witch and buried alive. Then the Laniers moved
into the Whitlock estate, too. Now, in the 20th century, Bill Lanier (Jack
Hedley) would on one hand love to bury the hatchet between the two
families - on the other hand though, he wants to turn the graveyard the
Whitlocks are buried in into a building site, much to the outrage of
Morgan Whitlock (Lon Chaney jr). The law though is on Lanier's side, but
that doesn't give his partner Forrester (Barry Linehan) the right to
desecrate the graveyard as such, something even Lanier is outraged about.
However, when Lanier pays a visit to the graveyard that night, he
accidently releases Vanessa from the grave she has spent the last 300
years in, and she now helps Morgan Whitlock to have his revenge, first
killing Forrester, then Lanier's aunt (Viola Keats) and even making an
attempt on Lanier and his brother Todd (David Weston) - and they only
survive by a hair, and it slowly dawns upon them witchcraft might be
involved here ... In the meantime, Lanier's wife Tracy (Jill Dixon) has
made friends with Todd's girlfriend Amy (Diana Clare), who just happens to
be Morgan Whitlock's niece who seems to be under some strange spell - and
one time, when Tracy sees Amy disappearing into an abandoned mausoleum,
she follows her ... and promptly falls into the hands of a witches coven
led by none other than Morgan Whitlock. Vanessa meanwhile goes after
Lanier's grandmother (Marie Ney), the only one who knows the whole story,
but fails to kill her - so for the finale she can send over Lanier and
Todd to the mausoleum to save Tracy just in time. And when Morgan orders
Vanessa to kill Todd, Amy can break the spell over her and set Vanessa,
the mausoleum, but unfortunately also herself on fire to save the day ... Witchcraft
is a film I am of two minds about: It has its powerful scenes, it
atmospheric in a loveably old-fashioned way, and it features some pretty
good performances ... but that said, its plot is a bit of a mess, quite a
few scenes could do with quite a bit more tension and suspense, and plenty
of the characters lack depth and motivation. Now it's still ok vintage
genre entertainment, one just gets the feeling they simply weren't trying
hard enough to make this really good.
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