Sex of the Witch

Sex of the Witch
AKA Il Sesso della Strega
Directed by Angelo Pannacciò
Released: 1973
Starring Susanna Levi, Jessica Dublin, Sergio Ferrero, Camille Keaton, Franco Garofalo
Running Time: 80 minutes



The Hilton family has just lost its patriarch and now the kids are fighting over the big inheritance. Someone has taken the initiative to kill the family off so that their chunk of the cash is bigger than everyone else’s. By using a set of Javanese fingernail covers (?), the killer has managed to harness the power to hypnotize people or something like that.



Why am I being punished? Oh yeah, I actually went looking for this junk. Just by the title alone, I knew that I was going to get screwed by Sex of the Witch but I didn’t know just how screwed. The film is a supernatural giallo with a weak inheritance scheme disguised as a plot. Daniele Patucchi’s musical score is pretty with its warbling piano pieces and the castle scenery is nice. Unfortunately, there are very few locations, mostly dull lighting and only occasionally inspired cinematography; so the film gets very dull to look at very quickly. At a hippie party/concert, some colored filters are used to liven things up but the scene is so useless, it’s a wasted effort.



The cast is populated by some lovely ladies including Camille Keaton (Tragic Ceremony) and Marzia Damon (Evil Face), but the characters are so indistinct that it’s impossible to care about them or keep track of what’s going on. It almost seems as if there is footage missing or scenes are out of order. Sex of the Witch is just incompetent filmmaking at its most irritating but some very, very desperate viewers might get a kick out of some this flick’s sleazy weirdness.



Ugh, this supernatural giallo is exactly the trashy Eurotrash softcore crapfest that I thought it was going to be but just less interesting. Sure there are hilarious internal monologues, some bouts of pseudoscience and a dog named Twinky but this is just a mess. I’d call the film mildly diverting but that might be too generous. Sex of the Witch is just a baffling murder mystery with lots of sex and a little violence that is impossible to figure out, even if one wanted to. And trust me, no one is gonna want to. For an even more confusing yet actually entertaining giallo, check out In the Folds of the Flesh.



Quotes

“If you read our entire family history, you’d arrest us all!”



Here's the awesome opening music: