“The Love Witch” – Cool, Campy Occult-Themed Film

The Love Witch is a new independent film coming to your local art house cinema this month. The film’s website gives this synopsis:

“Elaine, a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, and then picks up men and seduces them. However, her spells work too well, leaving her with a string of hapless victims. When she finally meets the man of her dreams, her desperation to be loved will drive her to the brink of insanity and murder.

“With a visual style that pays tribute to Technicolor thrillers of the ‘60s, THE LOVE WITCH explores female fantasy and the repercussions of pathological narcissism.”

Early reviews say:

• “Extravagantly fulfills the filmmaker’s intention to create ‘visual pleasure for women.”Steve Dollar, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
• ““Biller shot it, ravishingly, on 35mm and furnished every frame with uncanny precision; the result really could pass as a relic of the era. That it’s quite funny and charming seems almost beside the point.”Calum Marsh, THE VILLAGE VOICE
• “Sex, death, Satanic rituals, God-level costume design, and cinema’s greatest tampon joke ensue, as Biller spins an arch but hyper-sincere story about the true price of patriarchy. A spellbinding homage to old pulp paperbacks and the Technicolor melodramas of the 1960s, Anna Biller’s THE LOVE WITCH is a throwback that’s told with the kind of perverse conviction and studied expertise that would make Quentin Tarantino blush.”David Ehrlich, INDIEWIRE
• “At once hilarious and grotesque, with awe-inspiring costume and set designs that hark back to such low-budget curiosities as Hammer horror movies and the erotic cinema of Radley Metzger, Biller’s vision is less nostalgic throwback than genre-recalibration, putting a woman in a position of power as a perpetrator of violence against men.”Craig Hubert, ART INFO
• “A metaphysical astonishment. The costumes and furnishings, Biller’s own handmade versions of the era’s candy-coated extravagances, are as exquisitely arch and theatrical as the performances and the action, which—for all their comic exaggeration—echo with an uncanny symbolic power.”Richard Brody, THE NEW YORKER

Having seen the trailer before a screening of the “Gimme Danger” documentary I’ve gotta say this looks like a hoot and a half, a cool campy tribute to 60’s B movies, with especial love for relatively non-gory horror films. Great attention paid to period costuming, set design and filming technology.  Like IndieWire said – what Tarrantino does without the obsession with ultra-violence.

View the trailer, photo gallery etc here:

http://thelovewitch.oscilloscope.net/