Legend of the Witches
“Cult of witchcraft today… Their secret rituals exposed…” teased the lobby posters for Legend of the Witches when it came out in 1970. Also on the posters – silhouettes of naked young women in full cavort. You get a lot more of the former – the rituals – than the cavorting (though there’s still plenty) in this oddity from Michael Leigh, a thoughtful and not disrespectful documentary about witchcraft ancient and modern, its lore and rituals. See it as a companion piece to The Wicker Man, maybe, which came along three years later. Its director, Robin Hardy, and writer Anthony Shaffer, had surely watched Leigh’s film as they were researching their own. It starts … Read more
