The Witch Who Came from the Sea

Director - Matt Cimber (Sex and Astrology)
Starring - Millie Perkins (Necronomicon: Book of the Dead), Lonny Chapman (The Hunted), and Vanessa Brown (The Twilight Zone)
Release Date - 1976
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Molly really knows how to cut men down to size"
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (American Horror Project Volume 1) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

    After Watching Cut Her Out, an exceptional modern horror film that captures some great atmosphere and imagery, I wanted to visit some horror films from years long forgotten.  I then remembered that I had The American Horror Project Volume 1 bluray set.  This set was put together to give horror fans an alternate American horror history with three films that you never hear fans talk about.  The set includes Malatesta's Carnival of Blood, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, and The Premonition.  This set was sent to me from MVD and Arrow Video.  I want to thank a minute to thank both MVD and Arrow Video for sending this amazing set my way!
     The film follows Molly (Perkins) who says she lost her father at sea.  She has two nephews who she continues to tell stories of grandeur about their grandfather to.  She suffers from migraines and often hits the bottle to cope.  To support herself she works as a waitress at a bar where she is also dating the owner and bartender.  However, she is also obsessed with television and it's stars.  She secretly goes out with several television personalities and every time she is aroused she kills.  We then learn that her father was not the amazing man that she claimed.  He often physically and sexually abused her resulting in her unstable nature.
     The Witch Who Came from the Sea is one of those films that I really wanted to like but was really disappointed with it.  I loved the film's artwork (seen above) but the film was actually nothing like that image portrayed.  The acting in this one is awkward considering the cast that the film had.  The film's lead, Millie Perkins, is a legend in her own right.  She was Anne Frank in the 1959 production of The Diary of Anne Frank, and she would go on to appear on The Bob Newhart Show, Murder, She Wrote, and Our House.  She obviously has some talent in front of the camera but her role in this one made it difficult to watch.  Most of her scenes made me think she was drugging it up.  The remainder of the cast has had just as lucrative of a career as Perkins but they deliver some solid performances that did not make me question their sobriety.  The story for this one is not one involving witches and the sea.  Instead, it is more a psychological horror film that uses the witch and the sea as a metaphor.  This could have still been one hell of a film but the awkward acting and random scenes that make no sense take away from it.  Finally, there is several on screen kills but they are so fucking weak.  The kills are nothing we haven't seen before and they are so cheap that the viewer has no option but to laugh at their poor attempts.  The little bit of practical effects we do get are so bad that it makes me wonder if they were actually planned at all or just tossed together that day on set.  Overall. The Witch Who Came from the Sea is not the film the poster makes you believe.  Instead of a classic witch tale, we get a psychological horror flick that is extremely boring.  This is not the high point of the set.