George A. Romero – Page 2 – Tripping Through Gateways

Originally made as “Hungry Wives” (which sounds more like some sexploitation film), the title of Season of the Witch was chosen to tie in to the Donavon song of the same name (which is used in the film). It is also a much more apt title.

Joan Mitchell’s husband is going out of town on business, and while he is gone, she falls under the influence of suburban witches.

Some see this as a feminist work, truthfully, it felt more like a well meaning work that understood cartoonish versions of feminism. It really is the “Men are Evil, Marriage is Prison” styled feminism you sometime see in right wing parody.

The film does a lot of disorienting “dream vision” which just feels odd. And the problem is, really…the film is remarkably dull. Romero has stated it is the one film of his he would have liked to remake. And I do wonder what an older Romero would have done with it..

Welcome to the month of October. As with every year, it will be scary movies all month. Themes for this month include the films of George A. Romero and Tobe Hooper.

I had started doing a zombie theme for the month, but the death of Romero in July prompted an exploration of his films, as I really had only seen a few. And I had not seen some key parts of his older work, so it was interesting to take a look at films like Martin and Season of the Witch (one I find myself generally thrilled with and the other…well…).

Only a month later, Hooper passed. Now, I have covered a few Tobe Hooper films in the past so I will not be creating new entries for those. For Lifeforce, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the Funhouse…click the links). I confess Hooper’s films start to take a sharp turn after the Mangler (which is more a crazy mess than a classic). I am going to also include his Masters of Horror episodes Dance of the Dead (which seems like it would be a Romero title for a zombie movie set at a rave, oh wait, that was one of the Return of the Living Dead films) and the Damned Thing.

Also, later this month, I will be going through the entire filmography of Christopher R. Mihm, a local Minnesota filmmaker. He has a new movie coming out this month, the Demon with the Atomic Brain. His films are loving odes to the horror and sci-fi films of the fifties and sixties. His Mihmicerse is populated with ghosts, mutant animals, and Nazi Killing Weresquitos. I will expound more as we get to the films later this month.

Hope you have as much fun reading these as I have had writing them.

Tag: George A. Romero

Bored Housewives (Season of the Witch, 1972)

October: The Dead, Martians and Atomic Brains