Instant Favorite.
... View MoreIn truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
... View MoreThere are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
... View MoreThe acting in this movie is really good.
... View MoreThis is nearly an auteur film for George Romero, acting as director, editor, cinematographer and screenwriter (with his wife producing). Inspired by the occult and feminism, two major movements of the early 70s that play nicely together, the film was shot with a small crew for $100,000 (originally budgeted for a quarter million).The film had issues finding distribution, with several of them demanding hard core scenes. Jack H. Harris (producer of The Blob, Equinox, Eyes of Laura Mars and Dark Star) finally distributed it as Hungry Wives, cutting nearly 41 minutes from the films running time (the version on the Anchor Bay DVD is still missing 26 minutes, which are presumably lost forever as the original film negative and director's cut are thought to be gone forever).The film has the feel of pornography with none of the payoff, something noticed by critics. Others consider it a film that's unsure of its approach — indeed, how do you follow up a film like Night of the Living Dead which totally nails it and reinvents the horror genre without doing more horror? Romero's efforts in this period feel like avoidance — yet knowing that the grave (slumming it in the horror genre) beckons.Joan Mitchell is Jack's wife, introduced to us as walking through the woods that look eerily similar to the Evans City gravesite that opens Night of the Living Dead. Together, they live in the Forest Hills suburb of Pittsburgh (this movie is so yinzer that it thanks Foodland in the opening credits) with Nikki, their 19-year-old daughter. Much like many of the characters of Romero, they're Catholic and find their faith ill-equipped for the changes that the end of the 20th century brings to them.Read more at http://bit.ly/2yx7Om2
... View MoreGeorge Romero is a very talented filmmaker and I wanted to take something away from this movie. I really did. I even rented it twice more after my initial viewing, hoping I'd see something that I missed the first time. No, I wasn't anticipating a straight horror film; I was ready to accept "Hungry Wives" on its own terms. But I could never figure out what this film was about--and neither could Romero, unfortunately. After the enormous success of "Night of the Living Dead" he wanted to avoid being stereotyped as a horror director, but both of his post-"Night" attempts to branch out ("There's Always Vanilla" and this film) were unqualified duds, and Romero returned to the horror genre shortly thereafter with "The Crazies". While it's obvious from the cinematography and the menacing atmosphere of certain scenes that a genuine talent was at work here, the end result was a royal mess. "Hungry Wives" is confusing, badly dated, and full of surrealistically unsympathetic characters (though Jan White had some charisma as 'Joan'). Sorry, George :(
... View MoreThis thin and sometimes uncertain movie is never a mess, not even when it seems improvised: the 'arty' cutting is too assured. This is a surprise even though we are dealing with Romero after all who knows what he's doing. But we are only used to him applying his talents to horror, and that's not what 'Season of the Witch' is - it's Diary of a Mad Housewife with exploitation frills and an upstart feel that definitely ain't radical chic. Romero shows a lot of compassion for this landlocked suburban housewife, and explicitly distances himself from her hipster love interest's contempt. But after this weird Cassavettes thing in the first act, everything gets verrry metaphorical - the secondary characters are metaphors for housewife's emotions, housewife is metaphor for social repression - and this works better in horror than it does in drama. Leaving us with a very weird, arty, failed yet accomplished experiment by a guy who loves his medium, kind of a pre-Martin notepad sketch.
... View MoreThis movie was boring, badly produced, the audio was terrible, the acting was amateurish, and the story line was simply ridiculous. It should have been titled; "The Season of the Sexually Frustrated, Bored, 70's Housewife".Any "witchcraft" in the movie was limited to about 10 minutes total-- and was so off the mark, it was ludicrous. Summoning "the Devil" to do a Love spell... Puh-leeez. This is the kind of movie that gives Pagans and Witches a bad rap. Avoid at all costs! You know people, you have to look at a movie as a stand-alone project and forget which "famous" director (etc) had a hand in it. Doesn't matter if they've made masterpieces before or after... when a movie stinks, it stinks! Use a critical and discerning eye!
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