It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I stopped this film 20 minutes in to look up the Scottish ballad the film was based on, "Ballad of Tam Lin", so I could make sense out of the film. Wikipedia has a thorough article on the song and the lyrics. Everything made much more sense after reading the article.That said, this was one of Ava Gardner's few supernatural films, and was Roddy McDowell's only directorial effort. The screenplay sticks fairly close to the song's plot, with a look at "Swinging London" mod clothes, late 60's slang , and a so-so song overlaying all as an attempt at "relevance". Listen for the bits of ballad sung through the film .Gardner gave an outstanding performance as the coven leader; the film lets the viewer decide if other fairy tale terms are applicable. Ian McShane is good as the Favored One, and Stephanie Beacham is good as his Human love.AIP gave the film only a limited release. The misunderstanding arises from the fact that AIP promoted it as a horror film rather than as a poetic romance even reediting the film and retitiling it "The Devil's Widow" from the original "Ballad of Tam Lin" to try and achieve this effect. As a result, no one was happy, and the film sank without a trace, predictably losing money.McDowell didn't direct another film, which is a real shame, because this one has startling photography, the music is interwoven to maximum effect, and McDowell did well by the actors.This is one of Ava Gardner's least-seen, most underrated films. My opinion is that if you feel lost in the beginning, stay with the film anyways as it improves as it goes on.

Based on an old Scottish folktale about a young man (Tamlin) enamored of a fairy queen, the film's tagline "She drained them of their manhood...and then of their lives!" naturally created certain expectations. Even after all these years, I still tend to buy into this brand of hyperbole so I assumed it'd be something along the lines of Antinea, Aeisha, or Catherine Deneuve in THE HUNGER but what I got was a novice director's self-consciously arty attempt at enchantment starring a past-her-prime Hollywood glamour girl who admittedly couldn't act. Former MGM goddess Ava Gardner plays a fabulously wealthy queen bee whose latest flame, "Tom Lynn" (duh), rebels after he knocks up the vicar's daughter and wants to (gasp) marry her. Obviously, this arouses Ava's anger and there's hell to pay ...or there should have been, anyway. "Bloodless" gialli have their place but the same can't be said for a horror film, even when the horror's psychological (which it isn't here). I don't know what this is and except for the '70s fashions and decor -and the sight of a legendary beauty's crumbling facade- there's really not much reason to tune in. Actor Roddy McDowell's no Charles Laughton and it's not a pity he never directed again. Just sayin'.

What a terrible film! It's no wonder this is Roddy McDowall's only directorial effort ever; it's the kind of film nobody sees/likes/understands, and has only one category of possible defenders: those who like the "It's-incomprehensible-so-it-must-be-profound" school of filmmaking (examples: "Don't Look Now", "The Shout"). Has some tension at the end...enough for me to give it one star instead of none.

Based on Robert Burns' version of the Scottish folk tale "The Ballad of Tamlin," this modest but mesmerizing 1971 thriller concerns a young man, Tom Lynn ( Ian McShane), who becomes the romantic prisoner of an evil enchantress Michaela Cazaret ( Ava Gardner ). In a particularly arrestingly eerie and phantasmagorical set piece during which Tom, stoned out of his mind, is pursued by murderous acolytes of the bewitching Miss Cazaret, McDowall effectively punctuates the story's fairy tale quality with an entirely harmonious nightmarish and hallucinogenic tone that forever reflects the psychedelic sixties. McDowall's laudably creative panache as a filmmaker was embellished by a seductive performance from his star Ava Gardner. Though past her prime, she is nonetheless sultrily convincing as the irresistible, vampiric dominatrix insatiably commanding her hapless lovers to their eagerly desired doom.Tam Lin (aka The Devil's Widow ) was also McDowall's solo directorial effort. Based on the splendid result (especially the aforementioned set piece), it was a great pity that Roddy did not pursue a career as a film director because - as with Charles Laughton, who blessed us with his only turn as a director, the superb "The Night of the Hunter" - he possessed a definite flair as a filmmaker. Produced in 1969, his film sat on the shelf for two years. In 1971, McDowall returned to his film to do some post-production work on it but 'twas all for naught because it was poorly distributed and sank into relative obscurity. In 1998 Republic Home Video, in collaboration with Martin Scorsese and McDowall, restored "Tam Lin" and rescued it from oblivion by releasing a stunningly superb widescreen print with an introduction by McDowall.I highly recommend this stylishly directed and unjustly neglected gem to lovers of the macabre and mysterious. To all such, I strongly encourage you to seek it out.