The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976)

Directed by Matt Cimber

Starring Millie Perkins, Lonny Chapman, Vanessa Brown

Rated R

USA

"Do you shave with razors, or is this all going to be agonizingly slow?"

Millie Perkins is Molly, a Miami Beach barmaid who just happens to be losing her mind.

We first meet Molly on the beach with her two nephews. The children ask her about their grandfather, who from stories told to them in the past, was a great sea captain who tragically became lost at sea and was never seen from again. Molly talks lovingly about her father as she wistfully explains that he was too good for the world, and that was the reason he had left.

As Molly ruminates, she glances over at a pair of hunky beefcakes working out on the beach. As she stares at them with a seemingly lustful eye, her vision of them shifts dramatically to become that of them being brutally killed by an unseen hand. This is the point when we see that something is a bit amiss.

Shaking off the episode, Molly and her nephews make their way from the beach and pass a tattoo parlor. Molly's eyes become transfixed on a drawing of a mermaid on the outside window of the shop. She goes onto tell the children that no decent person would get a tattoo. Suddenly, the trio are quickly chased off by a tattoo-faced man inside the shop and they continue on to the boys' house.

Upon arriving to the children's mother's house, the three of them cuddle up on the couch to watch some football on TV. As they sit there, the conversation alternates between Molly and her sister arguing about whether or not their dad really was the great man that Molly remembers him to be and of Molly rambling about how beautiful and perfect two of the players in the football game are.

That night, Molly has a dream in which she is in a hotel room with the two football players she was admiring earlier. The scene turns quickly from laughing, pot smoking, and sex to Molly tying the two up to the bed and slicing off their manhood with a razor blade.

Upon waking, Molly soon learns that the two men she had dreamed of killing were indeed murdered that night- in the same way in which she had dreamt it.

From this point onward, we are led on a journey of uncertainties. Is Molly the killer? Is what we're seeing on screen reality or simply a scene from Molly's deranged mind? What is the true identity of her father and what does he have to do with her current state? The genius of this film is that you never feel certain of what is real and what is a delusion, even as the climax comes to fruition.

Originally advertised as a horror film, The Witch Who Came From The Sea never quite found it's audience. Hopefully, with this re-release, this film can finally be seen by those who can view it not from what they think it should be, but what it actually is: a true gem of 70's psychological drama.

The Witch Who Came From The Sea is a perfect film for anyone who thought Lifetime movies would be much better if they made you feel like you were on Quaaludes and acid, and included some penis severings and nudity to round everything out. I, for one, am that type of person - and I hope you are too!

- Jeremy Vaca