#Witchhammer

[goryhorroor]

horror symbols: crucifixes

In horror movies, crosses are often used as protective charms or magical weapons against supernatural enemies, but in horror movies critiquing catholicism, it could mean to a character a tramua of theirs and what is being used to scare them.

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Sona Valentova in Witchhammer (1970)

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔚𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔥𝔞𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔯 - 𝔏𝔬𝔬𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔚𝔞𝔯

[misforgotten2]

The Story Hemmingway Should Have Written.

"For sale: suicide note, never used."

©2023 Witchhammer

[icollectimages]

Witchhammer (1970) (Kladivo na carodejnice)

Country: Czechoslovakia

Directed by: Otakar Vávra

Cinematography by: Josef Illík

[freakshowpuppet]

Witchhammer (1970)  - Directed by Otakar Vávra

[soulsanitarium]

Czech 🇨🇿 Kladivo na čarodějnice (Witchhammer) Dir. Otakar Vávra (1970)

Adaptation of Kaplický's novel of the same name about the Northern Moravia trials. It is drawing from original historical documents.

In the 1670s in Moravia, an altar boy observes an old woman hiding the bread given out during communion. He alerts the priest, who confronts the old woman.🐄 Marina Schuchová has stolen a consecrated wafer with the intention to give it to a cow in order to make it yield more milk (so she was guilty🤔)

She admits that she took the bread with the intent to give it to a cow to re-enable its milk production. The priest reports the incident to the owner of the local estate who, in turn, calls in an inquisitor, a judge specializing in witchcraft trials. Judge Jindřich František Boblig z Edelstadtu. He is portrayed as a ruthless inquisitor summoned to root out witchcraft.

✝️Stereotypes of witchcraft, typical Sabbath stories, such as the contract with Satan, were already present in earlier trials held in Silesia by Judge Boblig z Edelstadtu, who now unleashed controlled persecution of inhabitants of the estate of Velké Losiny.

🔥By applying hard pressure and subsequently 

also torture, Boblig forced the

women and men not only to plead guilty 

but also to name their alleged accomplices. He triggered off a domino effect.

What was quite exceptional in this historical case was that judge/lawyer Boblig sought mainly the Conviction of local wealthy burghers.💰

🧹This film is very provocative, but it also offers a bit of a view of the layers of society and political motives. Indeed, the film is considered an allegory for the Stalin’s political show trials. 👀Just like Miller’s The Crucible used the past to mirror McCarthyism in 1950s 🇺🇸, so here Witchhammer inevitably refers to the Stalinist show-trials that plagued 1950s Czechoslovakia.

👁Also this film offers voyerism, guilty pleasures for the viewers. Psychoanalytic film theory has dealt with the subject from the perspectives of both sadism and masochism. Our capacity for empathy allows identification with both the torturer and the tortured.

📖In the Bible Pilate 'washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person'. This is an ideology but did he washed his hands also of the responsibility?

Click The video to Hear The sounds of this Film

🚻The juxtaposition of men and women often displaces hidden themes in the film. The culprit may be, for example, a Catholic church, leaders, etc. In this film a deacon Lautner’s martyrdom, is clearly an analogy of Christ🧔‍♀️

Thing that bothered me throughout the film was certain indicative ⚫️&🏳presentation. It was the authorities themselves which, in an effort to stop the economic decline of the estates in their jurisdiction caused by the witch trials, finally put a stop to the rampages of the energetic old judge. Before that more than 100 were executed.

Source:

Krištofová, Tereza 2009. Severomoravské čarodějnické procesy s přihlédnutím na vývoj čarodějnických pověr. Bachelors thesis. Institute of Czech History. Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická fakulta. English abstract.

[amazingmrcinema007]

Anytime this one priest in Witchhamer shows up, I can't help but feel amused at how much he looks like Michael C. Hall in a wig. Like, what are you doing in a 1970 Czech film about the Northern Moravia witch trials in the 1670s, Mr. Hall?

[unorthodoxchurch778]

This is one of the series of things I watch to question all of humanity and how privileged I am to be born in current times. Whenever someone says they want to live a medieval life with romanticization, recommend this movie.

[cinemaquiles]

CINCO CLÁSSICOS DA REPÚBLICA TCHECA QUE VOCÊ PRECISA CONHECER! 

[triste-guillotine]

A.M.S.G. "Hostis Universi Generis" LP 2016 ('...Dreadnaught titans of the end. Now there is nothing. So we become nothingness. Ouroboros has devoured itself. The swastika has stopped swirling. The event horizon has consumed itself in the final act...')

"For all its arrogance and purported grandeur, the cosmos as it exists in this incarnation is but a failed experiment, put into motion by an inept creator whose very existence is a reflection of incompetence. Let this work be a solemn call for a return to nothingness. Agios Lucifer. Hostis Humani Generis. So mote it be."

Hostis Universi Generis | A.M.S.G. | Inferna Profundus Records (bandcamp.com)

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Witchhammer (1970)

[goryhorroor]

Do you have any folk horror recs for someone who’s just getting into horror? Midsommar’s the only one I’ve seen and I loved it

blood on satan’s claw, the conquerors worm, haxan, viy, eve’s bayou, witchhammer, the devil rides out, the white reindeer, captain clegg, robin redbreast, marketa lazarova, the city of the dead, tumbbad, a field in england, the ritual, onibaba, kwaidan, apostle, picnic at hanging rock, kuroneko, the wicker man, and the wailing!

[befickleforever]

If you liked [inside no 9 episode] watch [film] : a guide. Part 1

(Some of these films go off vibes alone, whilst others are the films that directly inspired the episode. For example, we all know where the wicker man will be included)

If you liked ‘Simon Says’, consider:

- Misery (1990). After a serious car crash, novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by former nurse Annie Wilkes, who claims to be his biggest fan.

- Sunset Boulevard (1950). An aging silent film queen refuses to accept that her stardom has ended. She hires a young screenwriter to help set up her movie comeback.

- Perfect Blue (1997). A young Japanese singer is encouraged by her agent to quit singing and pursue an acting career, beginning with a role in a murder mystery TV show.

- The King of Comedy (1982). Rupert Pupkin is a failure in life but a celebrity in his own mind, hosting an imaginary talk show in his mother's basement.

- The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011). Martin, a mentally disturbed loner that obsesses over the film The Human Centipede (First Sequence), kidnaps a group of people to create his own 'human centipede' to act out his perverse sexual fantasies.

If you liked ‘The Understudy’ consider:

- Sleuth (1972). This mystery finds Andrew Wyke, a wealthy author of detective novels and game aficionado, facing off against his wife's lover, Milo Tindle, a middle-class hair salon-owner.

- Richard III (1995). A murderous lust for the British throne sees Richard III descend into madness.

- Throne of Blood (1957). Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures.

- Theatre of Blood (1973). After an unsuccessful attempt at suicide, Lionheart sets out to murder all of his critics, each with a different style of death taken from a Shakespeare play.

If you liked ‘The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge’ consider:

- Witchhammer (1970). When a beggar is caught hiding her communion wafer, the hunt for witches begins.

- The Witch (2015). In 1630 New England, panic and despair envelops a farmer, his wife and their children when youngest son Samuel suddenly vanishes.

- Witchfinder General (1968). When Matthew Hopkins is appointed Witchfinder General by the Puritans under Cromwell, he is empowered to travel the countryside with his henchmen and collect a fee for each witch from whom he extracts a confession - a policy which is exploited to the full.

If you liked ‘The Harrowing’ consider:

- Carry on Screaming! (1966). An investigation into the disappearance of several young women leads two bumbling Victorian detectives to the home of Dr Watt and his vampish sister Valeria.

- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014). Residents of a worn-down Iranian city encounter a skateboarding vampire who preys on men who disrespect women.

If you liked ‘Mr King’ consider:

- The Wicker Man (1973). Sergeant Howie arrives on the small Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the report of a missing child.

- In The Earth (2021). A scientist and park scout conduct a routine experiment while the world looks for a cure to a lethal virus and as the night progresses, they experience unexplainable things.

- Midsommar (2019). Dani's psychological trauma affects her relationship with Christian, her lover. However, when they visit their friend's ancestral commune in an effort to mend things, it changes their lives forever.

- The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971). Ralph Gower and a local judge are on a quest to get a bunch of possessed kids with a strange fur on their skin under control after they end up killing the locals.

[donnerpartyofone]

Everything I Watched While I Was Recovering From the Plague

I have a fantasy that watching a bunch of movies of wildly varying quality and content in close proximity can really bend your wires out of shape, like being exposed to too much radiation. I like to tell people that I had to get all those eye surgeries because of all the deranged stuff I subject my eyeballs to. My criteria for this marathon were "movies I want to watch but it's never 'the right time'" and "movies my sick husband in the next room is not interested in".

THE IRON CLAW: Pretty much the big, dumb, lummoxy movie that you might expect. The script is surprisingly weak--the girlfriend declares that everything is a matter of fate minutes before saying "I believe we make our own luck"??--but the family curse part is sort of compelling in spite of it all. I admit I was partially in it for the freak show of muscle mania; for various cultural reasons the way bodies were presented (and the kinds of bodies people aspired to have) in the '80s was so different than it is now, the exhibition of flesh had a very different kind of character that's hard to describe but this movie with its bulbous wrestler bodies filling the screen gave me flashbacks. Zac Efron should keep his He-Man haircut.

DARK HARVEST: I've been struggling to describe this certain type of movie that's very form over function, with a pretty specific form: there's like a really forced "stylized" nostalgia thing with a lot of humorless "weirdness" attached in movies like FINAL GIRL and KNIVES AND SKIN, and to some degree THE REFLECTING SKIN although that's a more sophisticated example (that I still don't enjoy). Anyway DARK HARVEST adds a Pumpkinhead guy (not pictured below) to the mix, and he looks pretty good at least.

THANKSGIVING: Well it's the best movie Eli Roth has made in a long time! It's OK. I like that the inciting incident is a Black Friday stampede, but it's too bad he didn't have the means to make it look more convincing; it feels like about a 150 people running around yelling and there's conspicuous amount of breathing room for the victims getting "crushed".

ZONE OF INTEREST: A tour of the ogre's castle, creepy and effective. Łukasz Żal's spy cam setup cleverly establishes a sense of being trapped in forbidden chambers.

GODLAND: Danish priest makes the perilous journey to Iceland, is a complete asshole to everyone he meets. Interesting, but more beautiful than interesting.

LINGERING: Goofy K horror in which a handful of different neurotic women are relentlessly mean to a small child. I often wonder about this trope of like, someone who is categorically unsuited to parenthood gets saddled with an orphan, and they REALLY don't want to adopt the orphan, but eventually they turn against their own personality and rational estimation of means because the orphan is so cute and/or sad. The implication seems to be that every one of us can and should be parents, and maybe this is even related to the (usually comedic) trope of the solitary curmudgeon who just wants to be left alone, until they undergo some kind of forced exposure therapy at the hands of their nosy neighbors who insist that no human being could actually enjoy their own company. This is an ongoing concern for me.

UNREST: Anarchist watch factory workers in love. Second movie in the list that uses early photography as a motif (also GODLAND). Pretty interesting formally, and I like all the stuff about the development and spread of standardized hourly time.

WITCHHAMMER: 1970 Czech allegory for Communist "show trials". Man, whether you're making an exploitation movie or a political statement, witch hunt movies are always tough stuff, huh?

HONEYCOMB: A woman unravels mentally when her childhood furniture arrives at her home, and she and her husband play out a series of weird infantile psychodramas as an escape from the pressures of their bourgeois existence. More interesting than enjoyable, and I'm not always sure how interesting it really is. There's a certain brand of European '60s filmmaking that involves a lot of improvised shrieking and laughing and crying and rolling around on the floor that makes me question whether it's really as hollow as I think it is, or if I'm just not a sophisticated enough viewer to understand the power of it, or if its original power was really dependent on its context in the development of cinema. Maybe the answer is a little of everything.

THE SWEET HOURS: A Spanish writer's latest play parses the Freudian mysteries of his childhood, and he fully immerses himself in the rehearsals to seek the truth by reliving his memories. It's actually not that deep but maintains a great air of importance anyway.

NIGHT GAMES: A young aristocrat brings his bride to his childhood manse where their surroundings trigger immersive memories of his debauched youth, in which--wait a minute, am I watching the same fucking movie for the third time? Not really but that was weird. Criterion notes that this is supposedly John Waters' favorite movie, which makes a lot of sense when you've heard him say that he used to force Divine to drop acid with him and go see Bergman movies, which Divine HATED. What's really funny to me is that if you basically do not want to drop acid and watch a Bergman movie then you'd think nothing could make you do it more than once! The idea of John Waters tricking Divine into doing this repeatedly is fucking hilarious.

SAM NOW: Disturbing documentary made by some young dudes trying to find out why their mother suddenly abandoned them when they were kids. It's a decent enough movie but I was extremely unsettled by the blithe naivete of the young brothers set against the increasingly obvious fact that there's something pretty bad going on with the mom. Get ready for a lot of discomfort and unresolved questions if you watch this.

LIZZIE: Why is it that nobody has made a good Lizzie Borden movie? It's one of those overly familiar tales that's just sitting there in plain view still waiting for a solid adaptation, kind of like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but that at least has the great Disney cartoon in among all the so-so film attempts. You really want this to be good with Kirsten Stewart and Chloe Sevigny AND Denis O'Hare who I love to death, but it's just not that compelling. Actually it doesn't even dig into the most interesting details of the story in my opinion, I guess we needed to save time for extra lesbian makeouts. Also I hate to say it but Chloe Sevigny is really miscast; I love her but her whole thing is being really easy-going and natural, and that doesn't really work for this character (or she's not getting the direction that worked on AHS). Oh well.

MAIDSTONE: See my notes at the end of HONEYCOMB. I found this almost totally unwatchable. I've never read any Norman Mailer. Is Norman Mailer still cool, or did he just seem cool to some people at the time? Was Norman Mailer sort of like an adolescent rebellion phase that American literature had to go through in order to get to wherever it is now? A cursory review of his legacy seems to indicate this. Or maybe it's just really hard for me to sympathize with someone who goes way out of his way to piss off women, and then his defense against the inevitable backlash is "SEE? Feminism is fascist bullshit because look how I'm being treated!" I still see men do this on the smaller scale of their personal relationships--you know the drill, drive some poor woman insane, and then when she acts insane, invalidate everything she says by calling her insane--and they don't even need the excuse of clumsy satire to keep doing it, so forgive me if I don't find this approach very radical. And that's all setting aside Mailer's fetishization of the American Negro for whom it is not my place to speak, but you can imagine what that consists of if you don't already know. In any case I did not enjoy this movie, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time waiting for the infamous Rip Torn hammer attack. I developed this whole fantasy that Rip Torn must reach a point where he just can't take it anymore and he tries to kill Norman Mailer. I mean *I* sure wanted to kill Norman Mailer, somebody has to do it, right? There are several moments in the film where it seems like someone has finally snapped and the cathartic murder might take place. What actually happens is that Rip Torn wanders up to Norman Mailer with a claw hammer, totally wild-eyed, and declares that he has finally understood that this great work of art can only be resolved with the death of the character Mailer plays. He really seems to believe what he's saying, and the sequence is extremely disturbing. In a way it's even disappointing, there were perfectly good, sober reasons to kill Norman Mailer without putting an unstable person in a chaotic and violent situation where he might naturally flip the fuck out! If MAIDSTONE has anything to tell us about the myth of the cowboy auteur, it might be that somebody like Norman Mailer shouldn't have free reign to abuse large groups of people even in the name of social critique or whatever, because one of them might turn out to be fucking crazy.

WANDA: I love movies that are made in Pittsburgh, I find them all totally fascinating. Or even just Pittsburgh-adjacent, like contrary to everybody else my favorite part of THE DEER HUNTER is the very beginning with the wedding, it's totally captivating to me. Anyway this is an odd, grimy little drama written and directed by Barbara Loden in which she plays the most incompetent woman in the world. It's a good time for a bad time, and if you're watching closely you'll see a poster for THE BRAINIAC in one of the scenes!

KISS DADDY GOODBYE: Obscure psychic kids movies starring Marilyn Burns and Fabian. Marilyn Burns is the nice teacher and Fabian is the cop who try to solve the mystery of the psychic kids, so they inevitably have sex because we have time for that I guess, but man Fabian's like roadside bachelor pad is SO SCARY. It has to be somebody's real hoarder house and it looks like it should be condemned, I felt nervous for Marilyn Burns! Marilyn Burns do NO eat or drink anything that comes out of that kitchen! Have you had your tetanus shot Marilyn Burns? Please run screaming, this is not a normal bachelor pad mess and it is not a good place for you to be naked!

The End.

[freakshowpuppet]

Witchhammer (1970)  - Directed by Otakar Vávra