Witches' Brew (1980) Reviews

• Groaner based on an excellent if dated horror story

  jclark-292007-01-13

  I stumbled across this movie on cable and watched for a while, thinking with Benjamin and Garr it wouldn't be a complete waste of time. Wrong! To compound the disappointment of wooden performances, I eventually realized the plot was lifted right out of Fritz Leiber's "Conjure Wife" -- a wonderful horror tale set in academia. If you go for horror and/or "weird tales", find the book (and read Leiber's "Our Lady of Darkness" while you're at it -- it's better). But forget this movie. Closest video approximation to the tone of Leiber's work is the Night Gallery episode, "The Dead Man". A student of Lovecraft, Leiber is one of the true greats in weird fiction.

• A fun kid flick

  mosesgthre2005-09-10

  This was a successful scary but funny flick for kids between 8 and 14 years of age. Teri Garr is an excellent actress. If there was ever a Bewitched character to replace Montgomery, Garr would have been perfect. This film is something to remember, is funny, and in its time, it was fun to watch. Today's movies, sure, somebody rents it and of course it's cheesy. Check out Rocky 1. Check out Star Wars 1. Great movies then, but today, they play like a radio on while you focus on fixing the car out in the garage or cutting the lawn. This movie is fun and I give it 6 out of 10. It is a classic to slapstick horror. The other characters in the movie are interesting.

• Some Gargoyles, including Teri Garr

  silentgpaleo2000-05-31

  WITCHES BREW was hyped in the early 80's by the same horror fanzines that hyped SATURDAY THE 14th. OK, so I can't help it. This is a pretty lame flick. And Teri Garr is in it. Granted, she is all right in small doses. Overbearing, yes. Annoying, yes. But she was good in last year's DICK. I can't really pick on her too much (Dave Letterman takes care of that for me). This film has a few effects around the silly housewife hijinks, and those said effects are of the Q variety. At least the gargoyle's supposed to be made of clay. Still, I haven't seen this picture in years, mostly by choice. It is an unmemorable, and thoroughly draining, viewing experience.

• Toil toil cauldron doesn't bubble

  jjnxn-12015-10-26

  Silliness about a group of faculty wives using witchcraft to advance their husbands careers. Picks up and drops ideas willy-nilly although it isn't completely without an ultimate goal. But the picture becomes increasingly ridiculous as it progresses. Odd to see gifted comedienne Teri Garr in such as this, although it is played initially with a light touch. She's not bad but it doesn't play to her strengths, she was however still working her way up so probably taking whatever was offered. She's also a peculiar match with Richard Benjamin, who spends what seems an inordinate part of the movie in various states of undress, their styles don't mesh very well. This was Lana Turner's cinematic screen swan song. While its not the horrifying train wreck that some Golden Age stars, Joan Crawford, Veronica Lake etc., were subjected to it's hardly the sort of film a legendary star should be exiting the stage in. She does look glamorous throughout until script dictates strip her of her trappings, an oasis of pizazz in a sea of slack suits. Worth catching for the two lead actresses if you're a fan of either but strictly a mediocrity.

• A comedy horror film with no comedy simply becomes just horrific.

  mark.waltz2018-10-31

  Truly bad special effects and some downright rotten acting by some usually pretty good actors turn this obscure remake of "Weird Woman" (1944) and "Burn, Witch, Burn!" (1962) into something so remarkably bad that the true mystery is why such usually interesting actors like Teri Garr, Richard Benjamin and the legendary Lana Turner would accept it. The answer lies in a downright awful script and some really bad direction, as the actors seem to be trying to bring some life to it, but fail miserably. Once again, it's about a bunch of professor's wives involved in black magic desperately trying to outdo each other to make sure that a family member gets the open head of psychology department position, even though they each know that the other one is involved in the dark arts. Lana Turner, having only made a handful of appearances on film and TV in the 1970's, looks tired here, given too matronly a wig and covered in costume rejects from the "Maude" TV series. She's the head witch, adept at the art of black magic, and seemingly nobody you want to mess with. She's also immensely powerful it seems just as a woman, riding around in her limousine and being quite imperious, coming off as graceful, but obviously up to no good. Her mission is to get her soul out of her dying body and into a new body, and this leads to Garr's soul ending up in Turner's body while she is on life support. Perhaps on paper, it sounded interesting, and it might have been, had it been produced as a "TV movie of the week" of which there were many of around this time. In a sense, it's very similar to 1978's "The Initiation of Sarah" which at least had the benefit of some decent, if cheesy, special effects, and a campy, over-the-top performance by Shelley Winters. Here, Turner (having recently been a witch in a tour of "Bell, Book and Candle") comes off as just a one dimensional nasty rich lady, and Garr is completely miscast and just utterly annoying, as is Benjamin as Garr's cuckolded husband. The presence of "Dark Shadows" leading lady Kathryn Leigh Scott adds a gothic connection to the plot, but if you sit there waiting for any attempt at "Hocus Pocus" style humor, you will be sorely disappointed. There's some strange plot twists along the way such as Benjamin being accused of attempting to molest a male student and one of the women suddenly spotted on a roof with an open rifle taking shots at innocent passers by. While this may have been Turner's last big screen appearance (actually more small screen; I couldn't even find a copy of the poster or any reference to a big city this might have played in), she would not go out with this as her last credit, fortunately. A different type of witch's brew followed just 2 years later when she went up against Jane Wyman's Angela Channing on "Falcon Crest", looking much more rested and returning to her glamorous image.