The Witches (1966)
Joan Fontaine is one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s golden age; at the height of her career in the 1940s she was a huge star excelling in the kind of melodramas that earned her multiple award nominations. We almost certainly remember her from the Alfred Hitchcock classics Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941), the latter securing her the only Academy Award won for a Hitchcock performance. By the 60s, however, Hollywood being notoriously limited in roles for the more mature lady, she was finding film work harder to come by and admirably took the matter into her own hands securing the rights to 'The Devil's Own' by Norah Lofts (writing under the pseudonym Peter Curtis). The concept found its way to the Hammer Studios which resulted in it being brought to the screen in 1966 under the title The Witches . The Witches introduces us to Gwen Mayfield (Joan Fontaine) who in the opening sequence is working as a teacher in a small school in Africa. Unfortunately the loc...