Day of the Turkey Review: The Witches' Mountain

The Witches' Mountain (1971)
Starring: John Gaffari, Patty Shepard, and Monica Randall
Director: Raul Artigot
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A commerical photographer (Caffari) takes a random girl (Shepard)--it WAS the Seventies!--with him on a trip to shoot a photo-essay on isolated Witches' Mountain. Random weirdnesses, and eventually witches, haunt them every step of the way.

"The Witches' Mountain" is a film with a muddled story and a twist ending that guarentees nothing in it makes sense.

How does the prologue with the evil little bitch girl fit with the climax? Was Shepard put in Gaffari's path through magic? What was the deal with the deserted village? Why do witches look like a modern ballet company during rehersal when doing "black magic"? Why do witches like to steal our hero's car and break into his house? These are just some of the questions you will be left with when the final frame of film freezes on your DVD player.

The best actor in this film is Shepard, who has shockingly blue eyes and has an odd sort of beauty about her--very much like the more well-known Barbara Steele--but no one is exactly bad... except perhaps that god-awful creepy innkeeper/comic relief character. But that might just have been the voice actor who did the dubbing.

Shepard's beauty aside, the only other thing this film has to offer is some great moments of unintentional hilarity to brighten any Bad Movie Night. Otherwise, this is just a mediocre horror film that's scare free and, like its protaganists, ultimately ends up nowhere.

A Matter of Quality

These pictures of actress Patty Shepard show that you can get an interest effect if you make a high-quality scan of low-quality images. In this case, pictures from printed page in a magazine. Click on the pictures to see the full-sized versions.

The pictures were originally spotted on this Spanish horror blog. For more on Patty Shepard and her movies, visit the Terror Titans blog.

Saturday Scream Queen: Patty Shepard

In 1963, at the age of 18, Patty Shepard moved from North Carolina to Spain where she swiftly found success as a model and actress. During the 1970s, she appeared in a string of thrillers and horror films along side the likes of Paul Naschy, Helga Line, and Erika Blanc while the eerie aura of mystery she brought to her these roles allowed her to carve out her own place in the pantheon of European B-horror movie stars.

In addition to her horror roles, Shepard was featured in westerns, comedies, sci-fi... probably every genre you can think of.

During the 1980s, Shepard's output slowed, and she retired from acting in 1988 after making two final horror movies--"Edge of the Axe" and "Slugs".

Shepard currently lives in Madrid, Spain, with her husband of nearly 45 years.

Young Hannah is lookin' to neck with you

Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires
(aka "Crypt of the Living Dead" and "Vampire Woman") (1972)
Starring: Andrew Prine, Patty Shepard, Mark Damon, Frank Branya, and Teresa Gimpera Director:
Ray Danton
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A young engineer (Prine) is tricked into unleashing a vampiress (Gimpera) who has been trapped in her tomb for 700 years. Will he be able to undo his mistake and save the inhabitants of a small island before it becomes a land of the undead?


"Young Hannah" is sluggish film, with a script that offers very little that hasn't been done in countless vampire movies before (and it doesn't do anything unique with the much-used elements; in fact, the film feels so much like an offering from Hammer Films that I half expected to see "Shot on location in Scotland and at Shepperton Studios" as the end credits ran out.

If you like the classic Hammer stuff for the acting and stories, this might be a movie you'll enjoy; the cast is attractive and they act well enough. If you liked them either for the beautiful use of colors, or the creative use of light and shadow in the black-and-white films, this is not a film for you... it's shot in black-and-white, and the cinematographer really wasn't good at handling that medium.

This isn't a bad movie... just thoroughly mediocre. The cast does decent job, the comings and goings of Hannah the Vampire Queen are well done, and the story is okay, if a bit too slowly paced. There are just movies of this type that are better.

(By the way, for those wondering about the credit given to Ygor at the top... that's just me razzing the movie for a really odd bit of costuming. There's a character (played by Ihsan Gedik) who looks exactly like Ygor from Universal's "Son of Frankenstein" that it contributes unintentional comedy to the film for film buffs. But still not enough hilarity to lift the film above mediocre.)