Which witch flick is which?

Robert Eggers’ The Witch got a seri­ous boost ahead of its US release last month thanks to a tan­ta­lis­ing trail­er and a provoca­tive poster fea­tur­ing a naked lady. On the film’s open­ing week­end audi­ences flocked to see what they pre­sumed to be a jump-scare spook­fest. Out­rage ensued when dis­grun­tled patrons found them­selves con­front­ed with a thought­ful, slow-burn­ing art-house film set in the 1700s. To pre­vent this sort of mix up from reoc­cur­ring ahead of the film’s UK release, here’s a handy guide to which witch film to watch.

A won­der­ful­ly lurid Ham­mer hor­ror about a coven of witch­es in a small Eng­lish vil­lage with Joan Fontaine as a school­teacher who uncov­ers the dev­il­ish goings on. There are voodoo dolls, satan­ic rit­u­als, lots of shriek­ing and an evil cat. You want witch­es, you got it.

Also known as Super­sti­tion, this supe­ri­or ​’80s splat­ter film fea­tures a kid get­ting sliced in two, a priest get­ting his innards minced by a cir­cu­lar saw and a prop­er­ly scary witch with long talons. This is a witch film that deliv­ers the goods, name­ly a head in a microwave oven in the open­ing scenes; unlike Robert Eggers’ The Witch, which is set before microwaves were even invented.

Full dis­clo­sure: there are no actu­al witch­es in Witch­board, but before you head to the exits in dis­gust, note that one of the lead char­ac­ters dress­es like a mid-’80s Simon Le Bön. There’s an impal­ing, a decap­i­ta­tion, a fatal crush­ing by par­ti­tion wall, a use­less cop, a spook with a pen­chant for toss­ing beer cans around and a gra­tu­itous show­er scene. Oh, and a Oui­ja board gets shot to death.

Also known as Ghost­house 2 and Evil Encoun­ters, this one stars a post-Exor­cist Lin­da Blair and pre-Bay­watch David Has­sel­hoff, a sure-fire guar­an­tee of a direct-to-land­fill VHS Z‑movie howler. There’s a creepy old hotel, Has­sel­hoff either in an anorak or with his top off, Blair pos­sessed by what sounds like Jack­ie Stal­lone and typos in the open­ing cred­its. To date there have been 12 (!!) sequels.

Mar­ket­ed with the hys­ter­i­cal title Burn Witch, Burn in the US, this is more of a study of a mar­riage in cri­sis than schlock hor­ror – a mea­sured and fright­en­ing account of a woman using black mag­ic to advance her husband’s career. See also George A Romero’s Sea­son of the Witch, where the Night of the Liv­ing Dead direc­tor turned his atten­tion from zom­bies to witch­es with a film about a bored house­wife dab­bling in the occult. Audi­ences couldn’t have been more dis­ap­point­ed that his trade­mark gut-munch­ing had been replaced by low-key sub­ur­ban navel gazing.

Reti­tled for its US release as Dev­il Woman, this mas­ter­ful Japan­ese ghost sto­ry, about a pair of Samu­rai killing women who get their come­up­pance, deliv­ers all the scares. It takes a bit of patience for them to arrive, but boy, when they do… An intense, poet­ic and rather extra­or­di­nary film.

The orig­i­nal title of this moody low-bud­get Ital­ian hor­ror film trans­lates as The Witch in Love, which would have had pun­ters queu­ing around the block for some­thing fruity and fright­en­ing. Imag­ine their dis­ap­point­ment when they realised this sto­ry of a mys­te­ri­ous woman liv­ing in a dilap­i­dat­ed vil­la lur­ing men to their doom was actu­al­ly in black and white. No gore or nudi­ty and not a broom­stick or black cat in sight, but instead a pal­pa­ble sense of dread beneath the sen­su­al imagery.

This film became noto­ri­ous when it was deemed a video nasty in the UK in the 1980s. But despite it’s rep­u­ta­tion this is a unique ​’70s odd­i­ty star­ring Mil­lie Perkins as a dis­turbed woman whose mem­o­ries of a child­hood trau­ma tip her over the edge: no witch­es, gob­lins and no ghoulies – quite lit­er­al­ly, as Perkins cas­trates some­one in the film, which come to think of it is prob­a­bly what all the fuss was about.

The Witch is released in UK cin­e­mas 11 March; The Witch Who Came from the Sea is out now on Blu-ray as part of Arrow Video’s ​‘Amer­i­can Hor­ror Project’.