The Witches' Mountain (1972)

Carla (Mónica Randall) comes home to find a knife through one of her wigs, creepy dolls scattered throughout the house and her cat dead. Her daughter informs her that "we" are angry and she is to be punished, and admits to killing the cat. She leads Carla to the garage where the daughter retrieves her pet snake. Carla, afraid of what is to come, poors gasoline on the floor of the garage and burns her daughter alive.

Her husband Mario (Cihangir Gaffari) is disgusted when he finds out, and abruptly calls his boss to cancel his vacation, demanding any assignment that would get him away. He is told to go to an isolated mountain community that is reputed to be haunted.

When he arrives, he becomes smitten with Delia (Patty Shepard), first coming across her bathing topless on the beach. He invites her to come along, and she agrees. The next morning he picks her up, but hears strange chanting coming from all around. The chanting abruptly halts when she exits her house, and she claims ignorance to hearing it. They drive most of the day, arriving at an inn with a strange, half-deaf keeper (Victor Israel). After seeing someone looking in her window, Delia and Mario decide to spend the night in the barn instead.

The next day they depart for the mountain proper, despite the innkeeper warning Mario that it is not a safe place to take Delia. He ignores the advice, they go, and he starts photographing the local scenery - that is until someone steals his Jeep and drives it to the house of Fanta, an old lady who lives on the mountain. While out at night he encounters a strange funeral procession, and slowly learns the secrets of the mountain.

Slowly is the proper word here. With such a shocking beginning, one would expect something to happen that would be interesting. Instead, there is just a long stretch of nothing, and then finally a confusing and unsatisfying conclusion packed into about 10 minutes. The only thing interesting in the whole movie is Gaffari's moustache, which should have had its own credit and whose backstory would have been a lot more interesting than anything else that happened.

The Witches' Mountain (1972)
Duration: 84 minutes
Starring: Cihangir Gaffari, Patty Shepard
Director: Raúl Artigot

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