Rating: 3.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2026 | Psychotronic Encyclopedia
CW // Blood, Misogyny, Body Hatred, Abuse, Mental Illness, Sex/Masturbation, Assault
Joan Mitchell walks a trail through the woods and through a graveyard. Her husband, Jack, walks ahead of her, reading his newspaper. Suddenly, she’s a dog on a leash. Jack bats her with a newspaper and puts her in a kennel.
Joan wakes up to Jack preparing to leave for work.
She talks about her dreams to her psychotherapist. He mansplains her dreams, telling her that her husband does not trap her — her choices do.
Shirley tells Joan and Sylvia about their new neighbor, Marion Hamilton, at a social gathering. Shirley accuses Marion of being a witch. Joan and Shirley see Marion, who gives Shirley a tarot reading. Marion sees Joan’s fear and encourages it — that fear means she understands it better than most.
After a miserable experience with her daughter’s fling, Greg, Joan looks into witchcraft to access the power she otherwise doesn’t have.
This film is another case of a doomed production for George Romero. The producers wanted horror or softcore, and he gave them neither. Like Martin, the film follows someone who feels powerless and seeks some way to access power. In feeling enslaved to one mode of being, they bound themselves to another. The film doesn’t call into question the power itself, but the role it plays in the individual’s life.
Throughout the movie, Joan feels trapped by the men in her life — her husband dismisses her and doesn’t realize it; Greg assaults and manipulates Shirley, and Joan cannot stop him. She believes that by taking up witchcraft, she can control Greg and her life.
While you could read that the witchcraft makes her feel better, the film argues that it is another mode of powerlessness. Though she makes an incantation to summon Greg, she also drinks half a bottle of Jack Daniels and calls him. When he comes, she believes the incantation did it, not her.
The feminist message that Romero intended is that women have access to more power than they realize, which is nice in theory. But Joan’s desires had social and psychological consequences. Still, as a work written during the Second Wave, the movie captures the spirit of self-empowerment and anti-establishment views.
Ultimately, the biggest issue with the movie is the pacing and performances. Jan White does a tremendous job in the lead role, but some actors around her drag scenes into stilted or campy territory.
Regardless, the film is thoughtful and an essential watch for any Romero fans.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers **
- The red floral wallpaper is amazing
- Doing mad-libs as a party game isn’t a terrible idea
- Even in the 70s dentists were pushing electric toothbrushes
- A reference to Rosemary’s Baby
- Turning someone on and swinging is referring to smoking weed in this movie
- Every man in this movie sucks ass
- The Graduate reference
- Wow, the movie invents a valid reason to run upstairs when there’s an intruder in the house
- Great use of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”
- “Gold-plated jerk” is a great insult
- Turning the Lord’s Prayer into an incantation? Fuck yeah.
- The shopkeepers spying on Joan’s shopping — she is still under patriarchal surveillance.
- The “Free Booze” cups are funny
- Joan kills her husband who comes resembling the intruder from her dream.
- The movie closes with Joan in an occult ritual that binds her neck and ties her like a dog to an altar — a mirror of the dream she has.
- “You remember Jack’s wife.”