The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976) Review

 

(contains spoilers)

I discovered this little 70's oddity from the Criterion channel's "70's Horror" collection. So far I've watched this three times. The first time I turned it off, about 15 minutes in, when the main character begins cutting two football players with a razor; the violence is done offscreen but it's implied that she castrates them. I decided to finish it but was not that into it; however, I thought it was unique and left a lasting impression. The second time I just had it on in the background and was only interested in watching certain scenes. The third time I started to pay closer attention to it and viewed it with a more critical eye. On the surface, it is a trashy 70's novelty. Once you get past that, it is a good movie.

The movie is about Molly, played exquisitely by the beautiful Millie Perkins. She is a cocktail waitress at the aptly named "Boathouse", a nautical themed dive bar in Santa Monica. Her boss and friend with benefits is a man named Long John. Molly is a disturbed woman with repressed memories of childhood rape by her sea captain father. Unusual for a horror film, she becomes the film's slasher villain, using a razor blade to kill men she to whom she feels an attraction. 

The movie begins with Molly at the beach gazing at three bodybuilders. It seems as if she is admiring the men but then she has a vision where the three men fall to the ground dead. This sets the tone for the remainder of the story. This vision of death comes off as silly and cartoonish. It could have been handled better and is one of the elements that tarnishes the film. 

Fortunately, the film has enough good qualities to balance out the schlock. The story is essentially a melding of "The Little Mermaid" (the original fairy tale and not the watered-down Disney version) and a slasher film. "The Little Mermaid" is mentioned a few times. Molly leaves a note for McPeak where she calls herself The Little Mermaid. She mentions the fairy tale to Long John in one scene. 

In the original "The Little Mermaid" the main character visits a witch in order to be transformed into a human woman. In exchange, she loses her voice and every time she walks she feels excruciating pain. She must marry the prince in the story or else she will die. When he decides to marry another girl, her sisters bring her a dagger to kill the prince. If she kills him and lets his blood drip down her body, she will transform back into a mermaid.

There are other ocean allusions as well, such as a scene where Molly is looking at "The Birth of Venus" by Boticelli. Another character tells the story of the birth of Venus. Titan Cronus severed his father's (Uranus) genitals and flung them into the sea. The blood and semen caused foam to gather and float across the sea to the island of Cyprus. Aphrodite rose out of the sea from the foam (hence her name came from the word aphros, which means foam). This ties into Molly's affinity for male castration.

One of my favorite moments is when she is being tattooed by a grotesque man with a face tattoo named Jack Dracula. He is tattooing a mermaid on her abdomen and she can't remember how she got to his tattoo parlor. The scene is photographed well by cinematographer Dean Cundey. His camera work adds artistic merit.

Molly becomes obsessed with an actor she sees in a shaving television commercial. She meets the actor at a party and steals him away from his girlfriend. She tells him how she wants to shave him sometime, which is hilarious considering her fondness for killing men with razors. Near the end, he lets her shave him and she uses his razor to kill and castrate him. She then rubs his blood over her nude torso, similar to "The Little Mermaid".