I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch
by Ren? Clair

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VHS Tape Cover Information

Actor: Cecil Kellaway, Fredric March, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Veronica Lake
Director: Ren? Clair
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 77 minutes
Release Date: 1993-01-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of I Married a Witch

Movie Review: Father and Daughter
Summary: 5 Stars

Cecil Kellaway makes I MARRIED A WITCH a scary film indeed, and I suspect that John Huston must have recalled Kellaway's portrayal when he undertook the role of the evil, incest-driven patriarch in Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN. Against all odds, Kellaway has kept his daughter to himself for 270 years, thanks to the Puritans who have condemned him to live, as a ghost, in the form of smoke, under a giant oak tree on the ancestral property of the Wooley family. And in turn Kellaway has cursed the Wooleys, ensuring that, in each generation, no man shall find happiness in love, all will be married to plain battleaxes.

Meanwhile Daniel (the warlock played by Kellaway) had Jennifer (his lovely daughter, played by the uniquely talented Veronica Lake) right where he wants her--he's the only man in her universe. When a lightning storm topples the tree, releasing father and daughter, it spells trouble for Daniel who risks losing the undivided love of his daughter, as, like Miranda in THE TEMPEST, she discovers a brave new world of cute guys and sort of begins to neglect dear old Dad. Daniel's fury is right out of the Chinatown playbook, and he tries everything he knows to break up Jennifer and her new love interest, Wallace Wooley (Fredric March, looking pretty dumpy only a few years after his killer sex appeal in the Wellman version of A STAR IS BORN).

Some will love Veronica Lake, some will be puzzled, but everyone must admit that in her early scenes, before love makes her more "human," she makes some of the oddest acting choices ever captured on film (Surrealist or otherwise). She employs a squeaky, oltrano voice, as though entrapment in an oak tree for centuries has blanched away her voice to mere oxygen. In her memoir, Lake told the story of how French director Rene Clair directed her from moment to moment, coaching and acting out her every phrase and expression, every mincing step. It is a performance more in bits and pieces than a whole, but it is extraordinary nonetheless. Readers of VERONICA, Lake's memoir, will also recall that she got tired of Freddie March always feeling her up during their scenes together and she arranged a rocking chair scene in which she managed to steer the rocker part right into his most vulnerable area. See if you can spot it in the finished film and look for his momentary expression of ghastly testicular pain.

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Summary of I Married a Witch

This fun and stylish Rene Clair comedy gave two big Hollywood names--Fredric March and Veronica Lake--a chance to break away from their stereotypically serious roles (as intense leading man and film noir vamp, respectively) and exercise their funny bones. The sultry Lake stars as a Salem witch burned at the stake who returns to haunt the descendants of the Puritans who let her smolder, namely aspiring politician March. Lake concocts a love potion for her victim that will get him to fall in love with her, rather than his snooty fianc?e (Susan Hayward in one of her early roles). Things get a wee bit complicated when said potion works its spell on Lake instead and she falls head over broomstick for March. Blissfully hilarious and romantic, this Witch is blessed with great chemistry between March and Lake (who never looked lovelier), dryly funny one-liners, and a scene-stealing performance by Cecil Kellaway as Lake's perennially drunk warlock dad. Robert Benchley of Algonquin Round Table fame also pops up in a supporting role. Rumored but never actually confirmed to be the basis for the hit TV series Bewitched. --Mark Englehart

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