A viscous whirlpool of nautical-themed alcoholism, father-daughter sexual abuse, seaside dive bars, prescription drugs, echoplexed castration-murder, the LA Rams, walk-in tattoo appointments, bad tv, The Little Mermaid, z-grade 70's Melodrama, severe mental illness totally overdriven to top-echelon bonker-ness in an era of supreme psychosexual bonker-ness, this yarn unravels and unravels until probably the most bonkers of them all. Weirdly entirely of its time and out of all times that are, there is nothing like 'The Witch Who Came From The Sea', now or ever again. Like if the oyster crackers turned out to be quaaludes, and it all started to go dark...

What in the hell did I just watch? Did that really happen? You can keep your Serbian Film and Human Centipede because The Witch Who Came From the Sea is a PERFECT example of how a shockingly-disgusting story should unfold on screen. Incestuous childhood abuse is never an easy pill to swallow but it goes down a bit easier when there's fantastic writing, acting, sound and camera-work. A hallucinogenic look at Molly the Mermaid. Definitely art-house friendly.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Almost an inversion of the typical psychokiller movie where a male antagonist oggles female bodies and associates sex with death due to some traumatic childhood experience, but this peculiar Matt Cimber project doubles down on selling the trauma and gets deeper into the weird personality defects that result (including the occasional homicide) in the female protagonist. It's also frightfully absurd and funny, which saves it from being a feel bad slog. Doris (Peggy Feury) the sassy barmaid, in particular, is always a hoot when she's on screen, as is the character with a twitchy eye named Jack Dracula ("that's my real name"). Keep your guard up, though, it'll turn from silly to spine chilling in an instant.

"Buck" Flower report: does not play a bum or a redneck!

Splash

Print was beat to hell with audio issues but I'm perversely inclined to be even more generous with my rating given that this is theoretically even more powerful in a more optimal form - as is, I was straight-up entranced, finding this almost completely lacking in the usual slow, draggy portions that often plague art-damaged sexplodramas like this one. That might be because it's an expressionistic exercise told from the protagonist's splintered perspective, and Millie Perkins is a true elemental force inhabiting that protagonist. I'd watch this again tomorrow.

Finally the art house, rape, revenge, cutting dicks off movie the world has been waiting for.

Mondo Cinema out....

Matt Cimber and Millie Perkins were up to some next level shit in this. Her performance is so oddly mannered, so bizarre, that I legitimately can’t tell whether it is incompetence or choice. But given Perkins’s pedigree, I have to assume the latter. Fearless and weird, totally unique.

Daily Horror Scavenger Hunt 7 – January 2019 Day 7: Any horror film with six or more words in the title.

I'll admit that I laughed a couple of times while watching this, mostly in the beginning, but I felt rather uncomfortable doing it because I knew what this movie was about. The dialog is weird and feels like it was snippets of poems at times. There's a certain beauty to this movie and it's rundown seaside setting, but once again it also felt so very sad. A kind of drugged out dream. I wasn't absolutely sure if the things that were happening were always actually real or just a figment from the imagination of a broken woman. I "enjoyed" this movie, I guess. I mean I loved it, but maybe "enjoyed" isn't quite the right word.

The writing completely bricks me off from enjoying this movie. Almost all of the dialogue is just terrible and Molly's trance-like monotone delivery makes it even more difficult to get into the action on the screen. Would have been better with 100% more scythes.

now this is my kind of fairy tale

The emotional trauma feels so real that this ridiculous film carries more weight that it deserves.

“do you shave with straight razors? or is this going to be agonizingly slow?“

“...shit, this’ll take forever”

a fuckn trip

Exploitation with arthouse & XXX influences. Intimate portrait of BPD and female psychopathy made worse by the dark side of Western "women's liberation". Tarantino wishes he could write like this.

A hell of a horror film that ought to be more well known! In part cause Millie Perkins is pretty electric the whole way through. Parts of her madness seem all over the place, but it certainly keeps you on your toes. That and some world class kills including dick razoring! NOW HOWS THAT FOR YOUR TUESDAY MORNING?! It does lose some steam by the finale. It kind of runs out of shocking reveals and lowers back into more of a personal, psychological drama. Not a big issue, but it does feel a touch blunted for how fairly hardcore the rest of the film is.

Molly the mermaid isn’t quite all there. An abusive childhood, alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex has made her slightly insane and now she is slicing off men’s twigs and berries. This was part of American horror project from arrow and is psychological horror Made off the beaten path.

Part exploitation film, part heartbreaking tragedy. Beautiful cinematography and an off season view of Southern California. An unexpected gem

7.5/10

More interestingly odd/different than it is a great film but those type of films tend to be more hits than misses with me anyways so I.e. this was a hit with me 👍