‎The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976) directed by Matt Cimber • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

The Witch Who Came from the Sea

1976 Directed by Matt Cimber

Molly really knows how to cut men down to size!!

Anger stemming from being abused as a child drives an alcoholic's daughter to kill as an adult.

Millie Perkins Lonny Chapman Vanessa Brown Peggy Feury Jean Pierre Camps Mark Livingston Rick Jason Stafford Morgan Richard Kennedy George Buck Flower Roberta Collins Stan Ross Lynne Guthrie Barry Cooper Gene Rutherford John F. Goff Verkina Flower

88 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by nathaxnne walker ★★★★★ 4

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...
Review by Hollie Horror ★★★★ 10

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.
Review by Tony the Terror😼 ★★★★½ 8

Well ya know if there’s anything better than watching a surreal 70’s horror jam, it’s watching another one the same evening, amiright?

I watch most of these movies and really have no idea how they came to exist. Like, how did these movies get dreamed up because they had to have been dreamed, through either sleep or drugs or both, but there is no way that these surreal 70’s horror jams got written on nothing more than a venti mocha with no whip because all the whipping cartridges were inhaled by people writing movies like this do you know what I’m saying here?

Actually, the base plot line is pretty simple and has nothing to do with witches rising out…
Review by Sally Jane Black 2

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

CW: abuse/rape, incest, suicide

It's not as inevitable as this makes it seem. We don't have to beg for mercy in the form of a sleeping pill just to escape our traumas. There is healing in this world. It would not be an effective horror film, perhaps, if it acknowledged that, but none-the-less, it bears saying. The horror here is in Oedipal rape, not in the gruesome murders that Molly commits. Her own pain is far worse than the destruction she creates. The horror is that she is clearly still capable of love, yet her hope is all gone away. The horror is that she never escapes the pain. The horror is in the kisses at the end, as life slides away from her grasp.

October count: 14/31
Review by laird ★★★★½

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!
Review by Justin W. ★★★★½ 2

GOOD GRIEF

Some folks on this site have described this film as “funny”, but for me this was about as soul-crushing as you can get. Those last 30 minutes are ROUGH STUFF.

Special shout out to Jack Dracula

Recent reviews

Review by Tommy ★★★★

Watched it on a whim after a few clicks on Letterboxd.

Such a sad tale despite its strangeness. So many surreal and uncomfortable scenes are mixed in with just the right amount of mundane, sobering moments to make you sympathize with the main character in a somewhat unexpected way. Nothing is too grotesque yet the entire atmosphere of the film evokes the feeling of a lucid fever dream you want to escape. It's the little creepy touches of tenderness that pulled me back in. I know that sounds like a contradiction but there's something alluring in how uniquely weird it gets.

The only thing I've seen even remotely like it is the film Sisters.

Plus this film made me realize how weird humans looked in the 70's. Some characters bodies and faces look like aliens. They just don't look human. It's impossible to explain.
Review by Morgan ★★½

Could not finish
Review by Malakie Peters ★★★

Horror x 52: 1970s

This felt like a dream and I don't know if I mean that in a positive way! It could just be because I've been spending way more time reading about Neptune's planetary traits in astrology lately but this movie feels very Neptunian! Foggy and dreamlike and mystical and deceptive with weak boundaries! Skilled at keeping things hidden! Oceanic! I loved what I thought were psychic attacks when I thought they were psychic attacks but I didn't love them when I realized they weren't psychic attacks, they were just actual physical attacks edited confusingly. I couldn't always follow the dream logic of this movie!
Review by Pierce Conran ★★½

Though it spins a convincing tale of psychosis brought on by childhood trauma, Matt Cimber’s low-budget curio is more interesting than engaging.
Review by Justin W. ★★★★½ 2

GOOD GRIEF

Some folks on this site have described this film as “funny”, but for me this was about as soul-crushing as you can get. Those last 30 minutes are ROUGH STUFF.

Special shout out to Jack Dracula
Review by Andrew ★★★

Format : VHS

Very odd video nasty. Can see why it upset the censors back in the day, not so much disturbing as just off-kilter and .... weird!
Review by Joerg Bauer ★

WTF? A good story wrecked by a bad script, awful dialogue and terrible acting. Also a big nail in the coffin was the horrible music. I usually like weird or slow movies. But this was just boring as hell.

The new Arrow Video Blu-ray looks great nevertheless and has some very good bonus features.
Review by Michael_Elliott ★★

The Witch Who Came From the Sea isn't a seaside horror film like the title would suggest but another film in the long line of rape/revenge thrillers that was released throughout the 1970s. Unlike most of these low budget efforts, this film featured a somewhat respectable actress in Millie Perkins who received an Academy Award nomination for her role in The Diary of Anne Frank. The screenplay was written by Robert Thom who was making waves with Death Race 2000 and Wild in the Streets. Also of interest is that John Carpenter's future cinematograher, Dean Cundey go his start right here with this film, which is finally being released uncut and widescreen after years of P&S releases.

Molly (Millie Perkins)…
Review by ZSloth11 ★★★★★

Sleazy, batshit 70s lunacy with dadaist dialogue and wooden acting. Why isn't this movie shown in theaters across the country at midnight?