Nothing says fall, especially the Halloween season, quite like a great witch movie. One of the best is the cult film Night of the Eagle (1962), perhaps better known under its American release title, Burn Witch, Burn. Based on one of the seminal horror novels of the twentieth century, the film explores the nature of […]
After a prologue with a narrator declaring, over a black screen, that the film is cursed and invoking an incantation to protect the viewers of Burn Witch, Burn, the first spoken words of the film proper tell us everything we need to know about our main character: I DO NOT BELIEVE! Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngard), a professor of sociology, makes it very clear that witchcraft, psychics, superstition, and the like are all nonsense to him and should be to everyone else as well. Taylor has made tremendous strides in his short time teaching at the small but prestigious college where he now works, surpassing many who have been there much longer than he has. A contentious bridge party among several faculty members and their spouses sets the stage for the political environment he has been required to navigate, but Norman’s confidence in his own worldview and his abilities as a professor is unshakable—until he discovers some strange trinkets hidden around the house, even pinned into his clothing. He collects all his findings: vials of dirt from graves, a dried spider in a ceramic container, a brass bell, various bones, and confronts his wife, Tansy (Janet Blair), about them. She makes a starting confession saying, “Isn’t it obvious, I’m a witch.”
There are many films, horror and otherwise, about a crisis of faith, but Burn Witch, Burn interrogates this idea in an unusual way by reversing the trope. Instead of a person whose religious faith is shaken, Norman’s lack of faith is brought into question by the discovery of Tansy’s occult practice. She tells him that she began practicing witchcraft during a vacation the two had taken in Jamaica, in which Norman was in a near-fatal accident, and, after consulting a local practitioner of magic, tried a spell to save him. When this apparently worked, she continued to use the spells when they returned home in order to help advance Norman’s career. Norman’s challenge is that he cannot dispute that he has been surprisingly successful over the past two years at the college, but he is positive that it is due to his own abilities. Horrified that Tansy would get involved in such “nonsense,” he forces her to burn all of it, but in the process, a picture of Norman from her locket falls into the fire.
This is all of no consequence to Norman until he arrives at the college the next day, and his world begins to unravel. He is nearly hit by a delivery truck as he is about to enter the campus, which becomes an ill omen of much more serious perils to come. He is soon confronted by the college dean, who informs him that a female student, Margaret Abbott (Judith Stott), has accused him of sexual assault, which she says he committed over the weekend. The viewer knows this is impossible, as he was home with his wife throughout the weekend, confronting her about her covert religious practices, but Margaret seems absolutely convinced that she is telling the truth. He is also confronted at gunpoint by Margaret’s boyfriend. Through the entire ordeal, Tansy’s words from the day before, “I will not be held responsible for anything that happens because of the loss of my protections,” begin to echo through his mind. His faith in skepticism is clearly shaken.
This all poses the great central questions of the film. Did Tansy’s use of conjure magic help advance Norman’s career and protect him from the political and social perils of his position, or is it all mere coincidence? As the film progresses, Norman seems to become less convinced; the words of Hamlet when he and his friend see his father’s ghost, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” likely cross his mind. Norman experiences a kind of crisis of faith in his own abilities as well. Perhaps his success is not based on his merit but on the unknowable forces placed around him by Tansy. Though the film does not explore this aspect deeply, the question is certainly raised, and his self-confidence is undermined in a powerful sequence that demonstrates how unraveled he has become. Norman tries a bit of conjure magic of his own in a last-ditch effort to find Tansy, who has left their home apparently to sacrifice herself in his place. Inside a crypt, he lights candles and places them in a circle around her picture, as he found in one of Tansy’s spellbooks. Norman is willing to give up a key component of his character in order to be reunited with his beloved. He loves her that much.
This all illustrates the true heart of the film—the deep bond of love between Norman and Tansy. After the hellish day at the college, Norman awakens to find a tape-recorded message from Tansy saying that she has left home for his own protection and intends to die in his place. He relentlessly pursues her with the same instinct of protection and love that drove her to leave. He literally pursues her to the ends of the earth, the ocean shore, where they finally reunite. The combination of Norman and Tansy, the skeptic and the believer, the one devoted to science and the other to what Norman deems a superstition, is an illustration of the power of a bond of true love. Their partnership transcends all else and is more powerful than any hardship, difference of view, and the evil that wishes to destroy them. It brings to mind a verse from the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible: “set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death.” I can think of few horror films that so beautifully depict the power of love between two people in such an honest, yet unsentimental fashion. After their ordeal, they return home together to face whatever force has been attempting to destroy them. To preserve the surprises of the film for those who have not seen it, I’ll leave it at that.
Burn Witch, Burn is so lean and tightly paced, with crackerjack dialogue, and great suspense setups that it is shocking that it has fallen so far under the radar all these years. The film plays like one of the top-notch episodes of The Twilight Zone, which is no wonder considering it was penned by two of the best writers to work on the original run of that show. It manages to marry the exploitative qualities of AIP of the early sixties with the class of British and European films of the era, like Black Sunday (1960), The City of the Dead (1960), and The Innocents (1961). Shot in gorgeous black and white under the direction of Sidney Hayers, the film manages to be classy, artful, and thoroughly entertaining all at once. It was also a complete bomb in Britain under its somewhat perplexing title, Night of the Eagle, though an eagle does play a major part in the film’s climax. In the US, it fared slightly better under the title Burn Witch, Burn, though that makes it sound as if it is a movie about Puritan witch hunts, which it most certainly is not. Despite all this, the film garnered a cult following and apparently played in Times Square for ten years from the early sixties into the seventies. Today, it is enjoying the first gasps of a rediscovery thanks to some recent physical media releases from Scorpion Releasing and Imprint Films. Hopefully, its notoriety will continue to grow.
Not only was the film on the cutting edge of culture, or more precisely counterculture, in 1962, but it is extraordinarily relevant today. The subplot involving Margaret Abbott could practically be pulled from a current headline related to the #MeToo movement. Current films like Tár (2022) and After the Hunt (2025) have explored similar complexities of accusation, the need to believe victims, and evidence in various situations. There is a strong undercurrent of the nature of masculinity, of both the healthy and toxic varieties, that runs through the film. And then there is the ever-present clash between belief and unbelief that we as humans have baked into so many of our stories for generations.
Within the past few years alone, horror films that examine various aspects of faith or lack thereof are innumerable, including The Witch (2015), Hereditary (2018), The Conjuring Films (2013-2025), Heretic (2024), and many more tackle religion head-on, while many more weave it into their subtext. The nature of belief and nonbelief remains unendingly fascinating to people, and the bookends of the film are a testament to that fact. The film opens with the emphatic statement “I do not believe.” It ends with a question posed by the filmmakers meant to be pondered after watching Norman’s belief in nonbelief unravel: “Do you believe?” For some, the answer is a simple “yes” or “no.” For others, it is much more complicated. Either way, it is a question worth examining, and few films do so with the introspection, style, and flair of Burn Witch, Burn.
Burn Witch, Burn is currently streaming on Prime Video and the Roku Channel.
