The Naked Witch



A college student doing research on local superstitions travels to an old German settlement somewhere in central Texas called Luckenbach, a place where the residents still speak more German than English. While there he’s told about the “Luckenbach Witch” who reportedly cursed a local family 100 years ago after their ancestor accused her of witchcraft and had her burned at the stake. Curious about these stories, the student finds the witch’s grave and, in the dead of night, digs up her body, inadvertently releasing her and allowing her to fulfill her curse.


They thought she was a witch because her DEEPLY contoured eyebrows freaked them the hell out.

The Naked Witch is a locally made, independent short film, shot on location in Luckenbach Texas, and is yet another example of one of those movies whose background is far more interesting than the movie itself. The film was made in 1960, yet has a copyright of 1961 and wasn’t actually released until 1964. So if you happen to go looking for it and get horribly confused by people listing multiple dates, that’s why. It was also made on the cheap (for around 8k) with a bunch of mostly local talent, so you shouldn’t expect anyone to look familiar, for the acting to be any good, or for the film to look all that hot, because, again, cheap (cheap cheap cheap cheap….). But (!) it also marks the first filmed example of where a resurrected witch (or ghost witch) wreaks havoc upon a populous, a theme that would become more popular in the following decades (ie. The Blair Witch Project, The Warlock, etc.) So at least in some capacity it has some historical horror significance.


Eh-heheheheh

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie, is that it was intended to be an “Adult” picture, because the movie makers wanted to capitalize on the growing ‘sexploitation’ scene at the time. However, if you put this on expecting to see a naked woman running around tormenting people, I imagine you’re going to walk away from this quite disappointed. Because for a movie titled “Naked” Witch, she really is sans clothing for only a very small portion of it. I mean, she IS topless a couple times, but really for most of it she’s running round in a ripped gossamer nighty that she tore off some poor local girl who was just trying to sleep.


A single saving grace.

But before we even get to that part, first: A History Lesson! Because the film doesn’t even start out with a proper narrative. Before you even get to story time you have to sit through an 8 and a half minute long spiel about the history of witchcraft. And I say “spiel” because not only is it completely unnecessary to the overall story, but it’s also painfully historically inaccurate (the Middle Ages did not become the Dark Ages, dearies). Meaning you get to sit though almost nine minutes of gibberish as a narrator states “facts” like how witchcraft ‘ran rampant’ and how women confessed to the most heinous of acts, with one group confessing to the murder of over 2,000 children for their ‘dark rituals. And the film states all of this as if it were all 100% true, conveniently skipping any mention of how these same women were being put through hellish torture in order for the authorities to gain these confessions before the women were killed. Or how if the woman didn’t confess to whatever allegations were being made against them, that they’d be put to death anyway, and that the whole system was very much a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario for them. Oh no. Instead it’s all just “Ah! Witches! Evil! Rituals! Orgies! Gah!” type of deal, and it would have been really nice if the filmmakers, who were otherwise making a film about a student doing research, had at least cracked open an actual history book for five minutes if they were going to make the audience sit through their song and dance spiel.


At least I got to look at some nice paintings.

Okay, NOW we can finally get into the movie proper! It’s…uh… It’s not great. The “movie” part of the movie doesn’t actually start until the 10-minute mark. At which point you’re treated with… Yet another history lesson? Damn it, movie! When will this friggin’ thing actually start?

Ahem…The answer to that is “in about 3 more minutes”, during which time you’re given a run down of the town of Luckenbach. Or I guess I should say the fictional town of Luckenbach. Because while Luckenbach is indeed an actual city located almost smack dab in the middle of Texas that was settled by German immigrants just as the film states, by the time the movie was made the place was basically a ghost town. In fact, even today it’s considered a ghost town, with only a couple of small shops and a handful of locals in the area, the population only temporarily increasing due to the town now being known as a popular music venue (you can see their rather robust calendar of events here.) But, at the time the film was made there basically wasn’t anybody there, so it was likely really easy for the filmmakers to shoot without having to go through the trouble of getting pesky things like filming permits. But that also means all the film’s yacking about how the locals are all super superstitious and everyone there still speaks German, what with their rich German heritage and all, is nothing but a giant bunch of hooie, and that the movie must have spent an absurd amount of its budget on sewing together all these different outfits for its extras so that they could skip around like it was Oktoberfest.


What in the hellish future vision of the Third Reich is this nonsense?

But then the protagonist arrives and our narrator guy finally shuts the hell up about the town (he is the film’s third narrator, by the way), because – Oopsie! – our bland protagonist ran out of gas and has to walk into town, oh woe is him. Why they framed it like that though, I don’t know, because he states that he was planning to spend his “one free” night in town anyway, before he has to go back to school, but I digress.


There’s also a bunch of yammering about how lucky these people are to live in such simplicity…. The patronizing ass.

Anyway, he walks into town and has a stilted chat with some old guy. Clearly the old guy doesn’t want to talk to him. So the old guy makes a cute blond girl take him to the Inn, where he has another conversation with another old guy who doesn’t want to talk to him. The cute blonde however, is perfectly happy to talk to him and after a long and awkward conversation about superstition and the local witch tale he’s come to learn more about, she tells him there’s a book about the subject and she’ll go get it for him. As a parting thought, he tells her she’d look good in something “simple and black”, suggesting that he’s never spoken to a woman before in his entire adult life. Surprisingly she actually comes back with the book and doesn’t hit him with it. She’s also changed into the black, frilly, gossamer thing I mentioned the witch wearing earlier, because I guess the dating pool in town really is that sucky. But instead of jumping her bones like she clearly wants him to  they have a stilted conversation and he stares at her like a drooling dumb-ass. She leaves him with the book, likely more sexually frustrated than he is.


DUDE, even my oblivious ass would have picked up THAT signal.

But instead of doing the Bow-Chicka-Bow-Ow with the horny hot chick, he sits down to read a book. Here we’re given a flashback about the “witch,” which shows us that the reason she was accused of being a witch and burned at the stake was because she was having an affair with the owner of the Inn after his wife became an invalid. But rumor spread and because he didn’t want his reputation ruined he accused her of witchcraft to deflect blame, suggesting that she may not have even been a witch at all, just very pissed off at her dickhead of a lover. But I guess if she wasn’t a witch already she sold her soul to Satan pretty dern quick (can’t say that I blame her), because she cursed the dickhead from the pyre and vowed to return to kill his whole family.

We are now halfway through the film.


This is your chance to go pee.

Our protagonist is intrigued by this tale of adultery and betrayal, so naturally he decides that to learn more he must take the next, most logical course of action: he’s gonna go find and dig up this chick’s grave. Cause that makes sense. So now he’s wandering around in the middle of the (day for) night with a lantern. And lo, he somehow manages to find it, in this place where he’s never been before. And the villagers at the time must have just tossed this lady in a ditch and kicked some dirt over it, because it takes around 6 seconds to unearth her with his bare hands. Then he decides that grave desecration isn’t enough. He has to be a grave robber too. So he pulls the stake out of her heart that has her mummified body pinned to the earth and… Oh, lookie there, her body seems to be coming back to life right before his very eyes! Welp, no need to see where this goes or tell anyone about it, so best to just sprint back to the Inn with your new souvenir and pretend you didn’t see anything.


Kinda like how I’d like to pretend I never saw this mask.

Oh thank the gods! The witch is finally here! Now maybe something will happen and there will be that nakedness that we were promised and…. Oh, that’s right. No nakedness yet. You just see her from the shoulders up. Oh wait, now she’s walking around so surely… Aaaand she’s too far away or conveniently obscured by foliage or low-lying walls. Oh, she’s coming upon an open field so now the pervs will surely… Wait, is that a damn black bar painted across the screen? WTF is this? I thought this was supposed to be an “Adult” film? I don’t even give a flying flip about the damn nudity, but at this point even I think the movie title is misleading and am offended on behalf of all the pervs in the audience.


I guess “The Partially Naked Witch” just didn’t have the same ring to it.

So our witch friend gets cold and steals the cute blond girl’s frilly night things and THEN finally goes on her murder spree. Which, considering the size of the town, only consists of two people. Woo hoo… But our stupid student hero boy (who is never given the dignity of a name) decides he must stop this evil since, ya know, he’s the one who woke it up. But he only gets as far as the lake before he gets distracted by the witch who is taking a swim ( actual nakedness! Finally!) He says it’s because he’s bewitched, but we all know it’s just because he’s still horny due to the cute blond chick whose bones he did not jump. So he just stands around and watches her like the little horny-toad he is while she takes a bath (aka a 3-minute-long frolic in a disgusting water pond.) But that’s not enough padding, so she steals him away and they frolic (with clothes) through the surrounding area. Then she dances for him (more padding still), after which they do the nasty (implied) and he (unsurprisingly) falls asleep, only waking up just in the nick of time to stop her from killing the cute blond girl (why the hell didn’t she kill her the night before when she stole her clothes?) The witch is defeated. The idiot and the cute blonde walk off into the sunrise. The End.


I still can’t get over the fact that they never gave him a name.

So yeah, that’s The Naked Witch. It’s got an interesting idea, but it also has questionable acting, questionable effects, questionable cinematography, and an incredibly questionable plot. Oh, and did I mention that like 80% of it was narrated in some way? In fact, I think if they’d added a bit more and upped it to 85% I think you could get away with just listening to it like an audio book and not have missed anything. It’s just…really weird. But I guess it was successful at the time, because they made somewhere around 10x their money back. So good for them and all that. But it’s still not a very good film. Interesting in parts, but not good. If you’re looking for early witchcraft films you might get a kick out of it. But otherwise I don’t think most people will care.

The Naked Witch is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Naked Witch is also available on DVD, but most of them seem to be out of print.

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