Expected more

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Michaela (Ava Gardner) is a rich middle-aged lady who lives in a mansion and filled with sycophants who don't do anything with their lives...they just party and answer to Michaela's bidding. She also has a boy-toy, Tom (Ian McShane) but when he stops worshiping Michaela and begins pursuing the local vicar's daughter (Stephanie Beachum), he incurs the wrath of his mistress. Ultimately, after LOTS of talking, they decide that the man's punishment should be death and they spend an inordinate amount of time tormenting him and chasing him about the British countryside instead of just offing him.This film was the only picture directed by Roddy McDowell and it's a bizarre product of it's times--less a movie about witchcraft and more a film about Bohemian hippies. A strange and very, very slow moving film--one that must have played much better in the drug-soaked early 70s. Today, it just seems pretty dopey and bad.

I stopped this film 20 minutes in to look up the Scottish ballad the film was based on, "Ballad of Tam Lin", so I could make sense out of the film. Wikipedia has a thorough article on the song and the lyrics. Everything made much more sense after reading the article.That said, this was one of Ava Gardner's few supernatural films, and was Roddy McDowell's only directorial effort. The screenplay sticks fairly close to the song's plot, with a look at "Swinging London" mod clothes, late 60's slang , and a so-so song overlaying all as an attempt at "relevance". Listen for the bits of ballad sung through the film .Gardner gave an outstanding performance as the coven leader; the film lets the viewer decide if other fairy tale terms are applicable. Ian McShane is good as the Favored One, and Stephanie Beacham is good as his Human love.AIP gave the film only a limited release. The misunderstanding arises from the fact that AIP promoted it as a horror film rather than as a poetic romance even reediting the film and retitiling it "The Devil's Widow" from the original "Ballad of Tam Lin" to try and achieve this effect. As a result, no one was happy, and the film sank without a trace, predictably losing money.McDowell didn't direct another film, which is a real shame, because this one has startling photography, the music is interwoven to maximum effect, and McDowell did well by the actors.This is one of Ava Gardner's least-seen, most underrated films. My opinion is that if you feel lost in the beginning, stay with the film anyways as it improves as it goes on.

Groovy! Roddy McDowell took the ancient fairy tale of TAM LIN -- a young knight captured by an evil witch, then saved by a fair damsel -- and turned it into a very demure slice of psychedelic romance. The daring camera angles and bizarre soundtrack make the movie work most of the time, but now and then the weird factor just turns funny.Ava Gardner, well over forty, plays the "immortal" Mrs. Cazaret. She's still an attractive lady, sort of, but not enough to be "hypnotic" and "irresistable." Between her and the young man she's entrancing, there is not a trace of attraction or chemistry. The scenes between the young man and his fair young maid are a bit better, but still lacking a certain natural sexual punch.The problem is, there are about a dozen gorgeous extras lounging around in most of the scenes, including a couple of famous faces. Watch for a luscious young Sinead Cusack and an even sexier young Joanna Lumley, both decked out in scrumptious Carnaby Street finery and looking ever so fresh and primly desirable. The movie would have worked much, much better if these two had had a larger part. Mrs. Cazaret should have used them to keep her young man satisfied. It's so easy to visualize him rising from her bed, seeing how tired and blowzy she looks in the morning light, and heading for the door -- only to be headed off by Sinead Cusack and Joanna Lumley. The two of them ask him to do something quite innocent and sweet -- like have some breakfast, or go for a walk in the garden. But as they ask, they also rub against him, licking his neck and purring into his ear, and before long he's forgotten all about escaping from Mrs. Cazaret!

What a terrible film! It's no wonder this is Roddy McDowall's only directorial effort ever; it's the kind of film nobody sees/likes/understands, and has only one category of possible defenders: those who like the "It's-incomprehensible-so-it-must-be-profound" school of filmmaking (examples: "Don't Look Now", "The Shout"). Has some tension at the end...enough for me to give it one star instead of none.