Cry of the Banshee (1970)

Day 44 of Sobriety. 

Cry of the Banshee is one of a handful of Vincent Price films directed by Gordon Hessler that include The Oblong Box (1969), which I also watched recently. Like The Oblong Box, Cry of the Banshee purports to be based on an Edgar Allen Poe story, a claim that is apparently completely spurious. It certainly doesn’t resemble any Poe stories that I have read. It has been on my radar for a while, though, as it is usually included in the wider cannon of British “folk horror” films.

I had no idea what to expect going into this film: it’s regarded as folk horror. the title refers to a banshee, I’d heard that there is a werewolf in it, and it claims to be a Poe story. I couldn’t really fit all of those elements together cohesively in my mind to generate any kind of expectation.

As it turned out, the film itself is also rather muddled. Apparently this is due to some extensive and hasty re-writing of the script at the behest of the director. First thing to mention is that no banshees appear in the film—at least not banshees as they are generally thought of. There is something that looks akin to a werewolf, but in essence, the film is about witch-hunting in the 16th century. Price portrays a sadistic magistrate determined to eliminate all of the witches in his jurisdiction (preferably as brutally as possibly). In that respect it could be compared to Price’s Witchfinder General (1968), which is revered as one of the “unholy trinity” of key folk horror films. However, Cry of the Banshee is not nearly as coherently crafted as Witchfinder General.

It does play well as a rollicking sub-hammer period horror film though. One of the things that surprised me most about the film was how exploitative it was, with copious violence and nudity on display throughout—and often simultaneously. I suppose I was expecting something a bit more austere and gothic—in line with the Oblong Box or Price’s Poe films with Roger Corman.

The plot is about…what exactly? The story is so scattered and unfocused that it is hard to say concisely, but I suppose essentially Vincent Price’s character, Lord Edward Whitman, while pursuing his usual hobby of persecuting, torturing, and murdering innocent villagers under the pretense of vanquishing evil and witchcraft, happens to cross swords with the wrong witch—i.e., an actual witch, who decides to avenge herself against Whitman and his family.

One thing that irked me slightly about the film was the way that—like Night of the Demon thirteen years earlier in 1957—it seems to portray pre-Christian paganism and satanism one and the same thing (something I'm sure the witchfinders themselves would approve of). At least that was my reading. The witches are initially portrayed as a kind of druid-like group frolicking in the forest like a hippy commune having a toga party, but then later they are in an underground cavern invoking Satan by name and sticking pins in effigies of their enemies. I guess it goes with the territory though. Behind its period garb, the film is pure exploitation fodder, and doesn’t pretend to have any aspiration to comment on the unjust persecution of so-called “witches” in the 16th century.

 

Despite its flaws, this is a film that I look forward to going back to—now that I know what to expect. There is certainly more than enough gaudy and gratuitous sensationalism on display to warrant repeat viewings.