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OVERALL
BEASTS
BREASTS
Director: Matt Cimber
Writer: Robert Thom
Cast---
Millie Perkins ...  Molly
Lonny Chapman ...  Long John
Vanessa Brown ...  Cathy
Peggy Feury ...  Dora
Jean Pierre Camps ...  Todd
Mark Livingston ...  Tripoli
Rick Jason ...  Billy
Stafford Morgan ...  Alexander McPeak
Richard Kennedy ...  Homicide detective
George 'Buck' Flower ...  Detective Stone

Runtime: 83 min | UK: 88 min (uncut version)
THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA (1976)

 I’d like to start off by saying that I enjoy dark, morbid movies, but this film was suicidal. The subject of
the story is incest and it’s brutal in it’s depiction of how it can fracture the psyche of the young victim. I
felt the character’s trauma so deeply that even though it is an excellent film I could not enjoy it. Frankly I
don’t know how anyone could enjoy this despite the quality of directing and acting.

 From the onset you can tell that Molly is a psychological mess. Her queer demeanor and speech are
unsettling to put it lightly. She’s an alcoholic, druggie and a slut. Even though this is all true you can
sympathize with her due to her abusive childhood and perhaps her moral culpability is negligible. She’s
so fucked up you feel bad for her. One wonders what sort of woman she would have become if she
wouldn’t have been an incest victim. Millie Perkins’ performance as Molly is daring and honest; truly
exceptionable.

 Molly’s father was a burly sea captain with a beard. We see him raping his daughter through
flashbacks. In one of them he’s crouched inside a closet naked when his daughter goes to get a coat.
Molly works as a waitress at the Boathouse bar by the beach. She has a fascination with television
personalities. In a drugged state she kills two well known football players, cutting off their balls. She’s
tied them up to the bed posts using sailor’s knots. She relates sex with death since her father died on
top of her (of a heart attack) during intercourse. Later she’s invited to a famous movie star’s house for a
party. The guy wants to shag her but she breaks his hand and bites him instead. She’s like a wild
mustang which no man could break. She’s also having sex with her boss but she doesn’t hurt him which
is odd.

 Later on she decides to get a tattoo of the goddess Venus on her chest, which we later find out was
identical to the one her father had. Molly is so confused and can’t make sense of her tragic life. She has
sex with a television actor and cuts his throat with a razor which she then uses to try to remove her
tattoo. Much of the gore is off-screen but we do get to see her cute little titties quite often. By now the
police are closing in on her. She hides out at a friend’s house and commits suicide by a lethal pill
overdose.

 There is a lot of symbolism used in the film. There is a story told of the goddess Venus. Her father (a
god) got his balls cut off and he spilled his sperm in the ocean giving birth to Venus. Molly has a
romantic fantasy of her father being a famous sea captain who is lost at sea. She’s in major denial of
everything and hides the hurtful memories away. She also has a fantasy of a violent massacre at sea
where her father is butchered. She even calls herself the little mermaid. The sea is a source of freedom
and strength for her. In the end, as she dies she envisions herself drifting away at sea alone on a raft.

 The whole story is utterly tragic and dark. I got this cold feeling at the pit of my stomach while I was
watching this film and it probably won’t go away until I sit down to watch some Disney cartoons or
something. If you can handle this sort of thing I recommend this film because it is well made. I gave it two
coffins because it was so damn bitter and unpleasant to watch due to the grim subject matter.  




                                                                                                  Jorge Antonio Lopez
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The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976)
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