Sisters Christine and Betty run away from home to find work as models. They are given a lift to London by Johnny, a businessman who is instantly attracted to Betty. Christine successfully auditions for unscrupulous modelling agent Sybil Waite and is offered a weekend's work shooting an advert at a house in the country. Betty goes with her. The modelling job is actually a ploy to initiate Christine into a coven of white wizards led by Sybil and the owner of the house, Gerald Amberley. Christine, who is shown to have psychic ability, willingly undergoes the initiation ritual, during which her virginity is taken by Amberley. Christine's powers create tension between her and Sybil, who practises darker magic and has a predatorysexual interest in her. The conflict escalates when Sybil vows to have Betty initiated into the coven. Johnny, who has been warned about Sybil's true nature, arrives to take Betty away. However, Christine places him under her control, forcing him to participate in Betty's initiation. During the ritual, Christine wrests control from Sybil by psychically torturing her. Johnny, no longer under Christine's control, takes Betty's virginity. Christine then uses her powers to kill Sybil and take her place as high priestess of the coven.
Cast
Ann Michelle as Christine
Vicki Michelle as Betty
Patricia Haines as Sybil Waite
Neil Hallett as Gerald Amberley
Keith Buckley as Johnny
James Chase as Peter
Helen Downing as Abby Darke
Production
The producer was "Ralph Solomons", whose other producing credits include The Green Shoes, It's the Only Way to Go, and A Persian Fairy Tale. Although Hazel Adair's name appears in the credits, she did not admit to co-producing the film until 1975, when she featured in an episode of the BBC's Man Alive on the subject of sex films. The revelation that prompted Cinema X magazine to remark that her films "are far removed from Miss Adair's more cozy world of Crossroads", Adair's other films include Clinic Exclusive, Can You Keep It Up for a Week?, Keep It Up Downstairs and the more mainstream Game for Vultures. "Klaus Vogel", who wrote the script and the film's tie-in novelisation, was in fact Crossroads producer Beryl Vertue. Virgin Witch was filmed in Surrey during 1970 and previewed in the December editions of Mayfair and Continental Film Review. However, the film is copyrighted as a 1971 production, and censorship problems would mean it was not widely seen until 1972. The country house location, Admiral's Walk inPirbright, Surrey, would be later used by Norman J. Warren for his films Satan's Slave and Terror.
The Michelle sisters have disowned the film. Vicki's website makes no mention of it, while Ann's refers to it as "not an experience Ann cares to remember". Writing for Sight & Sound magazine in 1994, Mark Kermode and Peter Dean described the film as an "amusingly dated British horror-cum-" with a script "so bad, it's almost good." According to M. J. Simpson, "hat starts off as a pretty crappy movie picks up towards the end, leaning more towards – though never reaching – the sort of unnerving, slightly-too-serious atmosphere of menace that characterised the best witchcraft films." Ian Jane of review websiteDVD Talk sums up Virgin Witch as "not the 'be all, end all' of British horror films, but it's an entertaining and occasionally sleazy slice of Seventies occult-themed picture with some great style and memorable scenes."
