I initially discovered Night of the Eagle/Burn, Witch, Burn!(1962) on a list of folk horror films that I was working through during my annual October horror binge but for one reason or another it never made my final viewing list. Folk horror is an elusive genre to define and I might consider Night to be closer to a supernatural thriller but there are folk magic elements to be sure. I wish I had gotten to it sooner as it’s a smartly written, well performed film that almost has the feel of an expanded Twilight Zone — pitting a rationalist worldview against a superstitious one. This balance between rational thought and the supernatural is not dissimilar to the Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton films — I Walked with a Zombie or Cat People — though the overall mood is perhaps closer to early Hammer Horror.
I’m not terribly familiar with director Sidney Hayers feature film work outside of his 1971 giallo-adjacent thriller Assault though he directed multiple episodes of televisions series from my childhood (Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., T.J. Hooker, etc). I am much more familiar with the writers - Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, George Baxt, and naturally Fritz Leiber who wrote the novel inspiring the screenplay. The film came to be through Matheson and Beaumont collaborating on an adaptation of Leiber’s novel — The Conjure Wife — which they then sold to American International Pictures. AIP passed the project to Anglo-Amalgamated — best known for the Carry On series but notably produced Peeping Tom, A Kind of Loving, and The Tomb of Ligeia among others — and the New England setting of Leiber’s novel was transposed to England. The film was titled Night of the Eagle in England and released with the title Burn, Witch, Burn! in the US with the addition of an “invocation against evil” at the top of the film performed by prolific voice actor Paul Frees.
Peter Wyngarde plays psychology professor Norman Taylor and the film opens during his lecture on the perils of belief in the supernatural — a scene somewhat inverting Christopher Lee’s witchcraft lecture in the Baxt penned City of the Dead (1960). Taylor is an up and coming member of the faculty with a beautiful wife — Tansy played by Janet Blair, a beach cottage, and the adoration of his students. Taylor’s ascendence seems to inspire not a little professional jealousy from his colleagues but he seems relatively oblivious to their gossiping. Tansy seems more acutely aware of their precarious social position and following a scene in which she frantically searches the house for a talisman, Taylor realizes she is practicing a kind of folk magic learned during their trip to Jamaica to ensure his prosperity and well-being. Taylor refuses to believe his wife that malign forces are posed against them and will not tolerate the supernatural practice so he forces Tansy to round up all of the occult artifacts in their home and subsequently burns them. Almost immediately things take a turn for Taylor — they receive a strange phone call during the night, he’s nearly hit by a truck on his way to school, and most grievously he faces an accusation of rape from one of his formerly devoted students. Tansy — intuiting the severity of the situation — dedicates her life to a ritual that will supposedly protect Taylor from future harm and nearly drowns. Taylor is able to save her via a detour into superstitious territory of his own — but the returned Tansy is in a zombie-like trance state. The source of these mysterious forces is determined and the wildly stylistic finale involves more witchcraft, fire, hypnosis, and yes — eagle attacks!
Night of the Eagle is rife with ominous dread — furtive glances and the stone eagles of the university campus loom in the background like harbingers of a dark fate — yet remains at least somewhat understated. While suspicious occurrences take center stage, there’s enough plausible deniability that the conflict between Taylor’s skepticism and Tansy’s belief doesn’t seem purely ridiculous. Night of the Eagle isn’t as ambiguous as 1963’s The Haunting but there’s enough to question whether supernatural forces are at work or if we’re seeing the results of psychological torment and trauma. It perhaps unfortunately casts the conflict between logic and superstition as inherently male and female but overall the film seems much more sympathetic to its women characters — certainly Tansy at any rate. The performances are quite good all around with Wyngarde and Blair — despite mostly being known for her musical comedies — having a good rapport. Margaret Johnston — who had a rather abbreviated acting career — has several excellent scenes and Colin Gordon takes a fun, lighter turn as her somewhat clueless husband. All in all Night of the Eagle/Burn, Witch, Burn!(1962) is a well acted, atmospheric occult thriller with some inspired directorial flourishes.
