Legend of the Witches

I was excited to see that this film had been released on DVD by DD Home Entertainment, and delighted that their version was supposed to be 113 minutes (1hr 53 min) long. Like most people who have seen the movie at all I had only seen the 72 minute, cut-down, version of this film that was shown in theatres in 1970 and was broadcast on the UK Horror Channel in October 2004. I trawled the net trying to find more information on the length of the original release, to get some idea of what might be in this longer cut, but found nothing. So I spent my money and waited, anxious to see what the extra 40 minutes of footage contained, and keen to see the Special Feature Photo Gallery.

As my title suggests, the playing time of this DVD is not remotely close to 113 minutes, despite what the packaging says, it is 72 minutes! It is the same version as was shown on the UK Horror Channel, not a single frame more. To make matters worse, the Special Feature is the most pathetic I have ever seen on a DVD: eight poorly selected images from the film. These are not Stills (still photos taken at the time of filming, to be used for promotional purposes) but images that have been taken from the video itself: exactly what you would get by using your pause button.

The good news is that the image and sound are quite clear. This suggests that we may eventually get, from someone else, a decent release of this film, uncut and with a few interesting extras.