“That mad dog that you all thought the product of sorcery is DEAD.”

There was nothing the cinema goer of the late 60s and early 70s liked more than watching a buxom wench get dragged along a muddy street before being stripped, whipped and set on fire. 

You may well think that, with the amount of films along the same lines of Cry Of The Banshee being released at the time. I certainly began to think it, as I gamely tried to stay awake through the first half hour of this effort. 

If you stick with it, it does get better. Lord Edward Whitman’s (Vincent Price) witch-hunting gets him in bother with the real McCoy, and before you can say "perhaps I shouldn't have raped and murdered all those girls", he's brought down a curse on his entire family. Well, when I say curse, I mean Patrick Mower. Patrick's a werewolf, his appearance signalled by the cry of the banshee, which sounds like a werewolf to me (so why not call it Cry Of The Werewolf? Search me. Perhaps someone had already used that title). The werewolf proceeds to munch his way through Whitman’s family. 

Unlike most films of the time, the special effects guys really understood the limitations of their craft - so we never actually get to see the werewolf come out of the shadows. No bad thing, by the look of his silhouette.

The only main problem with the film is the tone. Unlike most other witch hunting films, in this case the witches really are followers of Satan, which rather means that you're rooting for the bad guys.

Oh, and one last thing - the chief witch's name is Oona, and it gets repeated so often I was really hoping that someone on the set would break into a chorus of "Una Paloma Blanca". Sadly, no-one did. 

Burn the witch! And while you're at it, burn the scripts as well - and get someone to re-write them - this time with a Banshee in the storyline.