“Their secret rituals exposed…”

Never before have so many worn so little to such dull effect. Legend Of The Witches, purportedly a serious investigation into witchcraft in the modern world, features so many pale unclothed bodies wobbling across the screen that it's like a live action version of an old Health & Efficiency magazine. It might have been filmed as a documentary, but it was marketed as a titillating exploitation flick, and rather astonishingly, it fails to spark any interest on either count. The documentary scenes are deadly dull, with tales of gods and goddesses mingling with tedious landscape shots, pictures of wildlife, Stonehenge and other yawn-inducing images. And the witchcraft scenes are so packed full of naked flesh that you end up hoping they'll put something on, just for a bit of variety.

By the end of it I'd learned little about "modern day" (e.g. early 70s) witches - apart from the following: 

1 Witches had to kiss their leader's bum ("Much was made of this...");

2 All male witches have bad haircuts.

That’s it, I’m afraid.

If this wasn't the message director and writer Malcolm Leigh was trying to get across, then I'm a bit stumped as to what it was. The only moment of even remote enjoyment to be had from the whole film is a point during yet another tedious naked ceremony, which is supposed to have something to do with directing witch magic against their persecutors, when one naked girl turns and looks directly at the camera with an expression which seems to say: "It's rubbish this, isn't it?"

It’s a rare suggestion from this reviewer, who tends to recommend any old cobblers to the discerning British horror fan, but Legend Of The Witches really is a tedious waste of time. To be absolutely fair, it’s not a horror film, despite being lumped in as one due to its content. Yes, there were a lot of horror films made in the late 60s and early 70s involving nudity and witchcraft. This film contains both, but horror it just isn’t.