Simply A Masterpiece

Best movie ever!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Michaela (Ava Gardner) is a rich middle-aged lady who lives in a mansion and filled with sycophants who don't do anything with their lives...they just party and answer to Michaela's bidding. She also has a boy-toy, Tom (Ian McShane) but when he stops worshiping Michaela and begins pursuing the local vicar's daughter (Stephanie Beachum), he incurs the wrath of his mistress. Ultimately, after LOTS of talking, they decide that the man's punishment should be death and they spend an inordinate amount of time tormenting him and chasing him about the British countryside instead of just offing him.This film was the only picture directed by Roddy McDowell and it's a bizarre product of it's times--less a movie about witchcraft and more a film about Bohemian hippies. A strange and very, very slow moving film--one that must have played much better in the drug-soaked early 70s. Today, it just seems pretty dopey and bad.

I stopped this film 20 minutes in to look up the Scottish ballad the film was based on, "Ballad of Tam Lin", so I could make sense out of the film. Wikipedia has a thorough article on the song and the lyrics. Everything made much more sense after reading the article.That said, this was one of Ava Gardner's few supernatural films, and was Roddy McDowell's only directorial effort. The screenplay sticks fairly close to the song's plot, with a look at "Swinging London" mod clothes, late 60's slang , and a so-so song overlaying all as an attempt at "relevance". Listen for the bits of ballad sung through the film .Gardner gave an outstanding performance as the coven leader; the film lets the viewer decide if other fairy tale terms are applicable. Ian McShane is good as the Favored One, and Stephanie Beacham is good as his Human love.AIP gave the film only a limited release. The misunderstanding arises from the fact that AIP promoted it as a horror film rather than as a poetic romance even reediting the film and retitiling it "The Devil's Widow" from the original "Ballad of Tam Lin" to try and achieve this effect. As a result, no one was happy, and the film sank without a trace, predictably losing money.McDowell didn't direct another film, which is a real shame, because this one has startling photography, the music is interwoven to maximum effect, and McDowell did well by the actors.This is one of Ava Gardner's least-seen, most underrated films. My opinion is that if you feel lost in the beginning, stay with the film anyways as it improves as it goes on.

One should be a fan of British cinema, retro pop culture, fantasy/folklore, and personal auteur-ship for maximum enjoyment of this likable but format-challenged film from the late 1960's/early 70's. I sure am, and as such quite savored this cinematic retelling of the Tam Lin ballad.It's sufficiently enjoyable that I immediately transferred the VHS tape to DVD for future viewings. One suspects it had been slated for same, what with its 17 minute director's introduction, but remained lost in the ether of Republic Pictures' post-demise assorted distribution deals. One further suspects that its release under of aegis of an Ava Gardner tribute series was the ticket for its seeing light of day at all post theatrical debut. It's been written that Roddy McDowell lost control of this, his only directed film, with it subsequently languishing in drive-ins of the 1970's under such noms-du-exploitation as "The Devil's Widow!" As McDowell's sole direction job, this is a movie one ever so wants to be as good as Charles Laughton's similar solo effort "Night of the Hunter," which it isn't and cannot be, as few films can match "Hunter's" expert, mannerist weirdness. McDowell's is a B+ to Laughton's A+. What is it does share is the quirkiness of a singular vision, seeming unlike anything else of its respective era while still conforming to mainstream requisites, and the retelling of a dreamy but occasionally frightening fairy tale in modern clothes, with assorted decidedly odd touches. A true loss to cinema that both actors never directed another film.Simply put, it's the ballad of Tam Lin (its original title in fact) retold with late '60's characters, and peopled with a cast of still working, familiar British names like Ian McShane (representing the titular captured knight Tam Lin,) Joanna Lumley and Stephanie Beacham (the Hammer horror ingénue, here as the ballad's Janet) with both Cyril and Sinead Cusack in tow. Gardner as the controlling "Faerie Queen" seems an apt focus of the swirling debaucheries and cruelties rationalized as group activity fun. This, strangely, isn't so much part of the fantasy as modern viewers might conclude: some of us who were adolescents in the '60's remember the genuine, wealthy older types lending their mansions to us young'uns in order to share in the decadent fun, whether vicariously or actively.In "Tam Lin" you'll find a little seen but quite good updated fairy story, plus amusing music from jazz to the Pentangle, great costuming, retro period fun, gorgeous Scottish border scenery and an always great to watch cast. Time for whoever owns Republic's split assets this week to fund that DVD release.

What a terrible film! It's no wonder this is Roddy McDowall's only directorial effort ever; it's the kind of film nobody sees/likes/understands, and has only one category of possible defenders: those who like the "It's-incomprehensible-so-it-must-be-profound" school of filmmaking (examples: "Don't Look Now", "The Shout"). Has some tension at the end...enough for me to give it one star instead of none.