George A. Romero’s 1973 film now known as Season of the Witch was described by its creator as a feminist film but was marketed initially, under the title of Hungry Wives, as softcore porn. Sandwiched between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, the film is more occult-adjacent than outright horror, although some audiences may have found the protagonist’s ultimate victory-through-witchcraft over her family’s patriarch and the patriarchy itself more horrifying than the more explicitly “horror” films of Romero himself or the late 1960s and early 1970s. Season of the Witch engages with both the feminist movement of the early 1970s and with other films, both genre and general, of the era and is a significant, albeit trippy and low-budget, contribution to both the horror genre and the women’s movement. This presentation will examine Season of the Witch in relation to other films of its period, some of which it directly references, to look at how it subverts expectations, challenging the endings of films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives and then-developing tropes like the virginal final girl and the powerlessness of “women of a certain age.” It will also place the film within Romero’s horror oeuvre, comparing its protagonist, the challenges that she faces, and the anxieties that she embodies to those in more popular and widely analyzed works like the Dead films, The Crazies, and Creepshow.
About the presenterLeah Richards
Dr. Leah Richards is a Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, and teaches primarily composition and argumentation using popular culture as texts. She is co-editor of Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Art, Media, and Culture, co-editor of Representation in Steven Universe (Palgrave, 2020), and co-author of Not of the Living Dead: George A. Romero’s Non-Zombie Films (McFarland, forthcoming). She researches monsters who feed on humans and the cultures that create them.