MartinHafer Larry Buchanan is a director whose output is among the worst in movie history. Despite Ed Wood gaining recognition as the worst director in history, I really think Buchanan is at least as bad--possibly worse. Don't believe me? Try watching Buchanan's films--such as "Zontar: The Thing From Venus", "Mars Needs Women", "In the Year 2889" and "Curse of the Swamp Creature". These horrible films might even make you appreciate "Plan 9 From Outer Space" just a little bit more!! As for "The Naked Witch", most of Buchanan's early work consisted of making porno films. While they would seem amazingly tame today, back in the early 1960s they were pretty hot stuff. "The Naked Witch" is one of these films, though there is practically no nudity in this one--at least until late in the film. As it sat on the shelf for several years, it could be that they edited out all the nude scenes--or it was just a film that offered a lot of tease and little please. And, while this may sound really nasty, the woman who took her clothes off would today be seen as quite unattractive--so you perverts out there could certainly do better! The first portion of the film is a prologue--with LOTS of narration and up close shots of various Hieronymous Bosch paintings (often with very incorrect interpretations). This section is about witches and witchcraft and is mostly a lot of baloney--and pretty dull. Amazingly, after the credits then roll, there is ANOTHER narrated sequence! So, you have a 59 minute movie that doesn't actually start until about eight and a half minutes AFTER these prologues! Talk about filler! The story itself is mostly shot silently with voice-over added later. The music is straight from an electric organ. Together, the film looks and sounds absolutely horrible--like a home movie from the time. The story, such as it is, involves a grad student who arrives in a weird town in Texas to research about witches (and EVERYONE knows Texas is a great place for this!!). After learning the story about a woman who was killed years before as a witch, this idiot digs her up and pulls away a stake--and she becomes alive (and naked)--looking to inflict revenge on the family of the man responsible for her death. During most of these naked scenes, you really see nothing. Only later, in a long and completely out of place portion, do you see her swimming about naked for absolutely no reason.Believe me, even with the nudity, this is an amazingly bad film. It's dull, very, very amateurishly made (MUCH more than an Ed Wood film) and is about as entertaining as watching your own mother get naked! Not for the squeamish.

scott8823 To be fair, this low budget film should be viewed from the prism of its time, but even so, I don't recommend wasting any of yours on viewing it. Frankly, I didn't watch it all the way through, which is something rare for me. 1961 was a pretty repressed time in our country, and I think the main object of the film makers' intent was to titillate with the idea of a naked female character. I have a hard time believing that the protagonist didn't take a change of clothes on his journey, nor could I believe that the bedroom was 18th century. I regret that "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" is no more, as this film would have been great for them to spoof. This movie is worse than Seasonal Affective Disorder. Do yourself a favor and avoid it at all costs.

ofumalow This early Larry Buchanan opus is barely feature length at 59 minutes, yet it requires considerable padding to get even that far: It opens with a nearly ten-minute pseudo-documentary prologue discussing the history of witchery (and making use of a lot of Hieronymous Bosch imagery), then follows that with travelogue footage and an explanation of how a Texas small town remained a largely German-speaking one, over a century since its creation by German settlers. (This is accompanied by shots of flaxen-haired children in traditional garb dancing, singing and skipping around, very much kitsch like the German part of Disney's "It's a Small World.") Then our handsome collegiate hero tells us in voice-over-- there's not a lot of actual dialogue in this movie--why he's driving to this outback. He's researching a thesis paper on the region, notably its own witchcraft legends and persecutions. Other people have described the minimalist plot well enough. What should be pointed out, however, is that "The Naked Witch" is--as the title suggests--more a "nudie cutie" masquerading as a horror movie than anything else. The witch does indeed appear nude-- raised from the dead, she's nekkid, and wanders around teasingly semi-hidden by shadow, shrubbery and fences until she literally rips off a dress from the heroine. (At one point the witch actress was apparently over-exposed, because a crude black bar appears on screen to cover her naughty bits.) Later the hero spies her skinny-dipping in a pretty murky-looking river, and we see her topless for quite a stretch. She seduces him, and they have a sort of sex scene--of course not at all explicit, but it's still rare for a movie of this era to make it so clear that intercourse has occurred.Anyway, this quirky sexploitation/horror melange--with its violence so discreet as to be almost non-existent--is amusingly odd and too brief to become boring.

Score_The_Film This is dreadful, folks. I can't add much to what other reviewers have said. There is WAY too much narration in this film. If you need to narrate 60% of your film then you need a serious re-write of the script. The film opens with a 9-minute history of witches documentary-style (the only thing good about it are the paintings used). Then the story begins. I kept wondering why it was called THE NAKED WITCH when I've seen the witch but I haven't seen her naked (except for some black bars covering her naughty bits) until the 44 minute mark - just about 15 minutes before the movie ends! And what do you get? She baths in a pond (ala a nudist video scene where she just frolics in the water) while The Student watches in amazement for about 5 minutes. I guess they figured they had to justify the "naked" part of the title. It was laughable, really.The opening music was stolen from Bernard Herrmann's score to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Sadly, that lasted about 3 minutes and then for the rest of film we get nothing but a poorly-improvised organ score. Oh science, it's awful. All the mind-altering substances known to man couldn't set that straight.This is bad all the way around. I watched Something Weird Video's print. I did listen to one of the two commentaries which was somewhat interesting hearing what the producer's role was and the struggles he had to overcome. Pretty funny at times. Certainly more interesting than the film. The double feature DVD also has CRYPT OF DARK SECRETS (1976) which is surprisingly good. You also get the usual boatload of extras including several shorts and probably a dozen trailers (most with a New Orleans theme). The disc is worth picking up just for the extras.