Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!
Like it or not, George Romero is going to be forever associated with his zombie movies. To be fair, they are his greatest cultural legacy for a reason. He did more than rewrite the world’s concept of zombies, though. Romero made some other oddball movies like Knightriders and The Crazies as well. Hungry Wives (also called Season of the Witch is one of those oddball movies. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was another zombie movie, given the word “hungry” in the title.
This is a Romero movie, though, given the amount of social commentary that is at play here. Hungry Wives is about ennui, about feeling disaffected and disconnected from your own life. The film follows the sort of awakening of Joan Mitchell (Jan White), who is dissatisfied with her life as a housewife, her lack of connection to her daughter, and her unhappy, unpleasant marriage to her husband Jack (Bill Thunhurst). Looking for something more, Joan starts to explore witchcraft, which turns out to be more true and more effective than she would have thought.
Joan, our main character, is troubled by dreams that show her as being controlled and dominated by her husband, who is domineering and eventually violent. Her dreams show him leading her on a leash, dropping her off at a kennel when he goes on his business trips. Daughter Nikki (Joedda McClain) is in college and becoming distant and is also having a casual affair with Gregg (Raymond Laine), a student teacher at her college.
Joan and her friend Shirley (Ann Muffley) go to the house of a newcomer in the neighborhood, Marion (Virgina Greenwald), who is a practicing witch. After a tarot reading, it is revealed that Marion is the leader of a local secret coven. Joan and Shirley then encounter Nikki and Gregg, who it turns out is kind of a bastard, and decides to mess with Shirley by pretending to get her high.
But Joan is intrigued by the witch magic and decides to involve herself in it. Initially, it seems like this is about boredom, about looking for something to do in a boring life, but it becomes something that Joan sees as working. Seeing Shirley freaking out about getting old, Joan decides to try to capture some level of her youth, essentially by making Gregg attracted to her...and it works. But the nightmares Joan has are getting worse—no longer about being captured or controlled, she is having nightmares about home intruders attacking her.
It’s interesting to see George Romero do something that is substantially different from what he is best known for. This isn’t the first I’ve seen of his wider filmography--Martin, Knightriders, The Dark Half, and The Crazies are all a part of my viewing history. This one really feels like a Romero film in a lot of ways, though, moreso than some of his other films. The actors, for instance, are not people who had substantial film careers as a rule. A couple of them did no other movies, or only worked with Romero. It’s not amateurish, but there is a very real indie sense to the film, that these aren’t especially actors but real people. These people aren’t Hollywood gorgeous. They look completely normal, and that’s always going to be a lot more interesting for this kind of film. Making this feel real is what makes it work.
The reality is that Hungry Wives isn’t a fantastic movie, and part of that does come from the sense that these are not professional actors, but people who are probably more talented than the average person, but not really talented enough to make it in the business. What it is, though is an interesting one because of the social commentary. Essentially, this is about loss of connection, about the sort of weltschmerz that seems to infect most of us when our lives turn out not to be what we thought they were going to be. Joan isn’t a bad person, and while her marriage seems to be a bad one, her life isn’t terrible. It’s just boring, and even the yelling from her husband and the eventual mild violence are ultimately boring to her as well.
For Joan, and presumably for the audience as well, this isn’t about the power that she gets from witchcraft, but about the excitement of it. Joan is on an adventure, and that’s far more interesting than anything else that she might do with any magic spells.
I don’t see a reason to watch this one a second time, but it was an interesting viewing, and I’m happy I saw it.
Why to watch Hungry Wives: George Romero did more than zombies.
Why not to watch: You'll kind of wonder where the zombies are.
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