In this advanced technological age of ours, I’m astonished there are people (in what I think is still called the western world) who believe those of a different political bent than themselves consume the blood of children so as to gain magical powers.  What depresses me even further is such people seem to believe that process works, which makes me wonder when they’re going to try it themselves.  Anybody who can’t comprehend how early settlers could believe some among them were witches need only follow the news to see contemporary examples of the same.

I suspect a small percentage of the population held such beliefs back in 1945, when Woman Who Came Back was released.  In this short, and rather slight, film, Nancy Kelly is increasingly suspected by others of being the reincarnation of a witch executed 300 years earlier.

All this takes place in and around Eben Rock, MA.  Funny how our collective consciousness restricts such stories to the borders of that state. I mean, just imagine the story crossing the border into any of the adjoining states.  Nobody would take a film called something like A Vermont Witch Story very seriously.

When we first see Kelly, she is riding a bus into town.  The bus stops for the elderly woman Elspeth Dudgeon (how’s that for a name nobody now alive would possibly have?), despite this being intercity transportation, and not likely to pick up people on the roadside.  She pays with a pound note, saying it is “valid currency in all 13 colonies”.  Then she plunks down next to Kelly and proceeds to freak her out.

Almost immediately, the bus flies through a guardrail and over a bridge, into the lake below.  To be more technically accurate, an obvious toy stands in for the bus, and I thought that cheap effect was cute.  On the shore of the lake is a monument to the witch immortalized in the town’s folklore.  That the extensive text etched into the face of it looks so new can only be testament to the powers of evil.

Kelly is the only person to survive the accident, which starts rumors around town that she might be a witch.  Interesting how nobody would have thought that if she hadn’t lived, which seems analogous to the ol’ “if the woman floats, she’s a witch” test.  It doesn’t help her case that none of the bodies retrieved from the lake is that of the old woman she claims sat next to her.

The film is anchored entirely on Kelly, which is unfortunate, as something about her performance scans at times like a mockery of the material.  Admittedly, anybody would have trouble keeping a straight face throughout a production like this, but it is still the actor’s job to sell us on the work in which they appear.  But I couldn’t help but picture Bernedette Peters in her place, delivering the same performance, and it being a riot.

Although he appears in the film to a considerably lesser extent, John Loder is actually the top-billed performer, as the town doctor.  He is also Kelly’s boyfriend, and he initially seems to be naïve in his defense of his fiancée, until even he is swayed towards suspecting her.  Vying for his attentions is Ruth Ford, who is all too happy to fan the flames of rumors of Kelly’s witchcraft, so as to encourage the other woman to skip town.  She will even go so far as to pray in church for God to destroy Kelly.

For much of the film, it is hard to tell whose side it’s on.  I would have thought it was aligned with the woman likely falsely accused of being a witch, except it walks a fine line for much of the runtime.  Once it is finally, fully on Kelly’s side, it becomes preachy. 

That wasn’t surprising, given the moral compass of the film is Otto Kruger’s preacher.  Though depicted as a kind and intelligent soul, the advice he gives her when she doubts her own identity is to marry Loder as soon as possible: “Then you won’t want to change.  You’ll be doing it for him.” Yep, back then, the solution to any woman’s problem was always marriage, which seems to me like hitting your thumb with a hammer so as to forget about your headache.

Woman Who Came Back is a low budget picture, and it shows.  If there’s one thing such a work should be able to do is to be atmospheric.  And this does that, with such startling visuals as the corpses from the bus crash laid out on the lake shore, each covered by a white sheet.  Alas, such moments are few, leaving me with the impression of having seen a work with the budget of a Val Lewton film, but with little of the care that went into his productions.

Dir: Walter Combes

Starring Nancy Kelly, John Loder, Ruth Ford, Otto Kruger

Watched on Imprint blu-ray (region-free)