Season of the Witch

George Romero’s film about feminism in its Women’s Lib phase. It’s loaded with references to the occult, but owes as much to Betty Friedan as Anton LaVey.

Jan White, an East Coast soap actress and commercial model sought out by Romero for the lead role, plays an upper-middle-class homemaker who’s defined almost entirely as a wife and mother, but those definitions have started to lose their meaning. Her husband is often away on business, and her college-age daughter pays no mind. Staring down middle age, Joan starts to wonder who she is, even though her dreams provide an answer she doesn’t want to hear.

Restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive.