The Witches Mountain (El Monte de las Brujas, 1972)


US Mondo Macabro Blu-ray edition
- region All



 


The Mystery of the missing or not nudity scenes

The film Mondo Macabro presents is the short 86 minute Spanish version and according to
the Phil Hardy Encyclopedia of Horror there's a 100 minutes version too.

This seems highly plausible as there are obvious cuts in the shortened version. Cuts as the
chained to a wall men in the cave scene ? So, there are 14 minutes missing, but were there
any nude scenes in these. Again, highly plausible there were, export versions usually had
these scenes.
Phil Hardy says: "the picture stumbles from situation to situation, all of which allow the
display of women in sexual activity or as victims of gory doings". Yes, Hardy seems to have
seen the longer version and with sexual content. The Spanish short version is cleaned of
any partly nude, nude or gory scene.

But, David Flint in the audio commentary insists that NO nude scenes were shot for export.
Also in the interview with actor John Cihangir Gaffari he says that the film was shot in the
beautiful Asturia and that NO nude scenes were shot.

Contrary to this though, besides Hardy's witness, in the extras and the video essay
"An American actress in Madrid" we get to see Patty Shepard's boob and nipple very
briefly in the Beach scene, her first appearance in the film.
So clearly there were NUDE scenes shot for the long version of the film. Stop gabbing.

The Shooting location

Regarding shooting location the film was shot in Spanish Asturia according to Gaffari in
his interview. Also, I recognized some famous Asturian places as the mountains in
Picos De Europa and the mountain cliff road. The soft "Wavy" mountains unique for
Asturia. I also has seen the Vuelta (Bicycle competition) ride on that road.
In the commentary it's said that the film was shot in The Pyrenees and Andorra. maybe?

The Film:

Has a very strange intro where a woman arrives home and finds her cat killed, and the
perpetrator is a small girl who threatens the woman, Carla (Monica Randall). But Carla
puts gasoline on the child and burns her to death. That was an intense scene for sure,
but forget about it as this opening scene has almost nothing to do with the rest of the
movie. The rest is slow and filled with tourist spots footage from Spanish Asturia.

Mario Waldor (John/Cihangir Gaffari) is a photographer and is assigned to take
pictures of the mountains. On his way he meets Delia (Patty Shepard) who joins him.
In the Asturian mountains they meet women who may be witches. The End.

Film presented in widescreen 2.35:1 with spanish or english audio with english subs.
Extras:
Audio commentary by David Flint, The Witches Mountain Documentary (24 minutes)
A Conversation with actor producer Cihangir (John) Gaffari (30 minutes),
Archive interview with John Gaffari (36 minutes), An American Actress in Madrid:
Visual Essay by Chris O'Neill (8 minutes), Producers trailer, English credits sequence

 

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