Weird Woman (1944, starring Lon Chaney Jr.) and Witches' Brew (1979, starring Teri Garr, Richard Benjamin, and Lana Turner) were also based on Conjure Wife. For Night of the Eagle, the New England setting of the novel was changed to rural Britain. As she waits for him, the eagle statue falls from the roof and kills her.įritz Leiber's Conjure Wife was first published (in shorter form) in 1943 in Unknown magazine and as a single book in 1953. On their way out of the campus, Lindsay sees the chapel's heavy doors are ajar (left thus by Norman in his "escape" from the eagle), and insists on securing them despite Flora's protests. Tansy escapes her burning home and rejoins her no longer sceptical husband. Lindsay arrives at the office and turns off the loudspeaker, and the illusory eagle vanishes. Using a form of auditory hypnosis over a loudspeaker system, Flora convinces Norman that a giant stone eagle perching at the top of the university chapel has come to life to attack him. Flora uses witchcraft to set fire to the Taylor home with Tansy trapped inside. Her limping walk during the attack gives Norman a clue to the person responsible for his ill luck: university secretary Flora Carr ( Margaret Johnston), the wife of Lindsay whose career had stalled in favour of Norman's. Tansy attacks him with a knife while in a trance, but Norman disarms her and locks her in her room.
Tansy, willing to sacrifice her life for her husband's safety, almost drowns herself and is only saved at the last minute by Norman giving in to the practices he despises. He forces her to burn all her magical paraphernalia.Īlmost immediately things start to go wrong: a female student (Judith Stott) accuses Norman of rape, her boyfriend (Bill Mitchell) threatens him with violence, and someone tries to break into the Taylors' home during a thunderstorm. A firm rationalist, Norman is angered by her acceptance of superstition. She insists that her charms have been responsible for his rapid advancement in his academic career and for his general well-being. After a scene in which his wife searches frantically and finds a poppet left by a jealous work rival, he discovers that his wife, Tansy ( Janet Blair), is practising obeah, referred to in the film as "conjure magic", which she learned in Jamaica. Norman Taylor ( Peter Wyngarde) is a psychology professor lecturing about belief systems and superstition. The film was retitled Burn, Witch, Burn! for the US release. The script by Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson and George Baxt was based upon the 1943 Fritz Leiber novel Conjure Wife. Night of the Eagle is a 1962 British horror film directed by Sidney Hayers.
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