Return of the Witch (1952) (Finland)

aka The Witch 

⭐️⭐️

The body of a suspected witch is removed from her 300-year-old resting place in the bog where the locals put her by a team of archeologists. Proving that Finnish folk are just as stupid as everyone else, they ignore the fact that the local old coot was trying to re-bury the exhumed woman while speaking of a curse and the excited archaeologist than proceeds to pull a wooden stake out of the bog corpse’s chest. That’s a bad move in any part of the world. Heavy winds and odd accidents freak out the townsfolk and have them chattering about witches and being doomed. The local Baron doesn’t buy into it and thinks it’s all supernatural bullshit. The corpse is removed from the bog and placed in an old barn and the man of science gets to work on his research. Eventually, during an unseasonable thunderstorm, a raven-haired naked woman (1950’s BEWBS!) is found lying in the spot where the body was unearthed. The man of science is immediately convinced it’s the witch because I guess being rational has nothing to do with archaeology. He begins to calm down and think straight but the same can’t be said for the superstitious locals. All the men start acting a bit wild around this young lady. As soon as she wakes up she’s told by the Baron’s horny son (he’s horny because he has trouble finding a village girl his perverted father hasn’t had first) that she’s the witch and she seemingly takes to the claim and acts like a dope. There’s a bunch of focus on the archeologist, his wife/assistant Greta and an artist who has the hots for Greta and has no problem letting it be known constantly. After the beautiful black-haired (possible) witch Birgit shows up, the painter’s lust is given the chance to focus on Greta because the archaeologist begins fixating on Birgit but so does the painter which sucks for Greta. Birgit takes pleasure in driving the men insane and just really wants to get her freak on. Yeah, she’s attractive and all but she acts like a child with brain damage which is a major turnoff but not to the Finnish dudes, I guess. It’s like a horny comedy you’d see America shit out in the eighties just decades earlier but way tamer because of that. It holds merit as a rare Finnish horror (no matter how lite on horror it may be) film but still remains a little too scatterbrained for its own good. It brings slight folk horror, mixes it with some comedy, has the hallmarks of a minimal sex flick, focuses more-so on romance and unfortunately drowns in melodrama then gives you a big middle finger to close out everything.