THE HERNCRAKE WITCH (1912)
aka The Hencrake Witch
Short
Article 3866 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-6-2012
Posting Date: 3-15-2012
Directed by Mark Melford
Featuring Jackeydawra Melford, Mark Melford
Country: UK
What it is: Fantasy comedy

When the daughter of a local witch is ostracized by the other students at a girl school, the witch plots a revenge against them. She also helps her daughter’s lover to overcome his father’s resistance to their romance.

This title had ended up on my “ones that got away” list with a LOST classification, but a print (with only a few seconds missing at the beginning and the end) has apparently turned up, been restored, and posted on the web, thus giving me a chance to see it. It looked relatively realistic for a movie about a witch in its time, so I was wondering if it would be a movie about the witch hunts, but the minute the daughter shows up in a black pointed hat, I knew that it wasn’t to be taken too seriously. In the movie, the witch really only has one trick up its sleeve, but it’s a good one, especially when she casts it on a misogynistic father. It’s a fun and amusing little short that I’m glad survived. Incidentally, I was quite surprised to discover that the character of Jackeydawra (the witch’s daughter) was actually played by an actress name Jackeydawra.