For years, I've occasionally had flashbacks of a bizarre short film shown to me when I was very young - I *think* it was in my preschool or kindergarten back in Lincoln, NE. I never remembered much about the plot or who was in it, just bits and pieces like an old witch making pancakes for a family. When consumed, the pancakes caused them to stare blankly while colors danced around them. I never could remember much more of the film than that, but for years images from this movie have occasionally crept into my consciousness. When these memories came creeping around again yesterday, I decided I'd had enough. I entered "witch pancakes" into Google, and quickly discovered I'm not the only one that has been haunted by memories of this film. It's called
Winter of the Witch and was based on a children's story called
The Black Witch. On the film's IMDB entry, there's a user comment describing a story similar to my own, including finally putting "witch pancakes" into Yahoo.
Anyway, with a little more nosing around, and I found the film
posted on Google Video. I'm wondering if anyone else in my approximate age group (mid 30's to early 40's) has any recollection of this movie. In the past, when I've tried to describe my memories of it to friends of my own age, they had no clue what I was talking about. It's strange to watch this old film since I have no real memories of it other than the odd bits and pieces I described above. It certainly doesn't seem nearly as strange as I remember it being in my 4 or 5 year old brain at the time.
A couple of stills I dug up in my search:
