A university student (Robert Short) is driving through central Texas on his way to Luckenbach, a German village that was established in 1846. Life in this rural village hasn’t changed all that much. The villagers still hold on to their German roots and superstitions. Most people still speak German. When he runs out of gas he walks the rest of the way to the village. He meets Kirska Schoennig (Jo Maryman). Her grandfather Hans (Charles West) runs the local inn where he gets a room.
The student is doing research for his thesis about customs and legends around the German immigrants in the area. He is especially interested in the legend of the “Luckenbach Witch”. He gets basically nowhere with the locals but Kirska understands and loans him a very old book titled “The Early Germans in Texas” by Sergie Shroeder that talks about the legends and superstitions of the area.
One story is about a widow who was having an affair with Otto Schoennig (Denis Adams), the innkeeper at the time. Otto’s wife is an invalid so he is dallying with the widow (Libby Hall) who gives him an ultimatum to divorce his wife and marry her. Tired of her nagging he denounces her as a witch. The elders of the town took the widow to the grave yard. They drove a stake through her and buried her. Before she is killed she vows to return and take vengeance on the Schoennig family.
After reading about the witch the student becomes curious and ventures out into the night to see if there really is a witch’s grave. He finds it and digs it up. In the grave is a mummified corpse with a stake in it. He decides the stake would make a great souvenir so he pulls it out. He goes back to the inn with his souvenir. Now that she is free of the stake the widow is resurrected. Naked she begins to fulfill her vow to the Schoennig family.
“The Naked Witch” was filmed in 1960 but not released until 1964. The movie was written and directed by Larry Buchanan and Claude Alexander. It is an American low budget horror film.
Only Larry Buchanan could make a movie with a naked woman running around and still have it be boring.
The first ten minutes or so of the film is a prolonged lecture on witches and witchcraft. Along with it are some interesting photographs of paintings done by Hieronymus Bosch and other Early Netherlandish and Flemish Renaissance painters. All nicely narrated by Gary Owens. Although the lecture is detailed it is basically full of incorrect information. Once the movie actually starts it is accompanied by music provided by a Hammond organ and performed by Ray Plagens.
The movie was filmed in Luckenbach, Texas. The cast and crew were mostly local people and not actual actors. It cost around $8.000 and brought in $80,000 which actually made the film a hit. The financing was provided by a Texas drive-in theater owner. He wanted a movie with lots of nudity in it. This was when “nudie cuties” were popular. After it was filmed he ended up smudging much of Libby Hall’s assets so very little nudity was actually shown. Libby said she had to dance nude for Claude Alexander, Larry Buchanan, and the Texan. Since she was a nudist she had no problem with the assignment. Most of her role was to run around the countryside naked and skinny dip in a pond as they filmed her. She actually enjoyed her part.