With Wicked hitting screens this week, it’s time to look at the biggest witches to cast a spell on audiences.
Ranked in order, from the best to the best (I mean there are hundreds on the screen but they can’t be underestimated).
1. The Wicked Witch of the West
Worst villain ever: The Wicked Witch of the West, the beautiful one
Very scary, the very epitome of witches and witchiness. Kekel. Threat. Obsessive hatred of little girls is good.
Margaret Hamilton is at witch Appearing on the screen in The Wizard of Oz in 1939 with such a personality and image, the Wicked Witch immediately became not only good but mythical, creeping beyond the film into the dreams of millions of children.
Everything about this performance is a masterclass, the voice, the makeup, the way he moves, he comes out and looks through the fire and smoke… totally unnerving.
The new Wicked movie will certainly trade on the strengths of the original but won’t match it.
“Who would have thought that a beautiful girl like you could destroy my beautiful crime,” says the Wicked Witch of the West as she melts at the end, as she also acknowledges Dorothy’s victory and suffers the guilt of her death, pricking. good understanding.
It’s true that the Good Witch in the film, Glinda, is disturbing and annoying in a way that the villains are not. Salman Rushdie pointed out in his famous essay about the film, “Glinda is happy to be called beautiful and despises her sister who is not beautiful, while the Wicked Witch is angry at her death. they sister, showing, one might say, a commendable sense of solidarity … The Wicked Witch of the West can be said to be the more positive image of the two powerful female images offered here.
The Witches, the 1990 adaptation featured an incredible, electric performance from Anjelica Huston that Anne Hathaway couldn’t match in the 2020 remake. It helped that the film was in the hands of director Nicholas Roeg, who brought some of his trademark artful eeriness to the Roald Dahl adaptation. . Too much at first: he recut the film after showing the initial version to his son, who was absolutely petrified by it.
But Huston had the ball to give some kind of appeal to the role, and the revelation of the real face of the witch when they took the dead skin rendered terrifically horrible body here by the work of the last film Muppets creator Jim Henson.
Not Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent from 2014 – although it is quite good – but the original Maleficent in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty. Voiced by Eleanor Audley (who also played Cinderella’s wicked stepmother in the 1950 Disney film), Maleficent is the ‘Mistress of all Evil’ who curses the infant Princess Aurora to prick her finger on the wheel spindle and die before she turns 16. Actually, he just slept a long time.
Audley acted in live-action footage for the animators to reference the production nine years before the green screen. The character is supposed to be a combination of a vain femme fatale and a vampire bat so people get the message that this is a Bad Woman. However, the most frightening scene for the children is at the climax of the film when he turns into a vengeful dragon. It still bothers some of us today.
Of course we need the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on this list, and we’ll draw Swinton’s portrayal of the character as the pinnacle, just beating Barbara Kellerman who played the role in the late Eighties BBC children’s drama. .
Swinton uses icy charm here, showing a witch who can shift from sensual charm to terrifying intensity and is undeniably a force of pure evil. Until now, many of us have never eaten Turkish Delight.
Played by Carice van Houten, the Red Lady is a sexy witch. As liable to seduce you as to burn your child alive, this Lord of the Light priest is a trope in the early seasons of Game of Thrones where everyone is always naked.
But Melisandre is developed into a great character who continues to play an important role in the show, raising Jon Snow from the dead, making Snow and Daenerys matchmaking, until the end when she pushes Arya to find and kill the Night King. .
But perhaps the moment he stood up was when he took off the necklace to reveal his true form. That of a weak ancient woman. Echoes of the famous bathing scene in The Shining here.
Never seen, but strongly felt, this witch is still afraid. The Blair Witch Project’s reputation has taken a bit of a dive over the years as the many imitators found have created their own sub-genre (pulled by the film’s $35,000 initial cost and $250 million gross), but I’ve watched other original films. night, and still really stand up.
Filmed on camcorders by the actors themselves, who had no script to work with as they were terrorized in the woods by directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, this is the best horror film in true vérité cinema. The claustrophobia of being in the tent with the actors because of the strange noises heard outside was visceral.
No, we don’t see the witch, but her presence is felt as the characters walk in the dark for their destiny. Amazingly, when it was released in 1999, its successful marketing as a ‘found record’ convinced many people that it was all real.
7. The Witches of Eastwick
In this 1987 adaptation of John Updike’s novel with Jack Nicholson’s Daryl Van Horne in the city, the oppressed women begin to live a little. Yes, three of them: Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon. She has a latent power that is unleashed when she is transformed into Jack’s little witch, a harem for this unholy priapic master until she realizes that the “perverted little devil” may actually be the devil.
This witch is not scary, and playing second fiddle to Jack’s performance is none other than Jack. Off-screen was a different story though. Sarandon was initially cast as Alex’s single mother sculptor until, before filming, Cher demanded she have the role. Sarandon only became aware of the change when she arrived on set. Scared Cher.
The wonderful witch Angela Lansbury in Bedknobs and Broomsticks brings warmth where other witches bring chill. In this Disney classic from 1971, three orphans are sent away from the Blitz to the countryside, ending up in the care of Miss Price, a trainee witch who wants to use spells against the Nazis and take the dead in several adventures using a magical bedknob.
Loved mostly for the mix of live action and animation in a visit to the island of Naboombu love football, and for the climax in which the Nazi invasion was thwarted by a magic suit of armor, true magic in the casting, with three of the most annoying kids in the Disney pantheon and stand-in parents, in ever- very good David Tomlinson as Mr. Browne and Lansbury’s Miss Price. He’s more of a reassuring presence than the good wizard of Oz, that’s for sure.
Even though she’s known as the Evil Queen, she’s 100% a witch, what with the magic mirror that tells her she’s no longer the most beautiful, and with her transformation into a hideous old crone who turns Snow White’s stepdaughter into a poisoned apple.
Lucille Le Verne provided the voice, which was first heard in an animated film. With her fearsome attitude – loosely based on Joan Crawford – she’s one of the best.
Roman Polanski’s all-time horror Rosemary’s Baby – adapted from the brilliantly pulpy novel by Ira Levin – has Mia Farrow’s Rosemary ‘fortunately’ moving to a sought-after apartment block in New York with her husband Somewhat slippery played by John Cassavetes. It seems that all is well and good because there is a demonic cult around the part that has a fun idea to help Rosemary get pregnant.
The witch in this movie is Minnie’s neighbor, played by Ruth Gordon. It’s a masterstroke of performance and character, Minnie is a mixed-up neighbor who isn’t a stupid idiot, but only acts to ensure Rosemary eats a special chocolate “rat” while preparing for her womb. the arrival of the Beast. Gordon is convincing as an eccentric, overbearing, ridiculous pensioner who always gets what he wants. It’s still as cold as ever.
Suspiria, Dario Argento’s 1977 classic – remade with Dakota Johnson in 2021 – is one of the greatest horrors ever made and has such power in a way that, like Blair Witch, it can increase the tension without showing you. You just think you see something.
Suzy (Jessica Harper) is an American ballet student enrolled in a prestigious academy, only to find it home to a coven of witches. Maggots fall from the ceiling, a blind pianist is killed by his own dog, a fellow student disappears, and Suzy figures out that the school was founded by the head witch Mrs. Markos. He must find the witch and kill him, so that he can destroy the others in the burning hell.
Goblins do music. Thom Yorke’s soundtrack for the remake is also excellent. Everyone thought they saw a witch but they didn’t.
Again, this witch is more powerful than a true witch, although she certainly made it feel like she had Black Phillip’s sheep. This slow-burning modern wonder – despite its flaws, for this inventor never slow-burns with a hot and terrifying climax – by director Dave Eggers, takes witches from old crone and squawking voices into disturbing period realism.
The three witches in Shakespeare’s play are transformed into just one in the greatest film adaptation of Macbeth: Throne of Blood by Akira Kurosawa.
However, this witch is a fascinating, spectral figure in the forest, whispering hellish phrases into the head of Washizu (/Macbeth, played by Toshiro Mifune) such as, “A man’s life is worthless like an insect,” while spinning a ghostly loom. .
Played by Chieko Naniwa, she is made like a ‘mountain witch’ mask from traditional Japanese Noh theater. This is subtle, spell-binding, and truly convincing as both witches predict and shape Washizu’s fate.
The evil green woman from Rod Hull and Emu shows (Emu’s All Live Pink Windmill show is a classic, anyone? Maybe it’s just me), and then the star vehicle itself on ITV, Grotbags were part funny and scary for small children as a Panto evil great writing. Carol Lee Scott plays Grotbags, Pontins veteran and men’s club player, who meet Hull in the summer at Cleethorpes.
All this seems to have happened 40 years ago. He did.
